I mentioned in the previous post that it had been an emotional pendulum touching some real highs and real lows over the last few days. That was most true for the four days post discharge from the hospital.
Let's start with the lows.
It was really tough to get Madam to take the oral sedation. She is usually quite good with medicines, we never needed too much convincing but this particular one makes her gag and she resists it a lot. After somehow giving the oral sedation, she takes anywhere between 15 minutes to 1.5 hours to fall into deep sleep. Sometimes even though she looks like she is in deep sleep, she just wakes up as soon as the mask is put on and then we need another round of making her fall asleep. Post the treatment, she takes anywhere between 2 - 4 hours to wake up. And then she is super groggy and fatigued through the evening and night. The brave girl that she is, she would try her best to be chirpy and upbeat every morning but you can see the sedation and treatment taking its toll. And then to add on, the fact that tumor has grown and being told by the radiation oncologist that even if this gets treated 100%, there is still 30% chance of recurrence in the future - all of that pretty much sucked.
So well, those were the lows.
Then comes the extreme highs.
I had the privilege of attending the Female Film Festival of Kerala in Thiruvananthapuram. Because the organizers were kind enough to schedule my film's screening at a time I can travel, I could actually attend it in person. They scheduled it for the morning of 4th December, Sunday, so I could make a weekend trip that doesn't coincide with any of Madam's treatment sessions.
So yes, on the night of 2nd December, I took a flight out. The trip already started on a high, when I was upgraded to business class! My parents picked me up from the airport in Thiruvananthapuram and we checked in our hotel. Next morning, we paid a visit to a couple of temples and then went over to the festival screening venue. After getting introduced to some of the organizing members there and catching a couple of films, we made our way to the hotel for a quick rest. In the evening, we set off again to the festival venue. The plan was to watch the first few minutes of the panel session on "Women's films : Changing perspectives" and then make our way to another temple.
And then the most interesting thing happened. Once we reached there, I was invited to not only be part of the panel but in fact INAUGURATE it! I was astounded and completely nervous because everyone else had come prepared with pages of notes and there I was with nothing but some prayers to the universe to make this as painless as possible.
But they insisted that all I had to do was to talk about my experience as a female film maker and nothing more. That was easy and that's exactly what I did. The good news is that the people seemed to enjoy it and many folks came up to me later and said that this has made them curious to come watch my film's screening the next day. Free publicity, right there! I was thrilled! I also really enjoyed the rest of the panel discussion. It was fascinating to hear such varied points of view on cinema - what is male chauvinistic, what is not... why we don't see more female oriented films at festivals or even if we do, they are mostly dealing with assaults and violence... and many such fascinating topics. In a nutshell, it was an experience I am going to keep close to my heart for a long time to come.
The evening was spent in the company of my cousin and family who live in Thiruvananthapuram (I love their little boy to bits! Due to his current obsession of Pulimurugan, I ended up calling him Puliraman throughout) as well as my co-producer who reached from Mumbai late in the evening.
Then the D-day arrived. Once again we were back at the venue in the morning. After catching a film by renowned Malayalam film maker Padmarajan, it was time for my screening! We had a decently big audience - some of them were family and friends who had come to support (a huge thanks to those lovely people) and the rest were the organizers, media, critics and general public. We were given a brief introduction and I spoke a few words as well and then began the screening.
Finally, I got watch a live screening of our film! It was a beautiful experience especially as I could see the audience engage and react so positively throughout - they were smiling, clapping, and there were no walkouts or phone disturbances. It was incredible!
Then came the highlight! The Q&A and feedback session. My co-producer and I took the stage to accept questions. There were really no questions but the session ended up being critical analysis of various aspects of the movie. Overhwlemingly positive and some opportunity for improvement and I was so amused to see how taken people were with the film! Some of them seriously seemed to have given it more thought than I had till date and it was truly a blessing to be there and accept all that feedback.
Post the screening I was interviewed for a couple of newspapers as well as a TV channel and then many members of the audience flocked around me to tell me how much they loved the film. Women, especially those who had come together with their husbands, were the most thrilled. They kept saying "I was nudging my husband throughout because this is so close to our life!". One of my uncle's friends came over with his wife and gifted me a beautiful painting, a wooden trinket box and a elephant curio. How sweet was that! Few folks from the industry asked to work together in the future. And pretty much everyone said "Please take film making more seriously and make more movies." To me, that was enough. It made the whole journey pretty much worth it.
Those were the highs. The festival. The screening. The feedback. The people. I loved every single bit of it.
On the way back from Thiruvananthapuram to Singapore, I squeezed into the window seat for my overnight flight. I usually do not take the window seat in spite of the promise of a good view, because I really do not fancy having to jump over two strangers to attend a bio call! Also, after so much frequent travelling, you sort of lose that fascination for the window seat.
So there I was, squeezed in my window seat, resting my head on my pillow and pondering over everything that happened. The highs and the lows. And it broke my heart to think that come tomorrow, I would be back with my little girl at the radiation oncology centre. It would be all that sedation, tears and fatigue... for another 26 sessions. To prevent an emotional meltdown right in the plane, I tried to block off all those thoughts and somewhere along the way slept off.
When I woke up, they had dimmed off all the cabin lights. I gazed out of the window and there it was - a galaxy of stars in a moonless, cloudless sky. Millions and millions of them! It took my breath away. I looked at that magnificent sight and it dawned upon me that, this is what it is. I gave up the convenient aisle seat for the squeeze of the window seat and got rewarded with this sight. So maybe just like all those endless hours spent on making the film ending up in this magical journey today, the lows that are about to hit may just also have some highs in the future. That is it. It is as simple as that.
So I am ready, for the window seat.
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