From The Odyssey to road rage, one apology could prevent countless conflicts fuelled by pride and ego.
The power of a film or theatre is not in bringing to life all the details of the original work. For an epic as vast as the Odyssey, an auteur like Nolan focused on the essentials. He explores the threads of honouring the elements and ancestors; the code of defeating an enemy without torturing or maiming them, and self-control over bestial urges. And he leaves some questions without answers, such as why Penelope, who held a kingdom together for twenty years, was never considered fit to rule it in her own right by any man, including her son; and whether Helen was abducted by Paris or did she fall in love with him and go away willingly.
Mesmerised by the story and the technique of its telling in equal part, I found the moment that Odysseus realises the true horror of war the most profound. He was haunted not just by the numbers of people killed but by what going into battle turned them into. As we exited the cinema, I spoke to my son about our own Emperor Ashoka, who came to a similar realisation after his conquest of Kalinga. Struck by remorse after the scenes of carnage and suffering on the battlefield, he became a pacifist and a Buddhist. Far more than his achievements in battle, his devotion in spreading Buddhism became a spiritual and civilisational inheritance across India and Asia for centuries to come.
Anyone who advocates war should see works like this, we concluded, as we left the theatre. We were quiet, a little heavy in the heart and mellow with the realisation that history keeps repeating itself as human memory is frail.
We hailed a cab to get home, and just as the driver was about to start the car, a man on a bike came up the wrong way and stopped very close to the car. I saw him looking up at the mall. Perhaps he had come to pick up a food order from an eatery in the mall. Perhaps the same upmarket eatery that kept us waiting for more than half an hour for a salad and pasta while they were busy packing takeaways.
The bike rider was careless, parking abruptly, and the bike’s handle hit the side of the car. Our cab driver got down and naturally remonstrated with the bike rider. Had the biker apologised, it would have been the end of the matter. But he was defiant and rude, which led to such prolonged arguments and fisticuffs. Having had enough of the melee, we exited the cab and jumped into a nearby rickshaw and made our way home.
It was an unsettling end to an outing, and on the way home I kept thinking how unnecessary the fracas was. Just two words, “I’m sorry,” would have dissolved the entire episode before it began. Instead, a dent on the car turned into a public fight, and by the time we left, traffic was slowing down as the two men battled it out. Both drivers would have lost customers and money in the bargain.
It made me wonder why apology is so hard for us, and whether it is harder still for men in particular, for whom saying sorry is more than an admission of fault. My mind returned to the story of the Odyssey. During Odysseus’s long absence from Ithaca, the suitors occupying his palace are given chance after chance to back down: Telemachus confronts them, Penelope stalls them, there are even omens that they should have heeded. Antinous and the rest continue to abuse the hospitality, are arrogant and crude, and plot to kill Telemachus. When Odysseus comes back, they don’t apologise or regret their behaviour. There is no room left for anything other than vengeance, killing and exile.
From a three-thousand year-old epic to a bruised car door, the thread of my musing traced back to the same refusal to apologise. By someone stubbornly insisting they were right even when they are wrong.
Set against that refusal is Penelope, who demonstrates the opposite instinct. She is under siege in her own home for twenty years, outnumbered by men who are determined to force her to choose one of them as suitors. Not out of love but out of greed for the throne. She uses her head and doesn’t confront them, but she stalls. She weaves a shroud by day and unpicks it by night, as the day it’s finished is when she will be forced to pick a suitor. She keeps her son safe without a single drop of blood spilling on her account. She is not submissive, but she never lets pride turn into a standoff that would inevitably lead to her son’s death. Such self-control and patience are hard, as hard as setting off into a fight to appease your own or someone else’s ego.
Ultimately, whether on a battlefield, a crowded city street, or inside closed rooms, the cycle of conflict is usually sustained by the stubborn refusal to admit fault. It’s triggered by ego and false pride, which make people feel that an apology is a defeat rather than a simple and honest acknowledgment of error.
The Female Gaze is delighted to note that Matt Damon’s stunt double in the action packed battle sequences of The Odyssey was a woman, Devyn Dalton.
*Sandhya Mendonca, author, biographer, podcaster, and publisher at Raintree Media, offers a distinct female gaze of the world in this column.
