"Hello Friend , Good Day"

We Indians, especially the Mallu lot have a predilection to snoop, stray and often intrude into another’s privacy; privacy of personal life, family, habits, professional activity and even his mundane routine. Some do it wantonly and some with manicured innocence. Though, I must admit that there have been in my experience a few civilsed exceptions to this.

It is in our temperament and tinctured social etiquette to ask a friend or an acquaintance who we meet  on the street, not how he or she is this morning or exclaim a pleasant day, but where he or she is going to. This I’m afraid may sound innocuous and even unpretentious but to me intrusive and an avoidable one at that.

Even if we ignore such enquiries as trivia and forgettable, there are the elements, the wiggles that hold us on the way, even way lay us, ambush us and literally cross examine us. I loathe such kind.

Long ago in my teens, I guess I was in the first or second year in college- it was the period when exploratory journeys were made with the taboo and banned practices say like smoking. Though I have never been a regular smoker, I have also been provoked by the charm of cigarettes. So most of the smoking adventures where in the College Hostel, canteen or in alleys. Cinemas where insecure as one could not tell who among the public would snitch back to the folks at home. One day after college I bought a cigarette at the pan shop next to the bust stop, lit it and luxuriously pulled in a lungful of tobacco smoke when I noticed the middle-aged man who lived in my neighbourhood walking towards where I was and I sneaked behind the pan shop. But I was actually provoked when I learnt that this impertinent fellow saw me light the cigarette and even before I noticed him and was headed towards where I was. He headed straight to me throwing perverted glances at my hand which hid the cigarette in the palm rather instinctively. In reality my reaction was borne out of a little respect for a person who was quite older to me and known to me as well. He came to me and asked facetiously as if it was the sole question that he was seeking an answer for the whole of his life thus far.” Why are you standing here?”  It was specious. I decided to confront him at his game.   I gathered the strength and impassively looked at him, my annoyance got the better of me that I put the cigarette to my lips and pulled in a lungful and threw it out sideways. I do not remember well what he did after. He vanished and since that day he would cross the street whenever he has seen me approaching his way. Audacity of teen and rebellious though, I could not understand even from then why some people choose to be intrusive and ask things that are impertinent and are best left to the privacy of another.  I would have honoured him had he ignored my standing there, walked past me unconcerned and then gone to my home and told folks that I had taken to smoking.

Besides the pleasure of seeing the discomfort of another, what ails many and make them ferret with their stinking noses is some have no subject matter or topic to discuss that they display impertinence.

At a recent social gathering where there were quite a few strangers’, I was introduced to some and I preferred to confine to exchange of pleasantries and handshakes. Some enquired where I lived and such innocuous questions. One fellow went further and in his sonorous voice asked me what I did for living and I told him I was retired from active work. He persisted. “That is alright, but what were you doing?”             

 “I was in business.” I said, smelling his inquisitiveness.                                                                        

 “That is strange I have not seen or known people retire from business.” He said rather pompously. I felt that like a question to which he demanded an answer.  I could see some other people milling around.                 

 “Well, now, you saw me! I guess that will make your evening.” I stated and moved on. Here the fellow was simply being inquisitive but I did not appreciate it much.

I have a distant relative who is an expat and he has been cooling his heels presumably assisted by the resources he may have saved during his working days.  That must be one of the reasons why he directs his unspent energy, time and mind on matters that are not his. He collects tit bits from sources sauté it and diffuses around. That, I’m certain invigorates him and makes him appear sanguine. Once, at a wedding reception he with artistic pureness asked a person who was estranged from his wife why he did not bring along his spouse. The miserable person was constantly avoiding such social functions since the estrangement as he was uncomfortable when people made such enquiries and few of us had persuaded him to attend. He did not stop at that and continued ferreting. Where she was? Why she could not get leave from her office? Why she is living and working in another city? Why he would not bring the children? And how sad he felt that he could not see all of them at that function! It was chagrin. The outrageous part was the fellow was aware that something was amiss in the miserable person’s family.

Isn't it bare decency that people confine to pleasantries invoking the sunny day or the cool evening or even the warm day after the torrential rains than ask awkward questions to a stranger or someone who is not a close friend? Could we tell if the other is not awkward towards our, perhaps even innocent ask or something we presume is a mundane matter that is generally discussed? Shouldn't we pause to watch what topic the other is comfortable to discuss with us? Shouldn't we accept an iota of privacy as a person’s birth right and inalienable?

“Privacy is not something that I'm merely entitled to, it's an absolute prerequisite.”  Someone said that.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

"Kerala Cafe"

The night was warm but it was about the humidity that we spoke about. The sky was cloudy and that shut out the stars. But more than the absence of a starry sky, the cloudy night was a matter of discomfort. The terraced balcony of the house was half shaded by a canopy roof, underneath which it was warmer than out in the open terrace.

What the nine of us who gathered up there did not acknowledge was that it was not an inconsiderate weather that was enhancing the humidifying feel, but the warmth of whiskey and Vodka that we were liberally ingesting. The spouses were down inside the house congregated presumably around the dining table fanned by the cool breeze of the ceiling fan.  The twenty-fifth wedding day anniversary dinner of a friend was what that brought us together at his house.

“Hey, by the way how about your father? Is he better now?  I asked B.

“Well how can it be better? It is getting worse.” B said.

Well, I remember when we last met you mentioned that he was not too bad and was back home from the hospital.”

“Yes, yes he is home. But then he has forgotten how to get out of his cot. You can see what would happen if we try to get up from bed only using our legs and that when an eighty five year old man does, it would be inviting agony for him and trouble for others.” I felt I noticed a glimpse of a tiny streak of irritation in B’s face and in the words. B continued. “I’m really worried for him if he has forgotten what a fall is .A fall, a broken bone can be very difficult in his age and in the mental state that he is.”

I nodded in agreement.

B said. “I fear he is fast losing all mental faculties. And besides that he is reasonably fine for a person of his age. That in fact is compounding the problem for him and for others.”

“In a way he is fortunate B. There are people to take care of him, I mean his children. Didn’t we hear the story on TV the other day when five children forsake their old mother- casting her away at a temple town? Then when the district administration and police traced them, they refused to accept the mother back. They were even not deterred by the threat from the District Collector to slap criminal charges against them.” BJ who was a professor said.

“Yes, that was raw negligence and ungratefulness. Wasn't it?” said I. “Remember TC.” I said referring to our host. “He had to bear with his mother for five long years. She was bedridden and was struck by dementia. Lucky for her he and his wife took good care of her. It was not the money alone that matters in such cases. It is the goodness of heart, whether children or stranger.”

“I have no hope for these words and deeds such as of gratefulness and gracious. They are luxurious nouns and adjectives meant for eulogies and sycophancy. They are all defunct in today’s world. And I have decided that I will have nothing to do with my son when I’m old and if I live long. I will sign my savings to a hospice or an old age care and be comfortable. One has to be stupid to tag on to their children hoping they will take care of us when we are old. One has to be practical and feel no anguish about. They, the young too have a life to live. Don’t they? And if the old outlive and become encumbrance, do we still blame the young and their attitude?” P said aboveboard. He in fact had signed and legalised a document consigning his cadaver to the medical school and also donated his organs that could be harvested.

B was completely in agreement with P. He said.  “We cannot be judgmental. To slur those people who left their old mother will be unfair. They were being as P said practical. Perhaps they ran out of options. Didn’t you see the movie “Kerala Café” where a scene shows this man who had to cast away his mother who was afflicted by Alzheimer’s? The agony and raw torment he faced was well copied. What could he do? Abject poverty and no way he could feed or take care of the old woman; a cantankerous wife but to blame her was unfair. She was beyond her tether of her patience and forbearance; little children to take care and above all he were the only person to bring home bread.”

Now it was P who said. “Now listen, Man as a species was meant to live and procreate. Nothing more and nothing less. Nature have never intended Man to live beyond say forty or fifty years life span. It is the so called progress, inventions, discoveries, science etc. that has given man longevity, well beyond what was sustainable from Natures’ point of view. Come on yar our productive procreative life begins to ebb after forty. The prime is over in the forties. And what else are we here for. All this sociological commitments, the notion that “Man”, with a big Capital “M” is more  advanced, developed intellectually than beast, we cannot compare us to beasts etc. are bunkum.  They are off shoot of our conceited inflated self, our false feeling, and our silly belief in our prominence.”

We were going through a very interesting discussion.

“But why then do we have faculties of cognition, contemplation, and reasoning? Aren’t we differently evolved than beasts, though we are not in any way superior? Certainly each species is superior in its own ways learning to survive. Isn't it so?” I wanted to say but by then the call from downstairs for dinner was relayed to us  and we had to leave the matter and move down.

A Conversation

“It is the easiest of all acts to display being offended and you must understand that, see through that act. One doesn’t always  have to be coached at a school of acting to display expressions to cover ones underbelly.  Ha, don’t you see that being offended is our national pastime and sport? ” I said, the last sentence in lighter vein.

Though we have been discussing the topic for a while, the protagonist was not agreeing with me completely and seemed to be in déjà vu. “It may be true; perhaps you have been right in your judgment. Perhaps! But his conduct and the utter demeaning way he speaks, he rubbishes make one feel having done something gravely offensive.  In fact he makes you feel guilty of having wronged him.”

“Now look.” I said. “That is exactly the point I want to make. Alas! He has seen through you like he may have seen through some others, who may have had the same failings as you- who may have had timorously swallowed his acts of prudishness and preferred to see his idiosyncrasies as harmless and passable. You must ignore his malarkey, his acts. His sophistry, his imperious self-obsessed self-righteousness did not allow him understand you and acknowledge your honest feelings about him.  He may have had his way with people who were timid and passive; he loves their company because he can brusquely lord over them and revel. He may have noticed that strategy worked well for him and he has continued to practice it as an art and craft that gives him pleasure. He thus acquired the audacity to expect, to demand the same unquestioned pliantness form all. Hence his arrogance, his tantrums of being offended. That is only a decoy to sustain him.” 

“I guess so.” She replied.

“And doesn't he get wretchedly personal when he has this grandiose feeling of annoyance of being offended?  When he has nothing else to elevate his ego and his imperious righteousness to levels where others cannot rubbish it?” I said.

She said.“Of course he does. I have heard him often and seen him too; he has now directed his ire towards

me like he has done to others in the past. He has the bloated egoistic feeling of having been offended. Yes, he does. Sometimes when he displays his dictatorial annoyance, he makes people feel that he is “Napoleon” the rather fierce-looking big boar, the character in Orwell’s Animal Farm; not much of a speaker, but with a fearful reputation for getting his own way. He brooks no critique and dissent. Once at a friendly gathering, he threw up tantrums that were sour and behoved people who have not been through proper education and it was gauche. It was his reaction that was offensive and peeved me and others to much extent. All because a gentleman was expressive with his opinion that he resented.His opinionated statement about the gentleman whose only fault was that he spoke his mind and conviction, even to this day is derisory. Yet we brushed  it off as a tiny dark streak on the moon. ”

“Precisely the point. Brushing it aside may have been the mistake. But we do that because each one of us has characteristics and idiosyncrasies’ that are both good and not bad. Long at last, you seem to have finally after these many years understood the emptiness in the person. Such folks are selfish, unsure of themselves, they fear their weaknesses.  They aspire but are non achievers because they revolt within than be honest to themselves. They cannot be gregarious. They are double-entendre. If you trusted him it was your error of judgment. Your limitation! They think they can get even with others if they indulge in personal diatribe. Thus they expect to plow you down. You know? Ignore him, such lot. Move on. There is much brightness elsewhere in this world than to be tethered into a dark alley that can only be lit by an artificial source.” I said.

We spoke about other matters in general, a bit of politics and what could be in store with the general election results on May 16. Orwellian possibility! We agreed upon that without ado.

The Helmsman

A few weeks ago an unpretentious, diminutive man in his early seventies, a French and born to Jewish parents passed away in his adopted city, New Delhi, India. I understand that the obituary was in the Times of India and the Hindustan Times. A memorial was held in New Delhi and a requiem performed by the Opera that he co-founded, which is co- managed by his daughter.

“The Neemrana Music Foundation is a registered, national nonprofit, nonpartisan educational organisation in the field of classical music and they believe in the mandate to build bridges of understanding between different cultures. We have been pioneers in introducing the genre of Opera in India. We started with the production of the Indo-French Opera "The Fakir of Benares" in 2002 (Delhi) and 2003 (Mumbai).” (Quote)

Now the idea behind this post is not culture integrating art, Opera or for that matter the innovative hospitality Industry branded the Neemrana Heritage Hotels & Resorts or the highly reliable and professional fashion apparel sourcing business he founded since landing in Indian shores as a French diplomat and deciding to settle down in Mumbai in the 1970s.

Having had the privilege to briefly speak and chit chat with him on a few occasions, having had the opportunity to associate with a segment of his business empire and having been privy to many good words spoken about him, what struck me the most was the faith he reposed in people he picked to work with him and entrust his business empire. That uncanny knack of finding and trusting the right person has paid rich dividends and even after his passing the enterprises he developed, are I believe, in genuine and worthy hands. What probably prompted him to trust must be his unselfish attitude and the willingness to share the dividends of labour. He certainly gave a sense, a feeling of ownership to his top lieutenants and they may have probably percolated the notion down the pyramid.

Why do I mention this story? It is because I have been trying to compare human relationships and how they can prosper into equitable and strong ways and how avarice, grift and selfishness coupled with mediocrity, substandard education and fostering can threaten to pulverise and deracinate relationships, family and businesses.

Once, I asked a gentleman what was the secret story of the success behind their fairly big business which was well into through the second generation. He said. “It was the ability of the helmsman to carry every one along .He would not mind much if one oarsman is a tad slow, his effort will be substituted by the rest and that, seldom is an effort.” Certainly he did not refer to acquiescing inefficiency , remember it was a figure of speech. 

A stark contrast to these two let me call them allegories and the metaphor of the helmsman is a study in human greed, selfishness and absence of values- a concoction that is caustic and erodes the foundation itself. Sand Castles how so ever high are nevertheless buildings of sand build on sand.

The Right to Read

It is always a pleasure and often a sense of having done the right and in no uncertain terms of having asserted your right when you jump a fence that in the first place no one had any business or right to put up.

I today received by courier from AMAZON the Wendy Doniger’s book, “The Hindus an Alternative History”. It cost me Rs 1250 and took two weeks to reach me from its international publisher (not the pliable Penguin India).

This book as many know was found offensive by Dinanath Batra and his group of self-acclaimed Hindus and custodians of Hindu culture ( yes caste, untouchability, dowry, bride burning, marital rape,honour killing , khap panchayats and gang rape of women too are part of the culture they laud about). This group of drumbeaters and bigots filed a civil and criminal suit against the publication and sale of the book in India and simultaneously arm twisted the pliable and  pusillanimous  Penguin India to withdraw the book and pulp it. Interestingly this very same Dinanath Batra took on the Educational Board and has actively opposed and subsequently stopped the introduction of sex education in Indian schools, saying it was against Hindu culture and religion.

Shobha Narayan writes in her post titled “The real reason Wendy Danger’s book on Hindus was banned in India: It’s not boring enough.” She goes on to say, “Doniger is clever and playful; she shines the light into the dark crevasses of a religion that was formulated at a time when feminism as a concept didn’t exist. Doniger knows her Sanskrit and her Vedas, but she looks Hindu rituals and traditions from the point of view of women and minorities. …… .”             

  “……..is blasphemy, as far as he is concerned, never mind that Doniger knows her Sanskrit and Upanishads better than he does; never mind that she understands the glories of ancient India in a way that he cannot begin to fathom; never mind that she knows that the Manu Smriti that he often quotes uses animals to define humans.”

Now in these days when I finally begun to read to hearts content, now that I have a few good books that are tempting me on my table in their own forcible way to be read first, I guess Wendy Doniger has come and the rest will have to wait a while until I read through her tome.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

The author herself had this to say on the pulping of her book in India. “And I am deeply troubled by what it foretells for free speech in India in the present, and steadily worsening, political climate,”                                                                            

 As for me it is not the question of free speech or literary freedom. It is not the widely misused word blasphemy or offending sentiments and hurting religious feelings. It is the question of my fundamental right, my birth right to read what I want. The courts in India have ruled before proscribing books but they have not banned reading them. These impostors and custodians of Hindutva or of Semitic religions, faiths, culture race or region cannot and shall not usurp my right to read and accept or reject what I want.

How about you?

Musings on a Tuesday Morning

         "It is Dark only till you open your eyes"

Perhaps one of the most, if not the most captivating artistry with words and imagination I have come across has been in the writings of Salman Rushdie. People use varied words and phrases to describe his genre and style of writing; magical realism, abstract, fantasy and dreamland imagination, master class illusion, paronomasia, Houdini of literature and also mediocre, besides ‘absolute bullshit’.

He may be considered less in standing when put up with some of the Latin American exponents of magical realism. Well, then Nobel Prize is the sine qu a non of literary radiance.

When compared to the terrene writings, construction of sentences, choice of words and the plot itself for someone who have been breast fed on the writings of Blyton, Somerset Maugham, Hemmingway, Maurice Procter, RK.Narayan from the old to name a striking few, it was trifle difficult to imbibe the writings of men like Salman Rushdie.

I just finished reading three of Salman Rushdie’s books in the order, “Satanic Verses”, “The Enchantress of Florence” and “Joseph Anton”. While the latter is a memoir of his reclusive days- incognito and hounded by the blood thirsty cannibals of the Khomeini era Iran, the others are typical Rushdie class, the former ( The Satanic Verse) the controversial tome and took quite a while to read and use reference sites in the bargain for understanding, (I can only blame my limited comprehension for that).I must confess I have now begun, rather gained time (by default and by chance) and the appetite to enjoy the oeuvres of good writers.

Going back to the memorable beginning of a novel, “The Enchantress of Florence”, is unequaled.                                       “In the day’s last light the glowing lake below the palace city looked like a sea of molten gold. A traveler coming this way at sunset-this traveler, coming this way, now, along the lake shore road-might believe himself to be approaching the throne of a monarch so fabulously wealthy that he would allow a portion of his treasure to be poured into a giant hollow in the earth to dazzle and awe his guests………..”  

“But the sun fell below the horizon, the gold sank beneath the water’s surface and was lost. Mermaids and serpents would guard it until the return of daylight. Until then, water itself would be the only treasure on offer, a gift the thirsty traveller gratefully accepted.”                                                                                           

The Enchantress of Florence is set in the Mughal reign of Akbar, with occasional forays into the sixteenth century Florentine Italy and pulsating with life that the magical touch of Rushdie’s imagination could lend.

It was yesterday evening, when watching the “News Hour” on TimesNow channel that I began to wonder more and be quite afraid of what is in store for India should a bigoted, perverted and fanatic ideology in the guise of faith and religion were to come to power and with an absolute majority. The mindless frenzy, mobbishness and insane response to the literary creation “The Satanic Verses” and then “Shame” a novella of Tasleema Nasrin helped by mute, acquiescing and pliable governments in India and in some European countries, I find reflects the underlying venom and malaise in human psyche. The danger!

An antisocial called Pramod Muthalik the founder and lord of a fringe rightwing fanatic unit called “Sriramsean” vending his anger and wrath through menacing gesticulations and diatribe to the TV anchor and the civilised world as a whole when cornered by straight questions about his conduct and his self-proclaimed avatar as the custodian of Hindu Dharma and Hinduism was shocking, abhorring, bizarre and foreboding. Outrageously a man, a local head of his vile tribe who is a software engineer endorsed in equally frenzied manner the pathological ideology of Pramod Muthalik and that was far more distressing. They swore that they will hound and moral police any man or woman who to them are conducting against Hindu faith and Hindu dharma, because they have a right to safe guard Hinduism perse.

Mercifully in this age of live video telecast and information explosion such vile and perverted thinking elements are quickly exposed.  Though in some cases there are men who are roaming free even after a decade after approving and acquiescing social cleansing.

But what is amplified by the continuing ban in India on the book “Satanic Verses” and of late the meek withdrawal of Wendy Doniger’s scholarly work on Hinduism is that individual freedom, freedom of thought and learning are continuously threatened in all religions and all faiths have demented men and women, cannibals preying upon a just and peaceful  society where individual rights and tolerance is helped to flourish through argumentation and civilized conduct than recourse to banning of unpleasant facts and resort to mayhem.

Ironically the book Satanic Verses is not banned in Turkey a secular country with a Muslim majority but is proscribed in India which claims to be the custodian of secular values.

As for men like Pramod Muthalik and others who have thrived raking up communal and religious divide and murder under the guise of saving Hinduism, the fact is such people are like locusts out to devour and deracinate Hinduism that for many millennia flourished without  abetting bloodshed or by slaughtering  non-believers, but mostly on free thought, free speech, argumentation and tolerance.

If men like Muthalik and his more famously infamous  brethren are concerned, distressed and incensed by the repeated denigration of Hinduism and what they call Indian ethos and culture, they should be voicing and acting against social evils like caste,discrimination based on one's caste and  un-touchability that plagues Hinduism even to this day.

Certainly we do not need the aid of a Rumpelstiltskin who is the creation of marketing mavericks to lord over us and tell us about Hinduism or a brother in arms of an Ayatollah Khomeini or a mediaeval Catholic inquisitor to play the divisive card, be a moral police or bludgeon people with their outlandish ideologies.

Why these people are frightened of books, of words is because they contain far more potent matters of reason, ideas and truth that can threaten and unveil the cannibalistic and satanic ideas that they purvey as heaven-sent. In fact they may even want to rewrite history erasing what they do not like even if it were true historical facts.

Waking from the Dead

The smart phone thrust inside the breast pocket of my shirt ruffled me when its ring tone- music, together with the accompanying vibration woke me from the dead .Usually I stuff the phone in the pocket of my trouser, lest the electromagnetic radiation interfered with the smooth functioning of the heart and enhanced the chances if any of its naughty petulance. Frankly I was not worried about the radiation messing up with other functional organs. Well I could not recall what, if it was not the alleged malevolence of radiation that eventually interfered and annoyed the heart and put me down -dead. That is a different story which needs to be probed separately and is not in context here.

Well then, as I mentioned, the smart phone rang and that startled me and also interrupted the eulogy one bloke was engaging in with little restraint. Though I managed to maintain the perfect cadavers pose, folks standing around were attracted to the origin of the ring tone as it always does when the surly ring of mobile phones defiles and irritates, intruding into many places and occasions where it has no bloody business to be . “I see trees of green........ red roses too ; I see em bloom..... for me and for you ; and I think to myself.... what a wonderful world……”  Louis Armstrong’s immortal masculine voice played on through the Smart phone. I wondered if the irony of the song was missed.

 I must have been dead for quite a few hours, I guess less than a day or there about and I noticed that folks who promised me to consign my cadaver to the medical school forgot about the matter. Else I had no business to be laying there a silent, mute spectator in torpor clubbed by the ennui of the eulogies’. I ought to have been by then lying spread-eagle on some dissection table, rib cage sawed open, entrails left out, surrounded by curious youthful faces and a sophisticated professor- all equally amazed how the fellow’s liver stayed intact after years of tangoing with spirits.

Coming back to the interrupted eulogy, I was certain that these pleasant hearted souls would not want to speak ill about the deceased and that must be the sole provocation for this pretty long but certainly boring ritual of lavishing encomiums on the dead . I surveyed the scene from a distance and saw some of the elders annoyed at the sudden and irreverent (sic) intrusion of the Smart phone. I was laying recumbent, supine- decked with a few flowers and a couple of wreaths – laurel wreaths (!) (Sic).

Now, since I have been dead for long, how do I account for the time I spent from the moment of dying till now? I have not been to a nether world; I did not see paradise or the abominable hell. No fairies in pristine white chiffon gowns and silver wings sprouting from their backs, no sandalwood  and rose scented , perfumed sparsely clad celestial damsels  with provocative bosoms and rump, no forbidding looking men eager to haul me over rough thorny terrains. Then it struck me pleasantly, man there is no hell and mercifully there is no heaven too. The stories of rotting hell and bright paradise with rivers of honey and oceans of unadulterated milk have been pretty fables used by the sophist, grifters and nitwit men and women to scare the gullible , the meek hearted, the guilt ridden selfish of people and they were in plenty. I was immensely relieved, pleased and happy that there was no hell and heaven in the after-world- there was no after-world to worry about. In hindsight, I ought to have, when alive, enjoyed living with more exuberance than I managed to. Only because there was no hell and heaven to hitch hike to in the afterlife.

Thankfully there was no sniveling around. The eulogy continued by another bloke. I sensed that the folks were eager to get done with it and some were petulantly checking their wrist watches.

I surveyed. One bloke wearing dark aviator glasses, with greyish white hair and beard  was massaging his beard with his fingers, while leaving his other hand thrust in his trouser pocket and occasionally glancing at his reflection in the glass pane of the window. He refuses to be displeased with his appearance. The lovable narcissist that he is! I saw another fellow standing in the far corner, impatient and with deep frown announcing probably his belief that the world around is conspiring against him. Bludgeoned by that belief which constantly shadowed him, he flounced out flummoxed, in anguish and annoyance, pulled his moped from the parking stand and steamed away-all the idiosyncratic qualities intact and  trailing after him. Seeing him go, another tall lean guy, in faded Levis jeans decided that enough is enough with the eulogies, jumped into his car and sped towards the club for his evening quota of spirit.

I moved out to the verandah of the building when I heard some muffled laughter. There were some business friends and acquaintances of old in restrained conversation, broke by intermittent muffled laughter. One fat guy who I always admired for his witty retorts and stories asked another, the short bald guy who resembled an elf, the one who runs away to the wash rooms, or bends down to untie and tie back his shoelace when it was time to throw in his share for the restaurant bill and was one of the least fascinating beings I met when I was alive. “Look, Seethu, do you also not want to go away with such fanfare and respected treatment like our A did? We all will assure you, most of all I will, that we will not lessen the gaiety and splendour of the sendoff we give you when you are gone.”

Typical of the man his jest may sound rude and taunting for those who do not possess taste for spirit, of fun and banter and who are incorrigibly vacuous to appreciate jocularities. I saw Seethu’s face turn pale, paler like, paler than the most pallid among the pale skinned Americans.I impulsively began shaking with laughter and soon put the back of my palm to the mouth to muffle the laugh, though no one would have noticed my laughter in the sudden burst of feet pounding , clapping and laughing out there, triggered by Antony’s assurance to the now distrait Seethu, unconscious of the dead man lying inside and the panegyric ritual.

Louis Armstrong’s sonorous voice persisted and the wake up alarm ring tone on my mobile finally woke me. It was early morning and another beautiful day in this Wonderful world-

“I see trees of green........ red roses too ;I see em bloom..... for me and for you ;And I think to myself.... what a wonderful world.

I see skies of blue..... clouds of white ;Bright blessed days....dark sacred nights ;And I think to myself .....what a wonderful world.

The colors of a rainbow.....so pretty ..in the sky ;Are also on the faces.....of people ..going by ;I see friends shaking hands.....sayin.. how do you do ;They're really sayin......i love you.

I hear babies cry...... I watch them grow ;They'll learn much more.....than I'll never know ;And I think to myself .....what a wonderful world

The person mentioned here, his moniker - Seethu, passed away some six months ago and the news were relayed to me a few days back by a distant colleague.