The Falling Man
Who fell from the sky on September 11.
RICHARD DREW/APStanding on his balcony, I recollect looking at the picture of The Falling Man in the Times of India.
People discussing the photograph, looked pained, commenting mostly at their tragic loss of words to speak commemoratively of the man.
Like pouting vultures we stood on higher ground, moistening eyes with pity; for us not to swoop on this defeat of the human spirit as we gazed into the image placated on the table in front of us — his paper grave.
I made a mistake I will never quite forget every time I come across the image again. In that minute of condolence we held in the boardroom, I turned the page upside down, and said, “Why don’t you people look at it like this?”
A collective gasp rose up, like an uncertain cloud over the falling man’s head, waiting for a thunderbolt to strike him down.
“He isn’t going down; he’s actually shooting up like a free bird.”
As clowns vertically digested to throw up through cannon pits know that men can fly without wings, the falling man chose to do the same instead of melting like wax in the tower of an inferno.
Some people in the room immediately decided to distance themselves from me. “Weirdo”, they thought, ready to set fire to the canon whistle in which I was now roped and balled to flame up.
Gwendolyn, 9/11: The Falling Man: “I hope we’re not trying to figure out who he is and more figure out who we are through watching that.”
Excerpt from Lean Days (HarperCollinsIndia)
