 |
| Arti Jain |
This photograph is
wrongly captioned
It’s her lipstick
that piques my interest. A blood red crescent drawn precisely in the middle of
her full mouth, like a young Geisha’s, except the pigment doesn’t keep within
the confines of her lips but extends down her chin in a sharp line. Is it meant
to look like a sickle or a question mark, I wonder and realise, too late, I’ve
been staring.
“Take a picture.
It’ll last longer.” Her voice cuts through me.
“So sorry. I
didn’t mean to. Hi. I’m Mahesh.” I fumble with the leaflet I’m holding and grin
sheepishly.
“What do you make
of it?” She points to the photograph I was viewing before my peripheral vision had
alerted me to her presence.
We’re at an exhibition
of Robert Maddox-Harle’s latest work, in a gallery in Haus Khas. And the photograph
is, The Axe Just Fell.
“Fascinating.”
“Don’t you think the
caption is misleading? Forcing the eyes to fall on the axe that allegedly just
fell?” She jabs her right index finger in the air like a laser pointer.
“I’m not sure I understand.”
Before I can ask her
who she is, she turns around and says, “Close your eyes.” She shuts hers and nods
to suggest I do the same. “Go on, trust me.”
I take a step
back, and clutching the leaflet in my right hand, close my eyes, but not fully.
Despite Delhi’s December chill, my ears feel hot.
“Step back in time,”
her voice reminds me of rail tracks, just after the train has passed, metallic
and warm, familiar and dangerous, “at least a few hundred centuries, out of the
obvious. Breathe— inhale, exhale. Now, flutter open your shutters of perception
and let the photograph reveal its truth.
After a slow
second, I make a show of opening my eyes I had never closed.
“Is it a trick of
the light?”
“I don’t mean to
be rude. But despite the deluge of photographers these days, no school, no AI
tool, shows us how to see. You will have to work just a little harder.” She smiles and the blood-red sickle on her
lips stretches into a scythe.
Her kohl-rimmed
eyes, fine lines fanning out at the corners as she adjusts her glasses, are warm
and brown. She could be forty or fifty.
“Every
thought is recycled. And nothing is ever forgotten.” She breaks into my
reverie. “What would you say if I told you I am the woman in the photograph? Notice
how your gaze is drawn, nay propelled towards that enigma of an expression—while
the rest of her face is obscured?”
What was I
supposed to see? Some hidden symbol?
“Doesn’t her expression
compel you to think: will she pull the trigger?”
“Perhaps.” I
wonder if there is a connection between her lipstick and the woman in the
photograph’s half-scowl-half-glare-half-hidden face.
“Why the axe?” She
asks.
“Ah!” This I know.
“It’s a place-holder, right? Maybe for an idiom… like grinding an axe? Holding
a grudge? She looks mad. He better watch out.” I chuckle, relieved to have
covered some ground in this collective-viewing-game.
“Typical. Just as
lines begin to blur, men hide behind humour, or hubris, even hatred.”
“Not all men.” The
words are out before I can stop them.
“What do you make
of the opacity of the man’s knee-high socks or the broad stripes of the deck
chair he’s sunk into?”
“Visual
distractions?” I hazard a guess.
“Exactly.” She
lets her gaze rest on me for a slippery second and says, “You’re a quick
learner.”
I can feel the
heat rising in my cheeks.
“But the opposite
of opacity is not clarity.”
Unable to decipher
what she’s just said, I continue to look at the photograph, feigning depth of
perception.
“Tell me what you
see.” She surprises me.
“Any minute now,
she’ll pull that trigger.” I blurt out.
“Why are men so
eager for action?”
I want to repeat
not-all-men but don’t.
“The parasol is
what I see. No better metaphor for brain
fog that descends like silent crickets hungry for memories—devouring names,
faces, facts. The parasol is neither clear, nor hiding a thing. It even alludes
to peace.”
I lean in to peer
closely.
“In the moment of
this capture, while the woman holds the gun, the man is silent, at peace—the
lull before the storm.”
The gallery lights
flicker, as if on cue.
“I am all the
women. Storms, ancient and new, we have borne— for a long, suffocating time. We
were—and still are—silenced as embryos, as teenagers, as adults and now as we
come to this final lap, as we mature, ripen into ourselves—past our
child-bearing, family rearing periods, as we flow into fields of our choices,
voices, sharpen our axes to chop up labels and blitz them into a blurring—for an
awakening of us. Don’t get us wrong. We don’t plan to plunder. But prepare a
new vision for our fogged-up world.”
Spellbound, I
watch as she extends her hand and breaks through the photograph, as gently as a
dragonfly landing on a lily pad, barely a ripple, and plucks the parasol out of
the man’s clutches.
“Imagine if the man
in the photograph stood for all men. His presence visible only through his adornments,
his essence squeezed into—socks, parasol, background. A static man. Playing
golf. Best kept occupied with sticks and balls. Like we once were. In kitchens
and bedrooms, valued only for vaginas and wombs.”
“Not all men.” My
voice echoes in the empty gallery.
“The opposite of
revolution is repression.” She collapses the parasol and tucks it under her
arm.
“This,” she means
the parasol, “is a place holder for silence. For far too long, men, women,
cultures have used it to unsee the unseeable. It’s time.” She turns to leave
but stops mid-stride. “You didn’t ask,” she says, a faint smile softening the
question mark on her lips, “but the right caption is, Metaphor of Menopause.”
Bio: Arti Jain is a poet, an award-winning spoken word artist and an
author. Her work has appeared in many international journal and anthologies,
including The Kali Project, Kindle India Magazine, Muse India, Usawa Literary
Review, Gulmohur Quarterly, The Hooghly Review, Flash Flood Journal, Porch Lit
Magazine, Poems India, Epistemic Literary, BTWN and
is forthcoming in The Indian Yearbook of Poetry 2024. She has
authored two books. She lives in Doha, Qatar. Website: https://arti-jain.com/ Instagram: @arti.a.jain Twitter: @artijain28
