Cornucopia

It happened some years ago and this man with whom I had a brief acquaintance whiffed into my thoughts this morning. It is the easiest thing in life to be critical about another, while we may often ignore or overlook into ourselves and be critical of self. Nevertheless, as I try to be not judgmental about this person, I cannot refrain from observing how silly and stupid his actions and thoughts were. It was naiveté!

An unassuming quite man, he was known to me for a while through a friend. He and his spouse were Bank employees by profession and was enjoying a middle class life .It was without forewarning that abruptly something triggered in him the urge and longing to be rich- rich as rich can be. Having being transferred on his job to the industrial town where I lived and worked, he was dazed by the speed and maddening pace of commercial life in the town and the rapidity in which people became neo rich. The industrial city was equally famous and infamous for all the good and the bad reasons of commercial entrepreneurship. Certainly money that could be made in that booming town was amazing. But what he did not recognize was the stupefying speed at which the money, made and the richness got could also be nullified in even time. I mention the word money specifically as he, like most of the town folk related money to wealth and material wealth alone.

I, one day came across him at the local railway station and he was boisterous and in greatly enlivened spirit. To me it appeared quite strange, for he was reticent and soft spoken by nature. He took out a book from his bag and thrust towards me. ”Read it”, he said. “This will change your life overnight”.

With the least presumption and prejudice I took the book and flipped through, for I did not believe that a book could change one overnight. I do not remember the title of the piece- it was something like, “How to make money or How to become a millionaire”. Instinct told me that the book was the kind of ‘Dale Carnegie’ stuff and that was something I was never fascinated about, all those quick remedies and quick firing in matters of life. I remember thanking the man for the advice and persuading him to take back his book and that I would borrow it later. But he was insistent that I have it then and read it. For, he swore that he saw his life brighter than ever before and he will not have to turn back. He was very persuasive of the value of the book and its contents. I do not have the book with me now and remember casting it somewhere soon after.

I must indeed have to mention that the poor fellow was later heard to have been chastened and disillusioned. But only after losing as substantial part of his savings and provident fund benefits which he literally squandered by following his “Bible” to the letter. Apparently he invested with some local charlatan in the latter’s business there and was squarely cheated.

A doc friend once told me that money is in fact necessary and is a vital life line. I cannot disagree for it will be pompous and silly. He also added that those who swear having no need or value for money would rue when they are penniless and their turgid statements in the twilight of their lives. For not all are lucky to have a smooth sailing into the sun set.

The important point is what is the limit of sanity in terms of wealth? And what is wealth per se?

I ‘m aroused by a comment of Warren Buffet. He said, “I know people who have lot of money and they get testimonial dinners and hospital wings named after them. But the truth is that nobody in the world loves them. When you get to my age, you will measure your success in life by how many people you want to have loved you, actually do love you. That is the ultimate test of how you lived your life.”

The Warmth of Hearts

I had a dream.

It is strange that sometimes events and people from long ago visit us in dreams. Whatever may the Freudian analysis about such episodes and of which I must confess I have no knowledge of, it is certain three things in life would stay in our subconscious- people, places and events. Perhaps flavour of good gastronomic delights too!

It is often irksome and wakes you from the deep slumber when a quiescent and pleasant dream is cut short without an end and in haze. One such happened the other night.

The genesis of the story was long ago when I was in my twenties and the three of us who were from Thpuram used to with unfailing routine meet over weekends and, breaks from work in between on other holidays. I used to travel back from Cochin where I was then placed. The meetings were generally at S’s house and we used to spend much time of the day and evenings in his room tucked away downstairs. We used to spend hours talking nothingness, women, and all nonsense under the sun. In gradual time we acquired the audacity to have a few glasses of booze as well, secluded there. All this, while two noble souls used to be sitting up above, watching television and chatting – S’s wonderful parents!

The extreme difficulty was we had to go out through the living room upstairs where his father and mother spend most of their time. So sneaking out after the few drinks was ruled out and invariably one of them caught us on the way out and we had to sit with them and politely spend sometime chatting. It was awkward to be around with them after our episodes with alcohol.But,I'm certain his father was aware of our audacity but he did never mention even in passing.

The uniqueness I have not seen in other parents was the unbridled affection and love they had for us. The difference between their son and we, his friends was something they were alien to them. It was one particular incident when B, reached the house and found his parents with a few old guests seated in the living room. When the strangers saw him behave like an  inmate and straight  into conversation and unrestrained chatter with the father and mother, one impertinent old fellow in the group eyeing him suspiciously asked the father who the fellow was. His immediate response was, “This is S’s friend and he is  like my son, rather he is my son too!”

It is beyond the capability of words to describe the pure love and feeling they maintained for us. They were not from the economically  upper-class of the society. In fact his father retired as a policeman in the common rank. His parents reared six children and we now sometimes reminisce that all the six are in very good realms of life, it is because perhaps of the nobility of hearts of the old couple.

It was on the occasion of the sixtieth birthday of B’s mother that we had a small luncheon at his house. It was during the peak of the simmering upheaval in the aftermath of my decision to marry  “C”, a catholic girl. I was there with my mother and S with his mother too. Besides us there was B and his mother. I had not met S’s mother since the news of my audacious and unconventional decision was out. She looked me straight in the face and said in an admonishing note, “You little scoundrel .Do not grin, after all that you were up to, do not keep smiling at me. You boys take pleasure in hurting us, parents and our feelings.”S and B were taken aback by the suddenness of the rebuke and its tone. My mom was affected severely and she later confided to my sister. B's mother was elegantly callous in appearance as if she did not hear the reprimand.  I was taken aback for a brief while (though it seemed like eons) by the severity of the rebuke. But after, I was feeling sublime and serene within- for her angry short expressive outburst and censure was something different from the more passive disapproval I faced from my mother who was then nonconforming in a different way to my decision. It was then and where I understood the intense power and rage of affection. I still remember the happiness in her face and how she took C by the hand and held her when I took her to S’s house after our wedding. The bond sometimes exists even when one is not tied by the superficiality of relationship.

I saw them vividly in the same living room and like I may have seen them many a time while they were alive. It was hazy as dreams often are. But then is it not the haziness and the abrupt ending of dreams such as this that makes one live with fond memories?

The Agony of Noesis

                  

  “But I don’t want to go among mad people", Alice remarked

 “Oh you can’t help that “, said the Cat. “We are all mad here. I’m mad, you are mad.”

  “How do you know I’m mad?” asked Alice.

  “You must be,” said the Cat. “Or you’d not have come here”.

1975-“Unlike Hamlet there was no method in his madness if you want to believe that he was mad, because he was not mad. If he showed insanity as we call it, it was only the reaction to the incongruity with the world he lived in, the corollary to an insane world.” She said.

“I have not seen him in that state of anguish. His chirpy voice and the sprint in his steps seemed to be a memory from distant days. I was worried for him but also feared that he would make an unpleasant seen. He was in great emotion and I guessed I saw his eyes were glimmering with tear.” She paused and looked out through the window and exclaimed, “That was an unusual sight! It seemed that finally the misery of loneliness had grasped him."

I sat across on the sofa in the modestly spruced room and watched her intently. Rows of bookshelves stacked with books lined the walls aesthetically. The accolades and mementos she gained thus far adorned a couple of rows. The laurels that were awarded to her for excellence in academic and creativity in literature were enviable in display. A four feet tall bronze oil-wick lamp, the quintessence of Kerala stood in the far corner. The token of gratitude from the alumni she shepherded as the member of the faculty for thirty and five long years!

“That’s where he sat,” she pointed to the right side of the sofa in which I was seated. “I offered him some tea and he took it. He wondered if I would cook him a meal with the entire flavuors of the Kerala household and his favourite lamb curry in spicy gravy of coconut milk and coriander.” She paused and again looked out through the window. “Remember how he used to devour eggs and meat at the cafeteria in the college? The time when he gobbled twenty five iddlis in a whiff of time in that manic competition! He had not lost the lusting and intense fascination for food- spicy meat and fish.” Her eyes seemed to display moments from the long time past.The sun was frantic and ablaze, unrelenting on that midsummer afternoon. Did I notice her eyes were moist?

“I suggested that he come back another day and I would have all he wanted laid on the table. He sat still for a while not talking much, puffing away in chain the ‘Panamas’ and when I came back with some jack fruit chips, he was gone.”

She moved towards the rosewood paneled book shelf in the room, opened a tiny chest of drawer affixed to the shelf and delicately took out a book from in it. She walked by to my side and sat next to me in the sofa. I noticed her hair was graying  but her face still sparkled with elegance and charm that enchanted many of us, years ago while we were at the university. The panache was distinct as ever- in her gaze, her gestures and I noticed even in the walk back to me caressing the book as it were her pet and her soul. I sighed involuntarily; it has been thirty plus years since we were all alumni.

“ ‘Desert Spring’, this is CV’s only published work and he did the publishing himself spending a tidy sum. I did the forward to this anthology of poems.” She extended the book to me. I opened the pages and saw his elegant autograph carelessly across the forward page, ‘To the dearest friend of my youth and of all times’.

“There are many who trivialised and even rubbished this work as the clowning of an eccentric. Yes indeed you know as I do, that people branded him eccentric because he was different from the insipid and specious conventions that we, they claim as wisdom and so, inviolable”. She tapped the book and continued, “Even the poesies in this book are distinct and ricochets his mind, his persona. Because it is different from what the world likes to see can we rubbish it? His life was a statement against the frivolity of this world.” She was annoyed and incensed, I felt. She continued, she again threw her gaze outside the window and watched nowhere, “He was a bellwether friend, you will agree as you knew much about us”. She still seemed to have retained the passion to defend him, his words and his life too. Something she was adept and keen about while in our youth. Did I see a strange beauty that even anger and melancholy can display in some?

“I saw no necessity in more than a cursory glance at the small news column in The Hindu that a middle aged man, a Government officer was found dead for three days in his apartment in Palghat. The man was unmarried and staying single .It read that he apparently overdosed. It was later in the evening that I was called on the phone by a former ward to tell me that the newspaper report was on CV.” She keened   muted.

“It was only less than a month before he sat here in this very sofa and despite his stirred mental state we spoke quite a bit. He was not paranoid nor was he in a devastated state. He was probably burdened by the occasional excitement and worry we have seen often in him.  I do not think for a minute that he would overdose. I ‘m sure he died peacefully in his sleep. The annoying aspect of his self was the cigarettes he smoked. You knew very well didn’t you? Even from our old times? I confronted ,beseeched him many a time to kick the habit.” She looked down at the book she held in her hand, her slender fingers clasped around it. It seemed a tear fell on its neatly bound outer and she quietly turned her face away.

It must be true that CV would never have overdosed; it is hard to believe otherwise. For, despite the fluttering mind and instances of anguish as he seemed to display in later life, he was a person who wanted to live and live forever, to never die. The lust for life was unbounded. He used to remark while we were together at the university that a life is full and marked for ending only when there are no more books to be read, no one to author anymore and when he is barren of ideas to pen.When the mind ceases to function, to think, to create ,then it is time to depart.

For that he had a long, long way to span.