Yet Untitled 097 - Recurring Themes

On the importance of acknowledging what is important

Apr 21, 2024

Dearest Yet Untitler,

I’ve been watching Netflix’s latest prestige show - The Three Body Problem - made by the people who brought us the monumental Game of Thrones. GoT has been one of the TV events of my lifetime; its scale, excellent writing and spectacle really made a big impression on me, especially how it cleverly coded in a very stark message about impending climate catastrophe into the show’s long narrative arc.

For those of you who didn’t see it - here’s a summary of this arc.

Various powerful kingdoms are busy warring with each other while a looming, existential threat is brewing, and all of the self-obsessed warring kingdoms are ignoring it. Unless they unite and pool their resources, they will all most certainly be annihilated.

Here’s the longer narrative arc of The Three Body Problem:

A technologically advanced alien race is invited to invade Earth by a woman who has lost faith in humanity. But the aliens will only arrive in 400 years, by when they fear that humanity would have advanced enough to defeat them. So the aliens decide to prevent this by killing earth’s science, launching a long-range espionage assault from afar. When scientists start dying, a band of (rather attractive) young scientists decide to fight back.

‘The Three Body Problem’ and ‘Game of Thrones’ are based on books written by authors from different continents, but there are thematic overlaps - existential threat/humanity’s assessment of itself via its response to said existential threat, to mention a couple. The people who made these shows are clearly fascinated by these themes. It made me think about a statement I’ve heard about writers and filmmakers.

“You only write the same book / make the same film throughout your life”

Hmmm. I construe from this that it’s important to take the recurring themes that catch our attention seriously. What are my recurring themes? This question’s not been easy to penetrate - despite having grappled with it over the past few days for the sake of this instalment. Perhaps I’m too close to myself to have the distance to see my recurring themes clearly. Perhaps the only way to see them is to look at the stuff I’ve been putting out there over time - like Yet Untitled or my films.

Let’s briefly see the thematics of my short films:

Shanu Taxi

Shanu, a young Mumbai cabbie yearns to move up in the world. One day, when a grateful passenger gifts him the very mobile phone he had left behind in in Shanu’s taxi when Shanu returns it, Shanu start thinking he’s on his way up, until one day a passenger tells him the hard truth about how stuck he is in his life.

Sukrit’s Sundays

Sukrit loves meeting his grandfather on Sundays, especially their ritual where Sukrit watches his grandfather shave the old fashioned way. One day, when their ritual abruptly stops, Sukrit suddenly learns to find solace in memory when the world suddenly feels like its lost its magic.

Sebastian and Rose

After a stroke, Sebastian - an aging photographer - loses his memory, forgetting Rose - his wife of 40 years. The only thing he responds to is the photograph of another woman - not his wife. Hoping that engaging with this memory may help him remember more, Rose takes Sebastian on a road trip, searching for this unknown woman. In the bargain she ends up discovering many secrets about Sebastian that call their relationship into question.

To my mind, it feels pretty clear that long-term relationships are one favourite theme of mine. Even in ‘Shanu Taxi’, Shanu was looking for something other than the transient, transactional relationships that his work tied him to. Whether directly or indirectly, my nose for narrative sniffs out these favourite themes - these concerns - in any story I end up engaging with.

When I began this instalment, I thought that perhaps it will eventually turn into some sort of catalogue of the recurring themes that reflected in my work and, eventually, in my life. But I surprised myself. Let me tell you how.

Negations

I woke up this morning thinking about times in my life when I wasn’t so sure about what held most importance for me. These were various times in my teens, my 20s and my 30s when I was - for a lack of better words - figuring out who I was.

I remember experimenting with various ideas about myself in my head - like emigrating to Japan and living like a character from a Murakami novel - solitary, cooking spaghetti, content, listening to jazz. Another time, I took a sabbatical from work and tried hard to produce a graphic novel based on a story I really wanted to tell (more about this in YU 008). Another time someone close to me suggested that a regular intake of intoxicants might land me closer to who I really was.

Many of these early experiments and considerations around identity and preference lead to dead ends. I found that I didn’t do too well with extended periods of solitude, so the pursuit of the Murakami life was out. I found that beyond a point, I just wasn’t prepared to bring my art skills up to the level needed to finish a graphic novel. I also discovered that intoxicants eventually made me depressed.

Pages from my WIP graphic novel - “Long Walk at the break of day”

I also remember that when a lot of these dead ends stacked up, it upset me. I felt that perhaps I had made all the wrong choices that led me away from myself rather than towards. At the height of this feeling of anchorlessness, I remember letting go of all spiritual beliefs for a certain period of time and this led to further feelings of emptiness. I also burned my old journals from my 20s which, to a great degree, documented this confused time of my life.

It was in my 30s that my life seemed to start hitting some bullseyes. I felt this when I started my Buddhist practice at 35. I remember feeling that various things - of importance that I had been circling - the need to be compassionate, to be helpful, charitable, while building a stronger inner self - were suddenly within reach. I’m very grateful for this, for not only finding something that my life had been seeking but accepting it also. This resulted in a renewed confidence - that I still had traction on the road and had not fallen by the wayside.

Still on the road, somewhere in Berlin I think.

It was a similar feeling when I was clear about marrying Vani. We had met in an Indian arranged-marriage scenario and my independent living, modern metropolitan Mumbai self had initially rejected the idea. But when I met her, all feelings felt thereafter seemed to suggest that this isn’t a dead end but the way forward. Where would I have been had I not walked down those dark alleys where I had found nothing, or things that were not me? Perhaps I would have chosen differently. I’m so glad I didn’t.

Vani and I at our wedding, one of my clearest decisions ever, c. 2010

I remember from Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, a book that I have referenced here repeatedly, a suggested exercise to leaf through magazines and tear out pictures of things that make us feel something and to file these images away. Doing this exercise repeatedly, Cameron suggests, will start making our personal themes emerge for our conscious minds. The thought behind this exercise makes sense to me now.

Needing a workbook to suggest self-reflection as an exercise tells me a lot about the world we live in. Writing this instalment makes me very grateful to have had the intent and the trigger for self-reflection in my life. While writing, I encountered the regret for having burned my journals from the more confused times of my life. Had those doldrums not been crossed, perhaps my arrows would not have flown so surely towards the targets they pierced right at the centre.

A and A, hitting bulls-eyes, Rajaji National Park, c. 2023

A last word on themes

At the end of this meditation on themes, I do not believe that ‘finding your theme’ is in any way an arrival. I feel that it’s a direction, it’s a movement taking place above the turbulence of doubt-clouds.

I wish you all that same feeling, where you feel you’re on your way towards something; something important. May the flight towards this important something deepen us all; make us wiser. And happier.

Thanks for listening.

Lots of love

PS. I’d love to hear from you.

“Yet Untitled”

Discussion about this post