A caterpillar is crawling on a crowded floor. Uncertain and fearful, it eyes a way out of the hurried boots that surround it. I am reminded of the half squished beautiful violet green fly that I had seen few days back on my way to the canteen in office. I am terrified of the fate that befalls this one caterpillar. Suddenly, as if miraculously, comes a newspaper delicately handled by a ruffled hand, the very hand of God to the caterpillar. The caterpillar swivels itself into the paper and is deposited carefully on a leaf to live another day.
We see the caterpillar from the eyes of this monk, who rescued it. It is not just an insect that is there to support, improve or hinder our existence. It is a moving, feeling being with it's own life rhythm, busy in slithering, foraging, reproducing and perpetuating itself.
In fact, the long shots of moving, throbbing life, of trees swinging wildly, of rain lashing the Mumbai roads, of the sea that lies beyond, all of it inhabit the worldview of the monk. He sees himself connected to everything around him in the minutest possible ways in all his actions and their consequences. It makes him look rather like a speck on a large wall, much less than the transient, but individualistic, beings we feel ourselves to be. But there is also grandeur in this vision, which places him firmly in a chain that starts and ends in infinity. To bring this vision, to take his eyes, and bring out its inner dimensions through the landscape is what Anand Gandhi does in this breathtaking segment of Ship of Theseus.
Thus, while the images are hauntingly beautiful, they are indelible because they impinge on our souls, wrestling with deeper questions of ethics and morality, and create huge craters where our hearts lie, making the whole experience maddeningly exhilarating.
With all three stories, Anand Gandhi makes you want to believe in the grandeur of life. Of possibilities of change and renewal within the narrow confines we lead our lives.
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