End Paper

I title this post End Paper because of what it is supposed to denote.  By the time one writes the inner jacket of a book, its contents are in place more or less. In the same spirit, I hope not to write any more about this topic.  This is where I retreat into my truly private world of feelings, of suffering.  

If I did write, I hope not to publish it.  In the rare event that I published it I would definitely hope that I would not broadcast it, as indeed I did not publish the last two posts.

So here are my concluding thoughts on this matter.

By all accounts I have been indulging in something irrational.  No one among the people to whom I have spoken about my affection for this individual that I look upon as a child has felt that my affinity is understandable, let alone reasonable.  Reactions have ranged from dismissiveness to puzzlement to dissuasion to admonition. 

Even those who expressed sympathy at my sadness seem to believe that it is all self-inflicted.  I have been advised that I should think about the irrationality of my affection, that I should acknowledge the impossibility of the proposition.  I have been asked to realise the impracticality of the relationship.

I cannot agree more with all of that.  The rub though is in the presumption that feelings of affection can be dismissed out of hand through a rational set of arguments.  Equally, there seems to be a suggestion that all such relationships should be based on a principle of mutuality.

The difficulty with these arguments is as follows. By definition, feelings of affection and love are necessarily emotional and may not always be explained or justified in rational terms.  Even where we think we like an individual for some identifiable qualities in him or her, such likes and dislikes are based on some predispositions that may not be rooted in rationality. These are “affairs of the heart” over which the head is often helpless. 

That said, I agree that each of us has varying degrees of ability to let the head prevail over the heart.  For example, I once asked a young physician relative of mine who has chosen to settle far away from his aged parents whom he loves a lot.  He responded that he let his intellect impress upon his heart that he had a higher calling to attend to which required that he make that sacrifice.

What if an individual is incapable of such refined reasoning?  My sense is that there is nothing wrong in allowing the heart to indulge in these emotional excursions.  Such affinities have their own beauty.  Their own joyful purpose. What would the idea of a family and friendship be if it were not for such emotions?  Some of the greatest pieces of art and literature have been born out of utterly irrational pain that found expression through those creations.

It is however important to ensure that one’s affinity and joy are not the cause of misery, or worse, destruction, to oneself or to the party of the other part to the relationship.

That is where I am I think in my present situation.  I am simply unable to rationally overcome my affection to this individual even though I might agree that it makes no rational sense.  That said, I have no right to be a source of unhappiness to anyone, be it to those in my immediate family or to the party to the other part, namely the person I look upon as my “child.”

As long as I respect these boundaries I think I would not be doing anything wrong in showering my affection.

What is obvious to me though is that from now on I shall have to confine these thoughts to the recesses of my own heart.  It is a feeling that I know cannot overcome just as much as I cannot make anyone around me accept the way it is – except perhaps my wife Lakshmi who seems to be now convinced that this suffering of mine is real, however irrational it might be.

I have spoken about it enough.  I must now learn to suffer - silently.

Under a Dark Winter Sky...

Motionless, I lay

On the green lawn of the football stadium

The tentative cold of a truant Bangalore winter

Seeped through my aging, weary bones.

Tears streamed

Endlessly from my eyes

Bloodshot with suffering

That don’t ever seem to end.

An occasional star and a moth eaten moon

Seemed to look at me pitifully

Almost helplessly.

I recalled standing at the corner of the open ground

Your name was called.

You ran up the steps.

Your wan, signature smile said it all:

Tense.  Anxious about the future?

A million thoughts in your mind?

A million questions?

Degree handed over.  Hands shaken.

I stood transfixed

Like a proud father.

The culmination of many years of aspiration.

The end of months of your tireless efforts.

I gazed impassively.

Like a broken father who knew 
Those would be the last few moments

I would see you.

Why did you come 
So late into my life

My dear child?

When there is barely room in your home

For those already cast in your own life

And those that would follow

As your family grows?

Was it the Hand of Karma?

As the soothsayer

Who most unhelpfully said

That we had been Father and Daughter

In a previous birth?

How terrible a parent must I have been

To suffer thus in this birth?

The pain of being so fond of you

To think of you nearly all the time

Much as I love

My playful and guileless boys

Yet know that I never will see you again?

To pray for you everyday

Just as I do for my wife and sons

Yet not know how you are?

The unkind Hand of Destiny

Cannot probably serve up

A greater punishment.

How cruel a parent

Must I have been?

A truly horrible father.

A despicable soul

To suffer this everlasting pain

That I know will

Be there with me

Till my very last breath.

How terrible must I have been

To suffer
An agony that is as real

As the wonderful child you are!

Yet have the world think

That this suffering

Is nothing but a malady of my mind?

A mere fantasy.

If there be another birth

For you and me, My Lord

If only I may be forgiven 
Just once 

For my sins of the past 

Please give me back this child of mine.

That my sins may be expiated 
By the love of a caring parent

That I may savour the bliss
Of being this child's father

But once more.

Ruskin Bond Live

Delhi’s wintry chill this year was more brutal than it normally is.  Or so the locals and the media said.  I could not disagree as I huddled and shivered sitting amidst the patricians and the literary cognoscenti of Delhi on the open air lawns of the rarefied precincts of India Habitat Centre. 

I guess none of us quite sensed the numbness that was slowly enveloping our nerves as we were totally lost in the words of the man himself:  Ruskin Bond.  Which child who has been to an English medium school in India would not have read his ghost stories?  Even a semi-literate fellow like me has gone beyond those ghost stories and read other short stories or the Blue Umbrella, Flight of Pigeons, the last of which the pompous Sunil Sethi who was interviewing him described as a “lascivious” story.  Clearly the man did not seem to have read Harold Robbins or Irwing Wallace’s Fan Club.  If he had, he would know the true meaning of the word!

At eighty Ruskin Bond’s brain-mind complex are as sharp as they must always have been. His humour was just as rasping in an agreeable and engaging way.  Even his flippance was just as endearing.  When Sunil Sethi asked him why he was so successful in being elusive, he responded spontaneously:  I am a fiction writer you know.  And so I am entitled to tell an occasional lie.   

Or, when he explained that he was not one of the many lovers that his editor had had because she was many years older than him.  Quite like him, I thought, leaving one wondering if he really had been in love with her or not!  After all we know that one could be in love without being a lover, right?

Totally weather beaten and half frozen at the end of the hour that I spent on that lawn I asked myself how much of all that engaging stuff that I heard there did I remember.  Not an awful lot I am afraid, thanks to the degenerating brain.  But here are some of the thoughts that I still remember. 

RB describes himself as lazy.  But then here what he confessed.  He feels guilty if he does not write at least a few hundred words every day.  Now contrast that with my idea of laziness which is doing nothing at all for days together and not feel anything about it as I often do!

He urges that all writers must read a lot.  Their preferred genre of writing does not matter.  Reading helps writers learn about how other writers develop their ideas.  But every writer must eventually develop a “voice of his own”, or what he also describes as a “tone of writing”. 

Equally aspiring writers must respect the language in which they wish to write.  A corollary to that is that aspiring writers also ought to pay attention to their grammar lessons in school.

Writers must continue to write, even if publishers reject their writings.  He exhorted in an interesting manner.  He said:  Writers must never despair when their manuscript is not accepted for publication.   

And if they must despair they should continue to write, even if they are in despair.

Eventually a writer should go by how he feels about his own writing.  RB put it across beautifully.  You know have written something nice when the words ring true.

And finally, here was the most touching of all his words of counsel:  Look at everything in life as though you are going to be looking at it for the last time.  That in itself enhances the beauty of the object and the joy you get from looking at it. 

It reminded me of one of the few useful ideas I came across in Robin Sharma’s book The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari.  He notes that the sadhus in the Himalayas are so efficient and effective because they live each day as if it would be the last day of their lives.  And so they never put anything off.  OK fine, I should not be talking of Robin Sharma and Ruskin Bond in the same breath.  But then isn’t eclecticism all about picking up the most interesting bits from everything?

As I hobbled back to my hotel room, trying to thaw my stiff limbs I kept pondering over a question that I often ask myself: Do writers really matter to a society?  After we all know why we need a doctor or different kinds of engineers, educators, hair stylists and so on.  I have asked myself if the world would have been any more a difficult place if we did not have writers.

I will perhaps find a convincing answer to that question.  But I did recall that the few hours that I had read some of RB’s books and short stories, I had been transported to another world.  I must have felt like a junkie who had just had his fix.

Is it good to be doped?  Perhaps not.  But then does it really matter if it did give you those few moments of vacation from the humdrum or the occasionally harrowing realities of life?  Think about it. 

Nanni….Namaskaaram…