Little lady with the lamp

This happened a few years ago. And R was in the middle school class.
C spoke to me about her father’s death anniversary. And that she would prefer to visit his grave in the Kilpauk cemetery in Chennai where he was laid to rest. She confided that she needed some peace of mind on that day and so did not want to spend the day with her clan who as usual where all slated to make the anniversary day a day for feasting and superficial prayers. She also disliked the retinue of prelates who would descend on her clan’s bungalow. She traveled to Chennai by the overnight train on January the 11. I booked her return tickets on the 12 th evening flight from Chennai to Coiambatore . And assured her that I will pick her from the airport.

On the 12 th evening I and R (she had holidays) drove to Coiambatore. to pick C when she was back .

The drive back to our place was almost an hour and it was a bit late around 9 in the night. R took the rear seat of the car and we thought she slept off. C began to tell about her brief time in Chennai; her visit to the cemetery and how she got the care- taker to clean the tomb stone and arranged for some flowers to be laid on, and the time she stayed by the grave in quiet.

She also dropped over at her brother in law’s flat to enquire after him. He was living alone and after a by pass surgery of the heart. His wife  suddenly developed anathema to him. Perhaps he was past his prime, perhaps he was a handicap with a heart condition! Who can tell the wiles of woman without being charmed by her deceit? It was apparent from what C was telling me that he was finding it difficult to meet ends. And with no one for company, help or comfort. The discussion on this gentleman and the wickedness of people concerned went on for most of our drive back home. We in fact could only sigh for him.

C told me later next day that R was awake all through the drive back from Coiambatore . And she went to C first thing in the morning and said, “amma I was awake while you were discussing about ‘daddy’( she calls her uncle daddy).And I listened to all that you and atcha discussed. I have about one thousand rupees with me from my last birthday and other times. You can send that money to daddy. He is in need.”.

She was then twelve and I wish and hope that she carries such a heart through her life.

SHE

There has always been the one and only irritant which has created small tremors in our midst (me and C). It has been her helpless difficulty in accepting fait accompli when it comes to who are her siblings. There were quite a few heated arguments and yelling from my side. There were times when we chose to ignore the existence of the other for days. And I realised, I guess her as well, that we were being unhelpful to our life by being at logger heads on a subject which is about the malevolence of others.

But painfully I realised the burning ember within her that she has always tried to put away from me. Perhaps it was her way of not accepting and hoping that the reality is not what it is but what she long and yearn it is. Perhaps she thinks that if she breaks down in an unassuming and unguarded moment from the agonising puncture her inner self carries from the spitefulness of her siblings, that would be morally depressing after all the aura and fortification she created around the love they have for her.

I have wondered loudly during many of our discussions and arguments on the matter that she is being foolish showing her left cheek, while they have already mauled the other. I ask her often "why do you have to invite them to spite your whole face when you know that they have done that to your cheek”?

She confesses that she knows they are such, but she cannot be vengeful and dislike them. She laments she cannot hate them for what they do to her. She says that should they be in trouble and need she would be unhesitant to lend them succour. She cannot be what they are. That seems to be the perennial difficulty she would encounter and perhaps she being different is what I, Ara and R are lucky about.

Modern day Pharohs

This is a brief note on the Modern day Pharaohs who crave to reach the nether world with all their trappings from this world intact.

They are  amongst us. And they lost their soul long ago when the life they chose was one of lust for riches. Now they are all in their near twilight times. But the feeling of invincibility rules the roost and has metamorphosed them into impudent lot. The audacity comes from the power of the riches that flooded to them like manna from heaven. The weird sisters of Macbeth (the three witches) where a lot that was unfairly ridiculed as the dark characters. But the witches I speak about are the wayward ones, hand in hand, and assume to be the masters of the sea, sky and land”.

They are witches of dark and contradictory nature, with filthy trappings and activities.

They know that the days of the mortals are few. But the craving to walk the earth forever and ever lingers like the undying tempest.

They have now struck upon the idea of an after life. They yearn and will to carry the booty they amassed through their very many means into the crypt they will finally be interned. Like the Pharaohs they have decided to take into their sepulcher the gold, trinkets, money and all other material garnering they possess. They fear, they fear having to leave all that they possess behind.

They fear being dispossessed in this world. The fear of being dispossessed in the nether world! And like the Pharaohs they fear death and dispossession. And they look forward to the Day of Judgment when they they believe they can carry all that they have with them. Fear has begun to give them sleepless nights.

And yes they are building the Pyramids of the present times so that they can intern in with all that they possess.

The unimportance of being us

 Why do people cling on to the belief in the force they call God, even when it is so apparent at times that the inevitable has happened and if there is, or not such a force , it is helpless and status quo cannot be retrieved, or changed to our desire? Why do people pray for well being and fervently plead to their God for salvation in the after life but blatantly cross the rubicon of the commandments?

Some pray longingly to God for wealth, some for physical well being, some to stave of death, some for nemesis to others and so on and so forth. The other day I got a routed email from an acquaintance – it was titled “The fairy of wealth”.

The message was attached to a picture with a large room stacked with currency and a fairy standing by with a wand. The message exhorted and implicitly warned me that if the pictorial message was not circulated to seven people in the next twenty four hours dire consequences will befall me. I would not decline money if it comes as lottery but was in no mood to acquiesce the fairy.

During a discourse by a reasonably well known and financially galloping mystic, a gentleman I knew, who is worth assets of at least a few hundred million and more ask him in all seriousness if he could teach him alchemy. I for once was fortunate to see the today’s version of ‘Midas’ in flesh and blood.

A few months ago I happened to go to a famous and commercially rich temple. In fact I had to tag on with a friend and his accomplices. We were ushered in through a narrow path way (through VIP enclosure) past the serpentine queue of devotees and into the sanctum of sanctorum. I respectfully but with lot of amusement watched them pay obeisance and pray to the deity. At times their expressions were nothing but comical (no pun meant). In fact it was so. The prayer and rituals consumed around thirty minutes. Which also meant that since we were ‘Very Valued’ devotees of the deity we could hang around their much longer while the commoner was whisked away after a glimpse of the deity inside! Once out of the temple the topic of discussion my friend initiated was quite on the matters of promiscuous indulgence. And that he being a media person and consequently a familiar face cannot with comfort indulge in exploits outside marital relationship. So much so for the fervent prayers, respect and fear of God a short while before!

This is the state and statements of a mother, from whom fate had wrenched away her son. The boy in his mid twenties was drowned and body not recovered from a lake in Atlanta US. The parents are practicing Syrian Catholic Christians. The intensity of agony and trauma can be well imagined. The mother has now become a freak and recluse of sorts. She carries the Bible and a photograph of her son all the while. Christian help groups and friends gather in her house often for consoling prayer meetings. She is quiet at times, and then she weeps for long inconsolably. It is two months now since the tragedy. Now she and her husband go to the church every day without fail, perhaps a kind of deluding! They were Sunday church goers and practicing Christians in that sense. She makes statements that “I will not leave that fellow Christ until he brings back my son. He must tell me why he did this to me”. Reminds me of the story ‘Monkeys Paw’, wherein the grieving mother seeks the  powers of the talisman and wishes that their son who was maimed and killed crushed in an industrial accident be brought back to life. And behold he came back to life but it was the crushed and contorted creature that came to them alive. And the father had to usurp the grieving mother and wish the last wish to the talisman to take away the creature –‘their dead son’.

A few months ago on business tour outside India I lost almost a hundred thousand Rupees in an apparent ATM fraud. Coming back to India I have been in constant complaining mode with my Bank. When I realized that I was cheated the feeling was of despondency. Felt like a fool and stupid at that. It could be my careless operation of the dispensing machine. I felt terribly guilty. And goodness forgive me that sum was what was required for the college annual fees for Ara.

However the other day I was informed by the Bank that the matter was sorted out and they have received instructions to credit my account with the sum. Their anti- fraud team had gone through the CCTV footage at the ATM and found what and how the fraud actually happened. It will be insufficient to say how relived I was. When this issue was elatedly told to a family friend she said, “That was the hand of God”. I wondered loudly where this hand of graciousness was when the fraudsters took the money from the ATM.  She said, “well the devil had his way then”.

That tells after all, the matters of life are just another T-20 cricket. You cannot tell which way and how it heads until it is over. A game of chess as the old timers said. And most of the while we play we stay intoxicated by the belief and wish that we are something special to be taken care of and handled with kid gloves. But the God we put up there may think otherwise more than often. He may not need us for the sun to rise and set and the planets to move around the stars. We are not important enough.

…

The Plague

He avoids them like plague”. The statement was from a person who was refering to me the attitude of her friend towards some of his kin. She continued, “While in Coiambatore he prefers to call up on his few friends rather than go to the abhorred lot”.

Made me think a bit, but at the same time also struck a cord with the statement. Yes most of us have encountered people in flesh and blood  whom we later chose to avoid like plague. The civilized thing we could do most is not to burn them at the stake, like they did to plague afflicted lot in medieval times, but keep away.

But what this person referred to was not biological plague but plague of the soul, mind and the heart. Sounds quirk? “And there are many amidst us who are incurably afflicted by the disease of the persona. They walk and live in our midst as carriers of the abhorred bacteria .The melancholia of the matter is they can be more often the people who have been nearest to you”...

I did not bother to continue the discussion. And let the matter rest there. More because it was indisputably so!

The Tenderness of Darkness

The first streak of light that sneaks in through the thick fabric curtain on the French window hits him with the mammoth force of reality. His body clock strikes every morning at the precise and conformed time of early dawn. And he never would be able to slide back into sleep any long. Now the early light of the new day throws ominous amber on the future ahead. He becomes forlorn and listless. He wishes if he could sleep longer. And longer! He recalls that it was total serenity in sleep!

It throbs in his head. He could feel the discomfort the brain is wretched with. The chemical reaction that ensues within his brain traverse all over the nerves- head to toe.

Then suddenly putting him into awe his brain settles into a plateau that runs through with the exuberance and free will of the mountain rapids. There cannot be a hiccup and it can never be forlorn in the days ahead.. He feels the blood pound within him with the air of hope and confidence.

The momentum is lost soon somewhere. It is a free fall into despondency  and despair yet again. He tries to claw back slowly from the abyss that he stares down. But he feels the quick sand is pulling him in.

And it is soon night and dark. He slides into deep sleep and darkness falls upon with the blanket of comfort and reprieve until the early streak of light the next dawn.

Rainbow country

Over past years I have been traveling (purely for sustenance) I have been fortunate to see quite a few countries and places. And have been often asked if I have visited LA and Las Vegas. If I was blessed with wealth to throw around and if it was a few decades ago well then the idea would be tempting. But not any more, more because there are more Spartan places that gives you goose bumps.

I remember the few moments I spent at the Rjghat in Delhi. That was like visiting a haloed piece of land .It was awe filled indeed.

But then the visit to the SOWETO in Johannesburg South Africa was one unique  experience to the heart and mind.

A tour operator of Indian origin from Meerut UP was my guide. He took me around in his tour taxi. He was a third generation  migrant in South Africa.

SOWETO gives one a cultural shock of sort. Perhaps it would have been a traumatic one if I went there in the seventies. But now the roads into what is called the largest slum in the world have a four lane traffic running all way through the town. The slum as it is blithely called is a far cry from the sweltering dusty sewage dump that the slums of  Bombay  are. The houses are decent looking and all sported satellite dishes. Only in some interior corners did I notice shacks,open drains and muck. Though traffic and traffic rules are impudently ignored! Prominently even now, not a single white is seen in SOWETO. The tour guide told me of an instance in the seventies when two Afrikaner policemen who unwittingly wandered into SOWETO were lynched by a black mob. Their body was never recovered.

I was eager to visit Nelson Mandela’s house. We went past a steep gradient- a hillock and past what is even now the official residence of Winnie Mandela.. The former residence of Nelson Mandela is now  museum. It was from here Mandela oragnised the ANC resistance against apartheid. It was here he had those undercover rendezvous with his colleagues in the resistance Walter Sisulu, Oliver Tambo etc.

The house was made of red bricks and could not be not more than 500 sqft. It was on slightly larger piece of land perhaps 1000 sqft. Spartan I thought, was an understatement and blasphemous if one can compare it with the official residences of the Pontiffs who head the religious flock in different corners of the world

. One is engulfed with unbridled excitement when one enters through the small gate and steps into the drawing room. It was like going back into the moments of history. A rocking chair, a pair of leather boots, a single wooden cot a sofa, a table and a couple of chairs were all I can remember in the house. It had one living room a bed room and a kitchen. There were now photographs of the past, displayed. I was told that Mandela came straight from Robben Island off Cape Town after his long incarceration there to this house and lived here for a few days. 

                                                              

The guide, a young black who did his History major told me with impassioned face how he as a little boy along with his little friends peeped through the air vents on the compound wall and saw Mr Mandela sitting in a chair on the verandah. The guy was quivering with excitement. He showed me bullet marks on the wall of the house. They were gun shots that were randomly and indiscriminately sniped at the house by the Afrikaner police force when ever they got the information of Mandela’s presence in the house. The three quarter of an hour I spent in that small little place of history  will be etched in me for ever.

The Regina Mundy is a catholic church in SOWETO and is a symbol now of the resistance. It now sports a new look. But there are bullet scars that tells the agony of the past. It was into this church police fired live ammunition at students who were taking cover from the police firing during the SOWETO uprising in 1976.

                                                     "Where Hector Peterson Fell"

The Hector Peterson Museum tells the story of white mans savagery and reminds you of the days when more than half of the white race over the world turned a Nelson’s eye to the brutality of the white Afrikaners. This museum stands where Heector a little boy of 8 fell to police bullets while unsuspectingly walking with his sister during the students March against the white rule in 1976. The photograph of his sister running wailing by the side of a black man (who was never seen since) carrying the lifeless body of Hector Peeterson is haunting in memory. The photographs and the  video feeds in the museum  sometimes can bring out the gut from your stomach. It tells us the appalling and gory level human beings can go down when in relation to a fellow being.. And the revelation came to me was that it was not the English perhaps who inflicted the most horrifying savagery on the natives all over but the Dutch in South Africa and the Spanish in the Americas.

                                                         IN SOWETO

When one leaves these symbols in salutation to the human spirit and sufferings it is difficult to understand the heart and the vision of Nelson Mandela that would plead for a ‘rainbow nation’ after all that took place on its soil.

I felt that not even many trips decades ago to LA and Las Vegas with my pockets filled with green backs would let me experience the experience that these places in SOWETO rendered.