In the movie The Others, it is interesting in the end to realise who are the so-called others. Mary Magdalene, as it turns out, was never a temptress but a disciple. Enid Blyton, the popular children’s author, now stands cancelled with her work linked to racism and xenophobia. What do we do with the crates of her books we carefully preserved since KG?
It is not just the future that is changeable, so is the past. History is subject to reading glasses of different powers, everyone looking back claims 20/20 vision. The whistle-blowers are not wrong, but without a time machine that can take us back to where it began, the tweaking in the present tense sometimes throws up more villains than we can gun down.
The whole patriarchy as it stands today was painstakingly built one man at a time. Change is coming but finger-pointing, conditioning and enemy within own ranks have to be patiently analysed. Dissent finds its nemesis in rabble-rousing, incoherence.
No doubt offenders must be unmasked however late in the day—documentary series Allen v. Farrow makes for a chilling watch—but many backdated crimes also display a perpetrator’s lack of empathy as well as an inability to identify with the victims in the first place. In an Us and Them way.
What is clear era after era is this need to stand apart, to separate ourselves from everyone else. To practice otherism comes naturally to human beings; a hierarchy is inherently sought and organically built. Homo sapiens vs Animals. Man vs Woman. Adult vs Child. Legitimate vs Illegitimate. Rich vs Poor. Fair vs Dark. Tall vs Short... Most of it is relative, a colloquial comparison, politically incorrect, but to align along opposite sides comes naturally. This produces aspirational qualities, identification, a putting in perspective. Without which we fear being boringly faceless.
We need to stand out in a crowd, we crave hierarchy, and, unconsciously, we are ready to ‘kill’ for this. We, who gasp emotionally at apartheid practised faraway in South Africa, hand our domestic help, whom we happily call ‘maid’, suspect leftovers. We set aside the chipped cup and steel plate for them. They eat in the kitchen after we eat on the dining table. They sleep on a mat while we climb atop our Fabindia bed. We cut their pay on the days they don’t come and sack them for insolence. An ingrained superiority complex asks us to spell it out: who are the ones inferior to us, who?
While it is true that flashbacks are imperative to setting things right, it is time to perhaps see ourselves in yesterday’s villains. We could be complicit accomplices rather than righteous rebels back then. Let’s rewind by all means, but why always play the hero?
Shinie Antony
shinieantony@gmail.com
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