Stories We Tell

I believe that confronting, or even coming face to face, with a work of art is an act of surrender. You have to let it affect you. You have to be vulnerable. When I look back, I realize that is what makes me love the books, movies and music I love.

I am writing this in one such moment of weakness. I just got done watching Sarah Polley’s documentary, ‘Stories We Tell.’ The title gives little of the plot away but in retrospect, it reveals the metaphor of the film. In this film, she attempts to uncover an important truth about herself, the truth of who her father is. In doing so, she also discovers much about who her mother truly was. It is not an easy truth to unravel because of the number of narratives that need to be pieced together. The story finally takes shape through the accounts of many people, which includes her siblings, her mother’s husband, her biological father, her mother’s friends and a few fringe characters.

It is unusual that a story so intimate and personal to one person should move me - an unrelated viewer in another part of the world - so much. But it did. It suddenly brought home the fact that there is very little relevance or truth to what we think is the truth. Whose truth is more important than the other’s?

That of Sarah’s biological father, who is convinced that her mother and he are the only people who can authoritatively tell the story?

That of the man Sarah knew as her father for much of her life, to whom this revelation is utterly meaningless for there is no way she would stop being his daughter and for there is nothing that would make his love for his late wife diminish?

As Sarah’s sister puts it succinctly, “I don’t think there ever was a ‘what actually happened’.”

As the movie nears its end, the viewer gets to the same realization that the filmmaker does –that no story can be told without fictionalizing it, often unconsciously. That the ‘search for the vagaries of truth and the unreliability of memory’ is futile.

More than Sarah’s personal quest to uncover her parentage or the person her mother was beyond her social persona, the film asks us all a few simple questions - 

If you were asked to tell the whole story of your life, what would it be? How much of it would be tainted by your inability to make sense out of things and events? How much of the blanks would you fill with what you think it should have been?

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“When you are in the middle of a story it isn't a story at all, but only a confusion; a dark roaring, a blindness, a wreckage of shattered glass and splintered wood; like a house in a whirlwind, or else a boat crushed by the icebergs or swept over the rapids, and all aboard powerless to stop it. It's only afterwards that it becomes anything like a story at all. When you are telling it, to yourself or to someone else.”

- -         Margaret Atwood

The anatomy of a doubt

That morning, he had nothing important to do. So he lit an incense stick and settled down with a cup of tea. The morning paper had not arrived. He sat listlessly and stared at the fragrant fumes that gradually wafted around. He wondered if any research had been done into determining the lifespan of the fumes. If he Googled it, would he find something that said -

' A three centimetre-long fume can stay visible to the naked eye for up to five seconds.*

*under ideal test conditions'

Definitely not. He briefly toyed with the idea of positioning himself as a thought leader in that space, but decided against it. He would just sit and let his thoughts diffuse into one another like those fumes.

They looked tormented. Usually they went up in a straight line as if flowing through an invisible chimney. But that day, they looked like a psychedelic design pattern. They looked utterly clueless yet menacing. Directionless, hence miserable. He followed one plume as it rose as a thick, assured coil and soon started coming apart. It grew thinner, the coil broke into many little strands and drifted away. One strand outlasted the others, flailing, resisting but staying in his line of sight. He followed it without batting an eyelid but he could not tell the precise moment when he lost sight of it. He refocused and moved on to another strand, determined not to miss anything the second time. And it happened again. He couldn't tell when it disappeared. He kept on trying but nothing changed.

His eyes watered from those unblinking stares. He felt disturbed. It was right there in front of him and yet he could not tell when it was gone. He wondered why. 

It was a question he had asked himself before.

Morningscape

For a few years now, I have made a habit of stepping out with a cup of tea and staring at the grazing cows. I spend up to an hour just looking at them put their heads down and chew the grass. I never tire of seeing it. 

In recent days though, I have started seeing much more. There is a red tractor, red bricks, labourers with red bandanas all furiously at work. They are building.

At times, they see me stare and smile. It's a cold, unforgiving smile. They know what they are taking away from me.