This is my newsletter #47: Prachi Pramodh on Small Worlds
This newsletter is about all the tiny invisible worlds we all hold and how it's filled with love and has so much power.
I'm Prachi Pramodh, a freelance photographer & a graphic designer from Chennai. My room currently has 4 stacks of books piled up in different parts, and I'm always trying to find the right word. Everything I do has somehow been an intersection between words and my imagination which helps me articulate and put forward, these very specific thoughts and visuals in my head. Creativity has been one of my biggest challenges yet a gift very endearing to me and I hope everything I create somehow moves someone.
This cartoon heart of mine is a huge library built with some old fine wood. The nails have come off, there is a lot of rust on them, yet it holds different floors of books. Sometimes I let people, especially strangers, borrow these books. I hope they take good care of it. Sometimes these books aren’t returned and honestly, that’s okay. Sometimes these books are returned with a few pages missing, books with few pages underlined, words circled and I have no way to find out what this meant to a stranger. Yet, it is important. It’s important to be kept safe and handled with care. The book is important to be loved, even with unknown answers. And as a librarian of this library inside my heart, I would like to invite you to read a few of my thoughts here.
If you’re someone who knows me and you’re reading this then you know the volume of importance the small things hold in my life. I’ve been thinking about it all the time in the past year. A call to a stranger has probably been the most important one, thanking them for saving someone’s life. Just one small minute, one small tweet, or one small forward. Maybe it took 30 seconds. Maybe it also took 30 seconds to lose someone. Yet, I think about all these strangers who I’ve spoken to who I would never cross paths with, yet the conversation held so much love. When I think about all the times' someone fought for everything right, yet ended up in 4 locked walls, it makes me wonder about the invisible string of helplessness tied to both ends, the one in the 4 locked walls and the one who is hearing the news.
When I think about everyone being denied the smallest rights they own, from my maid to my mother in the past, I think about how strange it is, that people don’t realize the grand scheme of things is a collective sum of all small things. It’s almost like this library of mine. A single book cannot make a library. Similarly, every big thing is a collection of these tiny small thoughts and actions. Lately, my thoughts have been the collective thoughts of small worlds which people hold. A person joining a protest for a good cause, two people probably contributing to the same fundraiser, a person making a homemade meal for someone who is alone and has been affected by the virus.
I’ve also been reminiscing the small countless times there have been small worlds of love held by so many of us. A stranger offered me a seat on a mode of public transport because I had a lot to carry. A stranger offered me to kick start my scooty. I remember the day I helped an old lady cross a road even though I am terrified of it myself. Bravery comes in different forms. Sometimes, I think Bravery is a synonym for love. I think about these small worlds of love that humans hold, and sometimes we forget the power of it. So here I am reminding you of it, and I hope it lingers. I think about these small worlds of love filled with so much nourishment, so much greenery, so many flowers blooming, seasons changing, and perhaps what I'm trying to convey is that we living beings not only have the power to love but also have the power to express this.
Perhaps Vincent Van Gogh is right when he said, "What is done in love, is done well." Every small thing amounts to something. Every tiny star makes a starry night. Every tiny drop makes an ocean. Every small word I wrote made me write this till this word. Whoever you are, wherever you are, I hope you don’t forget this, or I hope this is a reminder from me to you, with lots of love.
On that note, I’m attaching here an extract from the movie Frances Ha, written and directed by Greta Gerwig:
“It's that thing when you're with someone, and you love them and they know it, and they love you and you know it... but it's a party... and you're both talking to other people, and you're laughing and shining... and you look across the room and catch each other's eyes... but - but not because you're possessive, or it's precisely sexual... but because... that is your person in this life. And it's funny and sad, but only because this life will end, and it's this secret world that exists right there in public, unnoticed, that no one else knows about. It's sort of like how they say that other dimensions exist all around us, but we don't have the ability to perceive them. That's - That's what I want out of a relationship. Or just life, I guess.”
―Greta Gerwig, Frances Ha
This was so heartwarming to read, Prachi! Thank you for this.
I loved how you wrote about bravery being a synonym for love. So much of that is true. We are living in unprecedented times, and no one is bulletproof. Yet, we can be each others vests of love, comfort, safety and warmth with a little bit of bravery and sensitivity. Thank you for bringing that alive here.
I love the closing Frances Ha quote. It's beautiful!
Thank you for curating this, Rohini! <3