White out

Very few things can survive a white out. A fade to black, yes ofcourse.. all movies end there..sighing heavily into their own ending. Their onerous responsibility to entertain is now over. Apparently when films were first shown in Africa, the audiences were not disturbed by the fading to black at the end, because thats what happens at sunset, but could not understand editing cuts and were troubled by those strange jumps. In India, maybe no one was freaked by anything.

A white out is however fascinating. Fading each piece of solidness - furniture, people, trees, boxes, hopes, feelings - of different colours - black, brown, greys and blues - into pure nothingness is a certain kind of skill that any editor would envy. Skylines of a city yield graciously to black, especially at night but how would they yield to white.

I've been watching episodes of six feet under. From when it came on television, all I had was a vague memory of an achingly smart woman who didn't have anything she could do with herself and an underlying acknowledgement that only certain kind of people yield to cohesive wholes of relationships and most stand outside, constantly watching, aware and alone.

But my main obsession is each time how they achieve the fade to white. And each time the episode ends and solid things that you can see, the peculiar weather that only the west experiences - with its non-intrusive sun rays that have no heat but spread colour, the constant nip in the air no matter what the season, that specific smell that seems to emnate from their airport lounges and planes onto the entire continent (though thats because of how I probably only reach the west through a plane ticket). How all that detail slowly starts burning out like an incandescent heat is licking the screen and gives us white...white..wiped