Still Life

“Golden State Moai” by Matthew Fertel

We lost the oval framed picture in which you were turning sepia. It couldn’t survive the moves from Delhi to Assam to Chennai. I still remember your face. You don’t look away. You are in a studio as was the ritual then. You wouldn’t have traveled alone, always with a shadow, a friend, a companion never your husband. A husband and wife couldn’t be seen talking in public. How the babies came one after another couldn’t be discussed. Perhaps you came in a car, as your father was an accountant at a textile mill. Perhaps you owned a glass jar filled with your dreams.

Each time I asked Appa about you he’d stretch a minute into a tunnel into which he disappeared, reappearing later with his head tilted – an angle better suited for receiving memory than transmitting them. I was too small, he’d answer, and once in a rare show of vulnerability, he’d added, A baby that couldn’t be breastfed. It stilled me, his voice breaking in sorrow for you. That in all those years he had held onto the image of himself as an infant denied his mother’s love. I couldn’t think of anything to say. By the time I was desperate for answers he could no longer talk. We wrote to each other in a legal pad. His long slanted cursive conversing with my short staccato bursts of words. The writing wasn’t as hard as the waiting.

 ***

They say the dead become crows. Why die to become a dead-eating bird? On weekends, when we ate lunch together, your son would place a fistful of steaming hot rice on top of our backyard wall. You came, you gobbled, you flew off. Do you remember watching me from behind the sliding door?

When I see somber faces in black-and-white pictures I wonder what they were thinking while being unnaturally still as a statue awaiting cues from the photographer. Did they suspect that that moment would outlast them? Did you know your picture would hang in the living room that you rarely visited? I’ve pondered your glance for years. Your stance is typical of women from that era – body swathed in rolls of saree with folded hands peeking out from sleeves of a blouse. The camera is trained on you but you don’t return the gaze. You aren’t looking away, you just aren’t there. I see the empty. The shell. It makes sense, this look, why it always felt familiar, why I felt I knew this, I had seen this elsewhere yet couldn’t place it anywhere – until I was stacking the dolls for Navratri. Each year I arrange on seven steps trinkets and toys, much like a Christmas tree with its storied ornaments. Among my collection of whimsical animals and tiny brass vessels is a series of 6” clay figurines of women performing domestic tasks: washing clothes, grating coconut, frying vadas, chores still disproportionately shouldered by women. Each statue appears to have been made from the same mold. Each statue appears to have the same blank eyes.

About the author

Vimla Sriram is a Seattle-based writer shaped by Delhi. This means banyans and parrots will try to sneak into her essays especially if she tries to steer clear of them. She loves the Pacific Northwest for its gigantic Douglas Firs, leaning Madronas, and oat lattes. When not craning her neck for elusive woodpeckers or nuthatches, she can be found reading, writing, and making cauldrons of chai for her family and friends. Her writing appears or is forthcoming in 100 Word Story, Wanderlust, Stonecrop Journal, Little Patuxent Review, River Teeth Journal, Cagibi, Tahoma Review, and Gulf Stream Magazine.   

About the Artist

Matthew Fertel is an abstract photographer who seeks out beauty in the mundane. Small details get framed in ways that draw attention away from the actual object and focus on the shapes, textures, and colors, transforming them into abstract landscapes, figures, and faces. His goal is to use these out-of-context images to create compositions that encourage an implied narrative that is easily influenced by the viewer and is open to multiple interpretations. More of Matthew's work can be seen on his website and on Instagram: https://mfertel.wixsite.com/matthewfertelphoto and https://www.instagram.com/digprod4/.