Echoes of Previous Lives

 

How do we remember? 

Memory is not always factual. There is forgetfulness, recall, and the anticipation of a future. The same recollections hold very different meanings for people. They don't always intersect or hold up to comparison. But also, painfully, they don't necessarily hold the same importance for the other. 

Those who distort the past, rewrite it, falsify it, who exaggerate the importance of one event and fail to mention some other will always be criticised. Such a critique is justified. It cannot fail to be. But it doesn't count for much unless a more elementary critique of human memory precedes it. For, after all, what can memory actually do, the poor thing, as Milan Kundera asked? It is only capable of retaining a paltry little scrap of the past, and no one knows why it is just this scrap and not some other one, since for each of us this choice occurs mysteriously, outside our will or our interests.

The people depicted in these photos—I didn’t know who they were.  

I didn’t know which of these were my relatives since my father didn’t feel the need to share this. He probably didn’t remember himself.  

The photo albums were showing a relic of time unimaginably alien to me. The people I encountered in these images felt distant, someone I knew nothing about except how much I resembled them. These images reflected something collective, familial, moments frozen in photos that were supposed to bring identification, a sense of belonging, and reverence. 

Over time, I thought I recognized some of them but never bothered to find out who they really were. It wouldn't have changed my relationship with them. They were as alien to me as she was. I might as well have found these pictures in a history book. 

They say 'One picture is worth a thousand words', but for that phrase to make sense, you do need to know what it is that you are looking at. Whose memories were these photographs talking about?  

I often thought that my father didn’t remember much from his childhood, or maybe he didn’t want to. Or maybe it was just the farsightedness of forgetting, one might say. But his elder sister, who was a lawyer at that time was the one person whom he remembered very vividly, maybe due to a naive hope for a better future for the family that he had from her. He often stopped me from asking silly questions about his childhood and asked for me to not indulge in these stories. I reasoned that at his age, I, too, would have forgotten all the moments and emotions I was experiencing as a sixteen-year-old.  

In his own way, perhaps, he was stopping me from setting a trap for myself. But was it me who was setting up a trap or a loophole that he was stuck in? Or just wishful thinking and nostalgia about his favourite family member? His recounting created a space—to weave an idea of her so special and dear—an idealised imaginary. It felt like her existence was at once in both temporal and visceral geographies. 

I often wondered why my father, who is so reserved and silent, always felt this need to reiterate these memories again and again—over repeated viewings with the photographs, and often without the albums. Maybe it was because of the promise of a better future—full of possibilities, or just the utmost regard for an elder sibling, who achieved a lot on her own through her dedication and hard work… for these are the qualities that I admire the most in him as well.  

The constant telling and retelling felt like an act of cementing certain ideals and values in me—as markers of greatness maybe? Was it because of these expectations that I held on to these pictures so dearly?  Was it about accomplishing goals in my career, like her? Or about being such a strong support for my family—the one on whom someone could depend and be proud of? Assuming that my life choices will be determined and guided by them… 

I think it is something we all hold on to considering our role as daughters in the family—carrying forward this task of preserving family history. This is assumed as part of a woman’s life—to be nurturers and carriers of family history, but is it only our duty? 

Much of the family stories are filtered and constructed through its women. I wonder why female perspectives often act as placeholders for the counter-narratives. It seems as if the narrative and counter-narrative remain associated with their voices—echoing with collective and individual (re)readings, questioning this family archive’s narratives, and also at the same time, burnishing over the years what were once simple facts. Their affective existence is as voices, guiding through time in various capacities. 

A photograph and memory are different—we assume one produces fact, the other remembrance, though which produces what is often unclear. One can say that the photographic image is the production of truth, a speculative simulated imagery.   

But is it just merely a reality imposed on me by these photographs? Or is this reality embodied and through this embodiment it is imposed? As if my life choices will be determined and steered by the people in the photos? I think the photos show the presence of these people. Their lives— taken out of the flow of time. And one of the things that I fear the most is that in the years to come we will forget their absence. It is going to happen inevitably, I realize, but the fact that a camera recorded them is evidence that these people really have existed; and that the pictures that show them so alive, forever young, are old enough to serve as proof of their probable passing as well. A presence in an absence. 

These photos for me were a mode of holding on to the ones that left and the ones that were here—a form of weaving and constructing my reality. No one ever told me to live up to anyone else’s path. So, was it really me who assumed all of it? Is assumption even the word I am looking for here? These memories were never mine, a reality that is shaped a great deal by a past which I made my own—maybe a little too much?  

But does it have to be negative? The subtle conditioning is through which I have shaped these memories for myself, a constructed history filtered by my embodied experiences, which will be passed down. 

It was through these stories and anecdotes that I created the burden of my own inheritance.  

The question is, am I free of it, and will I ever be?  

 

Author’s note: Echoes of Previous Lives is about the questions one goes through while looking at family photographs passed down through generations. Being a visual artist myself, I had been working with my family photographs for quite some time, and questions related to their relevance and importance in my life were something I was debating. The image attached is a collage created using these said family photographs and it attempts to answer the questions I had.

The text and the image both explore multiple questions and understandings that I developed while working on them. These are ideas related to questions such as: Why do I still delve into these photos so much?; How they have shaped my identity?; Why am I shaping myself through these photographs?; My father’s relation to them and how it shaped my relation to him; Are these members of my family—imagined or remembered—through the lens of his portrayal, and so on.

Pavni Anand is a visual artist based in Delhi with a Bachelor's degree in Fine Arts from College of Art, Delhi University, and a Master’s degree in Fine Arts from Shiv Nadar University, Greater Noida. Through her practice, she questions the reliability of photographs as a representation of reality, and the subjective nature of memory and further considers how sensory experiences can shape our understanding of the world, through intermedia installations, artist books, sound and video. By examining the boundaries of shared spaces through her interventions, she explores the ways in which one can navigate and negotiate the complex power dynamics that exist within them.

She is currently working at Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan New Delhi.