IN between the cat videos and scenes of Bollywood dances dutifully performed at various cousins’ weddings are a different set of clips. These clips feature colourised images of some of the first ‘films’ ever made. Some of them, taken in the 1800s, show people from the Victorian age peering into camera. On the faces of these long dead people is the same expression with which we view the advancements of technology today — a mix of curiosity, wonder and bewilderment. Time travel may not yet have been invented but this sort of recreation provides a glimpse of the people of the past — ordinary like us, unique like us and long dead as all of us will be.
There is a very particular reason I seek out these images of the past. Such is the self-absorbed solipsism of human nature that even as we are certain about our own finality we sink deep into the quagmire of petty problems. As we drive to work and back home, as we do the many tasks that life requires, we are beset by them. We agonise over what will happen, what will not, why a certain person spoke so rudely and was indifferent, whether our bosses like us, and why our relatives look at us with envy. The list is endless. Small disruptions in our lives, an illness, car trouble, a leaking roof, or water shortage can throw our mental peace off balance. We get frustrated, we are consumed — and most of the time we cannot help it.
This overwhelming sense of unease is........