A winter Evening by the Sea

It was cold winter evening on the beach

The people loitering on the beach or gazing at the blue waters were thin and sparse. The air was whiffing cold and I felt a bonfire would be wonderful to spend the star lit night, gazing in askance,contently or in awe at the sea.The waves of the ocean lashing gently on to the beach, against the sun that was gently hovering down in the horizon, enhanced the wonder of Nature. Sublime, caressing! It seemed like the shore and the ocean were engaged in foreplay. Could the ocean be tranquil as this? The question came back more often to my mind as I left the seaside. By then the sky was heavenly inundated with golden, twinkling specks that seemed like glow worms. They as always reminded me the insignificance of the bipedal ones down on the beach. I left him watching the gently lashing waves, still not quite convinced about my riposte and standpoint. His mind, I sensed was much as not as near calm as the ocean and the tempest was very much alive.

Perhaps that is the way human mind is. It often does not reflect in the facial muscles. Sometime to some it is the opposite, it mastitis in the face and all over the physiological being.

“I’m dispossessed”, was his curt retort to my query about who and where he was from. It was he who initiated and opened the conversation. And was not in my temperament to ask a stranger who he was and where he hailed from. With my characteristic apathy to strangers and discomfiture, I was confined to a good extent and more than often. If I were to be a salesman, which I detest and is unable too, to barge into any, everyone and at all times, it takes a considerable length of time for me to be anywhere proximal to the comfort zone with another. And, I was somewhat offended by his brusque reply.

We chanced to be sitting at the far ends of the disused stone bench which lay on a neglected but quite corner of the beach. I fail to recall who occupied the stone seat first. But it was he who initiated the opening conversation and then exclaimed,”Goddamn ocean this, hardly behaves like one .Look at the damn waves they seem to be of a shallow ces pool.”

“Cesspool”! It was my turn to exclaim and in silence. I looked guardedly into his eyes. This man terms the vast and beautiful ocean, a cesspool?

Tucking my palms into the jacket pockets, I suggested, “Relating this vast confluence with a shallow pool is rather strange. Is it your mind that refuses to see the vastness that is in front?’

He got up agitated, and gesticulating his fingers at me,said in a cold voice, “Man when you wear those leather boots you do not know what frost bite is.” He turned around and walked towards the water.

It was a cold winter evening on the beach!

The Laughter of Jesus

Here is an interesting piece of thought from Osho (the late Rajaneesh).To be offended by this loud thinking is unnecessary, but to introspect conventions as fed to us will be interesting and a revelation.  

Christ's message IS rejoice and be merry. But that is not the message of Christianity. Christianity's message is: be sad, long faces, look miserable; the more miserable you look, the more saintly you are. Sometimes I really feel for poor Jesus. He has fallen in such wrong company, and I wonder how he is managing in paradise with all these Christian saints, so sad, so dull.

He was not a dull man, he was not a sad man -- he could not be. The word 'Christ' is exactly synonymous with Buddha. He was an enlightened person. He rejoiced in life, in the small things of life. He rejoiced in eating, drinking, friendship. He loved companionship, he loved the whole life.

But Christians down the ages have painted him as very sad. They have painted him always on the cross, as if for thirty-three years he was always on the cross. And my own understanding is that a man like Jesus will not die sad, even on the cross. He must have laughed before he died( if he ever did).

That's what Al-Hillaj Mansoor the Sufi mystic and poet did before he was executed in public by the fanatic Mohammedans, because he had declared: ANA'L HAQ -- "I am the Truth".  Mohammedans could not tolerate it, just as Jews could not tolerate Jesus. They killed him – tortured and chopped of his organs one after the other- but before they killed him, he looked at the sky and laughed loudly.

And that's exactly what Jesus must have done, laughed. But Christians have tried their best to depict Jesus as sad. They have made a saint out of a real authentic human being; they have cut everything. The gospels are not true stories; much has been changed, much has been reduced, much has been added. They have become mere fictions. Emperor Constantine decreed what must be the Gospel . A happy Christ is a misfit for Christians and Christianity.

Down the ages, Christians have been trying to paint Christ as  sadder. Why? -- Because all over the world religion has been dominated by a neurotic kind of people. It has been dominated by the people who are masochists, sadists. In the East too, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism -- they have all been dominated by the masochistic people, the people who enjoy torturing themselves, the people who are incapable of living life in its totality. The people who are too cowardly to live, escapists, have dominated religion up to now. These escapists have depicted Buddha as not laughing, Mahavira as not laughing.

And Christians actually say that Jesus never laughed in his life. Can you believe that? Jesus never laughed in life? He enjoyed all kinds of people, and he never laughed? Can you imagine that a man like Jesus, who was always feasting for hours with his friends, never laughed? It is inconceivable! How can you go on wining and dining without laughing? He must have joked, he must have told funny stories. They have been edited out. He was a very true man, and very courageous. He accepted Mary Magdalene as his disciple. It needs courage, it needs guts. I cannot believe that he never laughed.

We are made to cry – as soon as we are detached from the womb. Up to now doctors have been very Christian. The first thing they do is they hang the child upside down and hit him on the buttocks. Do you expect a child to laugh? This is a great welcome to the world, putting the child upside down, giving him a hit -- a good beginning, because his whole life he is going to get hit in the pants, again and again. And hanging upside down, how can he laugh? No wonder he cries!

Now there are a few doctors working in a different direction. They bring the child in a more natural way out of the mother's womb; they don't cut the umbilical cord immediately because that creates crying, that is violence. They leave the child on the mother's belly with the umbilical cord intact. They give a good bath to the child, a hot bath, they put the child into a hot tub of exactly the same temperature as it was in the mother's womb.

In the mother's womb the child is floating in water. The water has the same contents as sea water, salty. In the same salty chemical solution, of the same temperature, the child is put in the tub. He starts smiling. It is a real beautiful reception. And not with glaring tube lights... that hurts the eyes of the child. In fact, so many people are wearing glasses only because of the foolishness of the doctors. The child has lived for nine months in the mother's womb in darkness, utter darkness. Then suddenly so much light... it hurts his delicate eyes. You have destroyed something delicate in his eyes. The child should be received in a very dim light, and the light should be increased slowly, so his eyes become accustomed to the light. Naturally the child smiles at the beautiful welcome.

I can't believe Jesus not laughing at all. He lived thirty-three years and did not laugh? -- That can only be possible if he was absolutely perverted, absolutely pathological, and ill. Something must have been wrong if he didn't laugh. But nothing is wrong with him; something is wrong with the followers. They depict their saints, their messiahs, their Prophets, as very serious, somber, sad, just to show that they are above the world, that they are beyond, that they are not worldly people. Laughter seems shallow, seems unspiritual.

Although the message of Christmas is rejoice and be merry, still there is sadness, because the whole of Christianity teaches you to be sad. It is not a life-affirming religion, it is life-negative. It is much more life-negative than Hinduism, much more life-negative than Judaism. It has no sense of humor at all. And a religion without a sense of humor is ill, pathological. It needs psychological treatment.

Peter, standing in the crowd, looked up at Jesus on the cross. As he watched, he distinctly saw Jesus motioning him forward.
"Pssst, hey Peter, come here," said the Lord.
As Peter moved forward, two Roman guards blocked his way and beat him till he fell to the ground.
A few moments later, Peter, bruised and bleeding, looked up and saw Jesus again motioning him forward.
"Pssst, hey Peter, come here!"
Looking around, Peter noticed that the crowd was gone and so were the Roman soldiers. He moved closer to Jesus, "Yes, Lord, what is it? What is it you want?"
"Hey Peter," said Jesus. "Guess what? I can see your house from here!"

St. Antony- A Story

Sunday, December 11, 2011

St. Antony- A Story

It was late January, and it was a holiday. The  weather was mild and comfortable at that time of the year. The sea breeze that came from the west  blowing in over the inland lake and caressing the bamboo shrubs around the perimeter of the church, brought a heavenly spell, adding to the mirth. Or was it her sheer presence, or was it the excitement and gaiety that accompany a wedding—the wedding of a close friend?

It was early dawn, well before sunrise, and I was woken up to the clutter and chatter—the excited shrieks and conversations. She had arrived by train early in the morning. I sometimes felt an initial awkwardness with young women, so I chose to stay a little longer than usual in bed. When I came out of my room, it was with controlled excitement, curiosity, and caution. I was determined not to reveal my idiosyncrasies to her, whom I had only seen in photographs.

I saw her lazing down the stairs, and I guess the first smile, nod of the head, and "hello" were not too bad. Photographs captured by a camera are sometimes a faint image of what the subject actually is, and they can also be grossly untrue. Something inside pumped up the excitement and heightened my heartbeat. Strange, I thought! The couple of days she stayed at the apartment, whenever I could create an opportunity to be near her and engage in some conversation, I grabbed it, made sure the chance never went begging. I wonder if others noticed the oddity in my general behaviour.

Something kept telling me that there was a mutual attraction, but it was more latent in her!

She came back a few months later. There was no communication between us in that short interregnum. In any case those were the days when one even did not have a dream of mobile phones. However, the second meeting was a friendlier and more alleviating affair. She had come to my close friend's wedding that afternoon. When my friend sent her the invitation to his wedding, she obliged. I was thrilled. Looking back, perhaps destiny enticed her!

After the wedding,at the old basilica  we all moved to the adjacent banquet hall for the grand feast that the bride’s father had organised. After the sumptuous feast and the brief revelry involving indulgent wine drinking, we friends left. We took off towards the pier to take the boat ride across the lake to the island. She was the last one to hop on the boat, and I offered her my hand to hold on to while jumping on the rocking little craft, which she unhesitatingly accepted!

We had a refreshing couple of hours on the island. The optical illusion in the west caressing the ocean—the sun setting and the magical shadows it cast on the lush green foliage and trees that straddled the island, the sparkling waters of the vast lake like molten gold in the fading sunlight—all of this was perfect for the occasion. There were three women in the group besides her—her aunt, her sister, and a friend's wife. It was an exciting time, even more so for the two of us, unbeknownst to either of us or the rest. I took care to not betray my feelings or make it obvious to others that I was stung by Cupid. Lest her brothers found out, I was quite self-conscious about myself, I wouldn't go any further.

It was dark when we returned to the boat that would ferry us back to the mainland. The journey back to the apartment had to be sorted out, as some of us had taken a taxi to the wedding, and now we all had to reckon with the few motorbikes we had. I was the only one on my bike and wished I could suggest that she could travel pillion on my Java-Yezdi with me. But timidity stamped out the grit to say so. As luck would have it, or destiny, one of her brothers suggested she ride a pillion with me. And he reminded me to take care of her while on the road. She accepted the suggestion without hesitation. Perhaps that was what she wanted too? I chastised myself for thinking for her. Stupid Cupid! But she traveled the distance back with me.

I rode the bike with great caution and sensed her timidly holding on to my shirt while I manoeuvred through the traffic. On the way back, she suggested that we stop at the church of Saint Antony. She asked if I had any difficulty doing so. I figured it would give me more time with her on the road, and I gleefully agreed.. We went into the shrine. The shrine of the saint was a popular destination for the faithful, who believed that their supplications and petitions would be favourably disposed of by the saint, God's interlocutor. One’s ardent prayers and wishes are sure to be granted! I was curious as to what she wished for and what favour the saint promised her. She bought candles and flowers from the vendor outside, and I joined her in patiently lighting them at the altar. It was indeed a good feeling to be in the shrine with her. I wish time could be stopped.

When we began our ride back, I was annoyed that the distance to the apartment appeared shorter. I frantically thought of ways to stretch the distance and time so that it could be a long, never ending ride with her.

Did the saint sense my thinking?

There is no Snow on Kilimanjaro

The hills were verdant. But it seemed to her barren and desolate. The dark green canopies of the trees and the tall elephant grass rocked in the wind. To her, they seemed to be expressing violent disapproval. The wind wailed and came incessantly brushing the tall grass, bending it, coercing it before it went back to its former state. The wind then hit the hillock where she lay with a howl. She felt them like the calls of the hyena. "You raunchy slut go away, you charlatan keep out”. They seemed to howl their catcalls in chorus. The symphony that Nature played did not touch her.

Is it or is it not the state of the mind? She again began to hear the words reverberating from far away-the words that were spewed at her. And now the wild has taken up the call, “Pariah, getaway.” Nature too has a way to tell her annoyance with her for being there. Her being there – did that defile Nature too? The cold roaring wind was like profanity directed at her. It came from far over the hills. But they seem to whip her, lash her lacerated torso, piercing through the torn fabric of her dress. Even the wind, the grass, the trees, the hills, all had begun to express discomfort, disdain, and repugnance for her. Is it or is it not the state of mind?

She knew she has not much far to go. Her broken limbs were twisted and swollen. She bit back the pain, though not more excruciating than those words that come after her, haunting her ears. She laid her head on the rock and lay still, looking far above up into the blue sky. She could see no angels, no fairies but a void, not even floating fleeting clouds, just void. And the words kept resonating, “You ........raunchy slut go away.”

The life lived was not! She deluded herself and lived in the tower that she crafted, the tower which she in her supercilious and imperious living did not see was a tower in a dune of sand. The frenzied aspiration to reach the skies could only built the tower of Babel. She saw the days come back in a time machine. In these moments when they who flocked to her beck chose to forsake her and now this miserable solitude in the hills! Impelled by remorse, guilt, infamy and now having purposefully wandered afar into the wild, lost her way, she knew she will eventually surrender to the lonesome cold and life would gradually ebb away from her. Her clothes were torn and in tatter. She now has been wandering for almost a week, aimless and in trance. The leeches in the rain-fed mangroves downhill have preyed on her. The sores were bleeding. Hunger and starvation were throwing her into intermittent delirium. Brief moments when she slid into hallucination brought to her apparitions of many faces whom she had hurt, had trampled with her wickedness and shenanigans, the ones she shut out selfishly. She will gradually yield to hunger, the cold, the insects, and the predators who will feast on her cadaver or may be maul and feast on her alive. She knew she may not see the light of another sunrise. Her time of reckoning was fast nearing. She longed for darkness, for light was dangerously fearsome.

She feared going back to civilisation. Was it the fear of repeated denials- all those who once stood at her beck? When did she lose her way? She lost her way in her teens, and adulthood- to avarice, glitter, glamour, and wealth. The hubris of youth, the lust for wealth, the licentious pleasures that overpowered and intoxicated her veins, when she used and jettisoned people -men and women, she lost her way! When she decided that there was value for nothing, but the price for everything, she had lost her way! She lived and thrived in falsehood, trickery, and emotional blackmail. For pounds of riches would silence all tongues. It was frailty at its loathsome worst.

She sobbed and cried. She lay there crying until tears to the last droplet out and dried . Flies were insistently feasting on the sores that lay open.She saw the predator bird circling above. It had sensed that the time was up for the feast. “The crunchy feast on the invalid raunchy”!

She rolled her eyes towards the tall peak a little to her left. She longed to be there on top. Then she saw that it was this fiery longing for being “there” that made her tread the path that brought her to this.

There was no snow atop Kilimanjaro! She closed her eyes and slowly sensed her going down the yawning abyss to be free at last, from all she ever relished, and all that finally vowed her away. The final image that stayed in her before the last strain of consciousness slipped away was the scavenger bird circling above in patience.

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill

 Some time ago, I bought a book on Winston Churchill. Though no admirer of him, it was a volume of his collected speech. Known for his eloquence, oratory skills and phrasing of communication with eternal words, I presumed that the book will be an interesting read. It was a disillusionment of sorts like the disappointment Winston Churchill must have felt after losing the elections in Britain after winning the Great War!

The speeches that were included in the edition were more concerning the domestic policies of his Government in Great Britain and his comments on the inland matters of that country. Though there were glimpses of his eloquence and rhetorician arrogance on World affairs, men, colonies and most of all reason why he must be detested for many of his opinions!

Here are samples  of few that may be read and concluded the way you may want to.

1-      1-The short crisp sentence that shot into international fame and immortality

“I have nothing to offer but blood toil and sweat.” (In the House of Commons, 1940 when Great Britain was crudely thrown into the World War II).

2-   2-   “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”(In the House of   Commons 1940. referring to the pilots who fought  the Battle of Britain).

3-    3-  Now here is something that the purist of Indian Jingoist would frown at.

“It is ...alarming and also nauseating to see Mr. Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well-known in the East, striding half naked up the steps of the Viceregal Palace, while he is still organising and contradicting a defiant campaign of civil disobedience, to parley on equal terms with the representative of the King Emperor.”

4-     4-  “You have enemies.Good. That means you stood up for something sometime in your life.”

5-      5-The Churchillian hubris at its detestable best.

 “Before we proceed let us get one thing clear. Are we talking about the brown Indians in        

 India who have alarmingly multiplied under the benevolent British rule? Or are we speaking about   the Red       Indians in America who, I understand, are almost extinct?”

6-     6- Here is the one that proved his insensitivity and macabre philosophy. Stiff upper lip or otherwise Britons were wise to show him the door after the War.

“I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time.I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the Black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the very fact that a stronger race, a higher- grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place.” (Churchill to the Palestine Royal Commission in 1937).

7-Nancy Astor, the first woman to sit as member in the Commons, 

“Sir, if you were my husband, I would give you poison”. Churchill, “If you were my wife I will take   it.”

8-Now here is one that if Mr Churchill were alive now and uttered would have seen him     enshroud with Salman Rushdie fearing the fatwa from the vile looking Mullahs.

“ ......the fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.”

9- Here is a blister that should keep all India thinking.

“India is a Geographical term. It is no more a United Nation than the equator.”

10- And the perseverance and courage in him is amplified in these words he spoke,

 "Never, never, never give up.

Summing up , perhaps I have to wonder,is it not true that all men are sculpted from contradictions?

The Ides of March

                                            Morte de Caesar


" Julius Caesar in derision,"The Ides of March Have come ". The Soothsayer," Aye Caesar, but they have not gone".


Those who extend much credence to the influence celestial configurations exercise on earthlings, wish off ill lucks, good tidings, ill tempered acts and omissions as matters that are not under the realm of ordinary mortals. While the heavens wreck havoc and shower largesse on us they are determined by forces abe initio not within our control. We are just marionettes, mere puppets dancing to the whims of the Puppeteer.

Destiny is written or foretold for each of us, it is said. That happens sometime during the exit from the mother’s womb, it is claimed. The heavens, widely acknowledged as the stars or the planets in the solar system, including the centre piece the sun, aligns in some predestined or ordained way that they directly influence the child that is born. His or her destiny, pallor of the skin, character, and life, all are influenced thereon by the life less planets that were  held also as beacon at night to men of the sea in the past. The trials, tribulations and triumphs in life are chartered by the alignment of the planets. Henceforth each course of events  in the life of the new born  is called fate.

Fascinating raison d'être from the oriental thoughts! Take it or leave it.

Dhuryodahana the villain of the piece in the epic Mahabharata, was obstinately impervious to reason, advice and sane suggestions by the elders and even from the mystical sorcerer Krishna. He was truculent, wanted war and nothing else. The aftermath is well documented in the epic. It is said that Dhuroydhana would never have seen reason because he was consumed by hate and lust for power. These attributes were instilled in him and latched like limpets because the constellation of his birth star was such. That he will have to fall! And hence he could not be redressed by reason and wise discourse. A wise head on those massive shoulders ought to have helped the man see reason and the safety net of a via media and détente. He and his retinue of brothers could have kept the chunk of the kingdom. But that was not to be, he invited wrath and chartered his and the elimination of his clan.

Don’t we see many a similar fate invited with ticker tape parade by many men in high places, Kings, Presidents, despots, and dictators of varied hues?  Manifestation of celestial alignments or otherwise, Man has often displayed bêtise and to great repercussions.

An astute strategist Adolf Hitler refracted on his pact of non aggression with Russia and attacked her. His army went deep into the Russian country and eventually was decimated by the harsh reality of Russian winter and her fire power. The collateral damage was the combined assault of the allies from the south and the west. The rest is history.

In the 1970s Sergeant Samuel Doe led a military coup in Liberia. It is said that on his way to power he killed the then President by disembowelling him while asleep. As it usually happens to despots he was impervious to reason and finally nemesis caught up when he was arrested after a coup d’état by his former accomplice. One can watch on “you tube” the execution of Samuel Doe. He was mutilated and killed. Alignment of the stars at his birth?

In contrast Iddi Amin one of the most infamous and notorious of African despots , who was quoted saying that human flesh was like Sushi and delicious. He was in fact a modern day cannibal. But when it mattered most he chose the wise way of vanishing to the sanctuary of the Islamic Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, where he lived a comfortable life well into his eighties.

And well in recent memory the despot of Babylon, Saddam Hussein was impervious to reason and sanity, that he chose the path that ensured his destruction. A haven and sanctuary for him with his booty was not a distant possibility, if he had agreed to relinquish his despotic hold on the country. But that was not to be. He was blind to reality of the American fire power and that decimated him and his cronies whole sale.

The harsh sandy desert soil may not have set in his grave, and it looked that Muhammad Ghadaffi was obstinately insistent that he must end violently, and seemed he craved for it. And he did meet the horrendous fate. There was ample opportunity for him and his clan to relinquish power and vanish into oblivion in some tax havens. But again, was it some strange combination of lack of reason, he went the oft trodden path of deluding in his invincibility?

It is said that the ides of his stars could not be resisted, that the demon king Ravana kidnapped the princes Sita. He was reticent to his brother’s pleadings to send back the kidnapped damsel and befriend the warrior prince Rama. The “Ides of March” had to be bewared of. But not, he did!

Is it a desideratum that Man must blame the stars for the ills that befall him? Beware of the Ides of March!

To Sir, With Love

My first teacher was a woman who lived near my house. She was a tutor in a Government primary school. I remember her coming home daily for an hour to teach me and my sister. I must have been about five. Memory is a shade sketchy, though. She taught us the first lessons in language- Malayalam and simple Arithmetic. We then had a writing tablet- the slate, we wrote with the chalk & slate- pencil and used the ubiquitous (those days) “Mashi thandu”shrub to wipe and erase the slate clean.

The next person who taught me was again a woman. Saroja (Saroja teacher).She was in her twenties and lived near our house. She was a Brahmin and we (me, and my sister) were treated to fabulous Tamil dishes- sweets, savouries, bajis, paniyarams etc when we went to her house to attend  classes. She taught at the same school  we studied- Holy Angels Convent School. She taught me through my first standard to the fourth. The wonderful thing about going to her house for tuition was the collection of comics her brother had. I was initiated into the fantastic collection of comics of the Phantom , Tarzan, Flash Gordon, Casper the friendly Ghost, Riche Rich and Mandrake the Magician. There was a huge  collection of comics  in that house. Her delinquent brother who apart from reading comics, having sumptuous food and blasting hell a lot of crackers for Deepavali did nothing much. He was a drop out! She used to be annoyed when I used to devour the comics between classes . She exclaimed that language was not grammatically perfect in comics, and may actually damage the development of a child’s language skills. Her big sister was always around to mollify her so I was let read those fascinating comics.

I think I can recall that it was from the third standard and parallel to the classes at Ms Saroja’s, I and my sister were also sent to the middle aged Ms E. Sawyer who lived opposite our house across the street. She was Anglican by descend (not the Anglo Indian) and a spinster. She coached us English. Ms Sawyer had a parrot called Polly that spoke English words fairer than we did. Many years after, I visited Ms Sawyer who had moved away and lived in a different part of the town. But now I notice that someone else live in the place she moved into. I ‘m sure she must be about one hundred and more if she is alive today She was the quintessential English woman, mysteriously marooned back in the sub continent.

Mr Sankaranaryana Iyer was the headmaster of a local government High School. He was in his eighties when he began to come home alternate days to teach me and my sister. He was gifted in English, Mathematics and array of subjects. The couple of hours he spent with us were enlivening. He let us feel that we were on a discovery and never coerced to study. He had a special knack in imparting knowledge and making us even question him. I still remember him going about the Second World War, the war time Prime minister Mr Churchill, De'Gaul and so on in the midst of his class in the nonsense subject called “Algebra”. That made me forget the anguish of studying Algebra. In the course of those classes he spoke about many matters , perhaps to keep our interest alive in the subjects he taught. No room for ennui ! He was of the opinion that learning must be a fascination and not a bitter pill forced down the gullet. He taught me from the fifth standard to the eight. Years after, when I was out of college and employed, I went to see him a few times at his house in Sreevaraham, Thiruvanathapuram.. He was then in his late nineties, but alert, and recogonised me. The last time I met him was at his son’s house, he was quite frail and was quite unsure of who I was. He died a few days after.

The memorable moment of my life- a moment when we met after almost ten years is etched with ample goose bumps. Before that, I last saw him when I went to his small apartment in my old High School to seek his presence at my wedding. He was the chief warden and retired from active duty as a teacher. The School authorities, as token gesture of gratitude and in there graciousness offered him the warden’s job after he retired, and provided him a room next to the boarders block in the school to live in. He was a bachelor, and his only relative, his mother had passed too. He was a revered figure; a man of average height, had a thin steady frame and bald. The long white beard, ocher dhoti and kurta gave him the appearance of mystic. Perhaps everybody who became mattered or not in Thiruvananthapuram society and who was educated at the Government Model High School Thiruvanathapuram have gone through his tutelage.

It was the morning of my cousin’s wedding which took place in Thpuram. The traditional reception that was accorded to the groom was on at the gates of the mandapam. And I was accompanying my cousin brother in the short procession into the Mandapam. I noticed this old man of thin frame and flowing white beard and simultaneously he, me. He shrieked as if it was a war cry and came running to me with outstretched hands. ”Eda Anil..ey” (Dear Anil). He hugged me in one mammoth bear hug -vice like grip and I in reflex responded by lifting him up. There was  tears brimming in his eyes. It was indeed one of the greatest pleasantness and fortune to be embraced by a teacher when meeting him after many years and time. He was the family friend of the bride and was their special guest. The whole crowd of men, women and children who were witness to the event, were dumbstruck and did not know that it was the unrestrained  affection showered by a teacher on r a former student and a lousy one at that. He was Mr. Narayana Kurup, and was known by the moniker “Kurup Sir”.

He peacefully  passed away some years sgo . He died while having food at a local restaurant.

To “Sir with love!”