Tee Pee, one of our professors in the Department of Direction and Screenplay Writing had visited me while i was in hospital and semi-conscious following my attempt on life. Tee Pee only gave classes in the first semester. I remember vaguely some of his lectures on French Poetic Realism. Rules of the Game was screened. Later he helped us during our DV project in which i made a crappy five minuter called ചെറുപയർ or 'green gram'.
I liked him not for his classes. Never thought he was a good teacher. He could hardly finish his sentences and always digressed to an extent which made us students feel giddy just by listening. I liked him because he was the only professor who made me cry out of love. I saw all kinds of professors here. Who abused students, who slept with students, who made students believe they were iconic just so that they could thrive and professors who only wanted students to drop out and feel defeated. In Tee Pee, i found a professor who was worried about his daughter with all the rapes and attacks on women in the country, who wanted to click photos of a birthday party in the family, who planned holidays in Kerala and had to ditch them because god! were prices going up like crazy!, who took my banana chips and gave cake which his wife made in the same steel dabba. It might sound silly, but in here, he was the only real person who actually loved, for me.
May be that was why even though i don't remember anything out of his visit in the hospital, i didn't find it hard to believe when Kunju Thalona told me that i held his hand in bed. That was why even though he digressed just as much today, i felt at peace when i spoke to him of the documentary project, Derrida, Jung and suicides.
I spoke for long on the treatment we were adopting for the project. Of the concept of death and of a woman who dealt with the dead for a living. He was interested. In fact he was one of the people who was present when i was at the department looking for a topic which was related to death. He had talked about one of my seniors' work which dealt with morgues. That was when our HOD emerged out of his room and spoke to me about Bow Barracks and the family which decorated corpses. I felt he felt responsible, in some way, for what had happened. With me. And my work.
I assured to show him the first cut when it was ready when he drifted to the Derrida for Beginners which peeped out of my sling bag and later to his journey with Jung. Inevitably he landed on my attempt at life. Like many, he said that 'it was not done'. Spoke of motivation like most.
I spoke of losing control. In the moments before the attempt i had lost control over my thoughts. That scares me even now. I am still in those moments when i was watering plants and thinking of what to do with my clothes whether or not to iron them before popping sleeping pills and lying down to die. Except it wasn't me who was doing all those chores. I was a goddamn machine with no intellect. Intellect is the only reason i have to live. That scares me. I know i am going to be in the same spot one day or the other, again.
I told him about writing. How i had devised a survival mechanism through my blog, by writing about many things and finding peace to an extent. I also spoke to him of ice when he spoke of finding motivation in cinema. Ice was one of the images D Jeet and i had agreed upon to be in our documentary project. We were looking for objects which were of death but also of a beginning. While shooting Florence had a pack of ice cubes which she laid in the coffin to keep the body as it was. While transferring it to a bag one of the cubes fell down and started melting. I asked D Jeet to tilt down to it. It left a small pool of water there and a line of it extending downwards where the floor slanted. The shot didn't turn out as i expected, but the image stayed with us. I told him why cinema didn't motivate me enough to stop me from taking sleeping pills or slitting my body to ease pain. It was because i was like ice myself. It melted at a certain temperature. It could only exist as water and water i was. He asked me to write that down. I just did.
My psychologist the other day gave me three alternatives to my methods of harming my own body. One of them was to clench tight ice cubes in both my hands. Sounded cool. Well, literally.
I hope Tee Pee makes awesome films like he used to when he was a student of cinema like me.
I hope i find my love and lust for life back.
I hope i don't melt. Not cool for ice, i suppose.
I liked him not for his classes. Never thought he was a good teacher. He could hardly finish his sentences and always digressed to an extent which made us students feel giddy just by listening. I liked him because he was the only professor who made me cry out of love. I saw all kinds of professors here. Who abused students, who slept with students, who made students believe they were iconic just so that they could thrive and professors who only wanted students to drop out and feel defeated. In Tee Pee, i found a professor who was worried about his daughter with all the rapes and attacks on women in the country, who wanted to click photos of a birthday party in the family, who planned holidays in Kerala and had to ditch them because god! were prices going up like crazy!, who took my banana chips and gave cake which his wife made in the same steel dabba. It might sound silly, but in here, he was the only real person who actually loved, for me.
May be that was why even though i don't remember anything out of his visit in the hospital, i didn't find it hard to believe when Kunju Thalona told me that i held his hand in bed. That was why even though he digressed just as much today, i felt at peace when i spoke to him of the documentary project, Derrida, Jung and suicides.
I spoke for long on the treatment we were adopting for the project. Of the concept of death and of a woman who dealt with the dead for a living. He was interested. In fact he was one of the people who was present when i was at the department looking for a topic which was related to death. He had talked about one of my seniors' work which dealt with morgues. That was when our HOD emerged out of his room and spoke to me about Bow Barracks and the family which decorated corpses. I felt he felt responsible, in some way, for what had happened. With me. And my work.
I assured to show him the first cut when it was ready when he drifted to the Derrida for Beginners which peeped out of my sling bag and later to his journey with Jung. Inevitably he landed on my attempt at life. Like many, he said that 'it was not done'. Spoke of motivation like most.
I spoke of losing control. In the moments before the attempt i had lost control over my thoughts. That scares me even now. I am still in those moments when i was watering plants and thinking of what to do with my clothes whether or not to iron them before popping sleeping pills and lying down to die. Except it wasn't me who was doing all those chores. I was a goddamn machine with no intellect. Intellect is the only reason i have to live. That scares me. I know i am going to be in the same spot one day or the other, again.
I told him about writing. How i had devised a survival mechanism through my blog, by writing about many things and finding peace to an extent. I also spoke to him of ice when he spoke of finding motivation in cinema. Ice was one of the images D Jeet and i had agreed upon to be in our documentary project. We were looking for objects which were of death but also of a beginning. While shooting Florence had a pack of ice cubes which she laid in the coffin to keep the body as it was. While transferring it to a bag one of the cubes fell down and started melting. I asked D Jeet to tilt down to it. It left a small pool of water there and a line of it extending downwards where the floor slanted. The shot didn't turn out as i expected, but the image stayed with us. I told him why cinema didn't motivate me enough to stop me from taking sleeping pills or slitting my body to ease pain. It was because i was like ice myself. It melted at a certain temperature. It could only exist as water and water i was. He asked me to write that down. I just did.
My psychologist the other day gave me three alternatives to my methods of harming my own body. One of them was to clench tight ice cubes in both my hands. Sounded cool. Well, literally.
I hope Tee Pee makes awesome films like he used to when he was a student of cinema like me.
I hope i find my love and lust for life back.
I hope i don't melt. Not cool for ice, i suppose.
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