BENGALURU: Do you remember the picture of the sailor kissing someone at Times Square in New York after the world war? A single photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt long ago in 1945 still holds out imagination. How about the other picture of two people making out on a street in Vancouver amidst all the rioting after the Stanley Cup? And another of two sailors in Hawaii kissing each other as recently in 2012? There was another of a couple from Hong Kong that was making the rounds recently.
There are few iconic pictures of love and longing from all the times that can beat these snapshots of people connecting in a spontaneous moment of desire amidst all the chaos of protests, parades and marches. There is something electric about these moments captured in a still photograph that moves people much more than a whole picture of love and romance could ever do.
Is it really the kiss itself or the idea of love, desire and longing in the time of chaos? Are we electrified by the juxtaposition of our core longings for connection, desire, romance and love, against our biggest fears of war, conflict, chaos, suffering and death?
I would argue that it is the latter. We celebrate our ability to still find love and a moment for desire amidst chaos and suffering. We celebrate how our humanness comes through in that moment, beyond the baser emotions and instincts. That’s why our films make space for that one kiss before the climactic conflict in pretty much every major disaster movie franchise. It might be a two-second kiss, but it is what matters even if there are bombs exploding all around, and shrapnel flying. In the movies, the screams of wounded people fighting for their lives soften for a few seconds to focus and linger on the kiss, before it all erupts again.
Even in the movies, the frames that might have been moving at a hundred to a second till just then, slow to a single lingering frame, as if it is a still photograph. Nothing else matters at that very moment. Not the impending catastrophic showdown, not the enormity and the scale of the scene. Just that one immediate, intimate moment. That one still frame of people finding a moment of connection.
Here, now in India, with all the protests and demonstrations going on currently, where does it put our love and desire? Will the students and general public out there, spontaneously pouring out into the streets, channeling their outrage and challenging the immense power of the state, also find moments of deep connection, love and longing? Chances are that at least for some, there would be those moments.
Maybe they’ll be captured by an intrepid photographer, maybe not at all, and even if someone did take a photo, maybe it would never come out into the public domain and become viral, but love always finds itself especially when it seems least probable.The author is a counsellor with InnerSight.
