Titanic

Source: Wikimedia

Ever since I was old enough to feel the inevitable weight of compassion, I have been fascinated by the ironic story of the Titanic. Not for what some might call her hubris, not for the dream it stood for, but as a focal point of another narrative that I am attached to. That of time and the invisible traces it leaves, moment by moment, and how those traces turn tides, take ships under and undo things that were made.

I used to re-enact her maiden voyage with a ladle and a can of milk, back in the day when our neighbours still raised cows. We'd walk over to their farm every day and fetch a three liter can that had been lowered into a well to keep it cool in the hot summer (strange how summers always were hot when you were a child). At dinner table, I would balance the ladle precariously in the can, so that the rim was barely above the milkline and an occasional ripple, as others — heedless of the tragedy unfolding under their eyes — shuffled their feet and reached for the bread, would send a few drops down her insides. Her sheer size made those drops hardly matter, but this was the crack in the bow and without anyone knowing yet, her fate had been decided. Drop by drop they came and weighed down the ladle, making her sit deeper in the milk now.

It was never clear how those moments would eventually lead to her going under, but they did, not on a linear scale, but as the droplets turned into small streams, rivulets that added their share to her burden, suddenly destiny manifested itself and milk came rushing in, the ladle sinking within a heartbeat. This was the moment I had been holding my breath for, the culmination of small insignificant, even unrelated events, that nevertheless all ultimately followed the same course.

No matter whether it is a ladle and the Titanic, or a block of driftwood on the beach, where the waves eat at its flesh, or the slow grinding of the knife as it cuts bread for years and years and years, I am still fascinated by how things are worn out until suddenly they are no more. But it did take me a while to find out that people, in fact, work in a similar manner to luxury liners, blocks of wood and metal blades. We too get shred and torn and bruised, slowly, second by second, year by year. Until we too sink and break and are no more.

I thank B.K.C. for her comments on this one.