A Sadder But Wiser Donkey: A Post Script

It is a part of the moral from an Aesop fable that I remember from fourth class.   The story is about a dhobi’s donkey who envied the happy plight of his master’s dog.  In an effort to improve his own standing with the dhobi, he tried to imitate the dog and eventually met with unhappy consequences.  The story that I read concluded exactly in this manner:  “It was a sadder but wiser donkey that slept in his stable that night.”

In my long life whenever I have had to taste the bitter fruits of my follies I have always drawn comfort from the plight of that poor donkey.  I write this post as I am reminded of yet another of those instances from my life.  This time around, though, I may well have crowned myself with the olive wreath for stupidity.

I write this as a post script to a tale of foolishness and naivette.   Through this edition I draw the curtain on a year of misadventure, hoping never to repeat it.  I hope to leave the year and its pesky memories behind. 

I hope to never again do anything that will put at risk the dignity and self-esteem that the Lord has bestowed on me in the form of an honourable academic position and the head of a family that dotes on me.  However genuine or even noble my motives or intentions this is one line that I hope never again to cross, to borrow a metaphor from the famous Jack Welch inspired integrity statement of GE.

For many years to come, as I reflect on these past months involuntarily - I do pray that I will have the good sense to not reflect on them voluntarily – these embarrassing moments will keep coming back to my mind.  I can only hope that the intensity of the feelings they stir up will slowly ebb away to a point where with the passage of time they will not matter to me anymore.

Exeunt Omnes from the stage that was this past year, as they say in old drama scripts.

I dedicate this piece to Surya and Rafsal, the two characters who make me still feel that after all what I attempted was not that despicable, even if it was not sagacious.

Nanni…Namaskaaram…

Identifying the real me

Which is the real me?  I have noted before that for reasons I do not understand well I tend to ask questions of this kind more often when I am holidaying in Kerala.

There is this side to me that I wrote about the day I landed, on March 31.  I was looking forward to the make-believe slow life in Kerala of temple-hopping, loading up on banana and jack fruit fries and soaking in the social life of the state.  This is the life that I might seem to enjoy, left totally to myself.

And then there is the other life in which I spend most of the year, a purpose-driven life engaging in productive exchange all the time.  That is the life that I seem to be expected to lead.  Even though it is not my preferred life I seem to be at peace with it.

This dichotomy seems to be a manifestation of my struggle between being happy and being right.  Which brings me to the question: Which is the real me? The happy me? Or the me that is at peace with myself?  I wrote about this struggle a few days back in this post at the link below.  

http://sgchalayil.blogspot.in/2015/04/end-of-summer-break-2015.html

I suspect that this might be a question that must bother many of us. 

The Baba of Puttaparthi, whom I worship, used to exhort:  It is more important that you like what you do than to do what you like.  I think that idea has been echoed by many others, in perhaps slightly different or may be in those same words.

I have found that as a useful guidance for being at ease with the life I lead.  I would have perhaps been happy just leading a life of savouring the simple pleasures that I enjoy during the summer break.  It would make me happy in the sense that I would want and look forward to more of that same every day. 

I would look forward to that make believe life voluntarily, willingly.  I would not need to think of or be reminded of the material payoffs from my getting up every morning, visiting a temple, watching my fav television programmes, reading my fav book or newspaper, walking around parts of the quaint town that Trivandrum still remains, shooting the breeze with my few friends and so on.

But then that would not be a viable life to start with.  And there are the moralistic questions to boot:  Am I leading a socially useful life deploying the talent, however limited, that I have been bestowed with, for the benefit of my family that depends on me and for the benefit of society at large?  And in an even more Victorian sense, would I not be guilty of laying waste some God given talent?

That is where Baba’s prescription comes in handy:  If you like what you do, you can be productive as well as happy at the same time.

But then a small hitch still remains.  Even if I were to assume that I have mastered the art of liking what I do, would I be truly happy if I am missing what I would love to be doing voluntarily?

It appears that many of us must be suffering from this dichotomy in our nature.  It is in some tangential sense similar to the problem of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde being part of the same person.

I started thinking more about this as I began to read up on bipolar disorders after I got to know recently that a dear friend of mine is being treated for that disease.  An extraordinarily talented student of literature and physics who chose to become a bank officer, who is perhaps more widely read and erudite than many academics I know, certainly more than me, and a man so full of mirth that you would find it hard to believe that he is a victim of severe clinical depression.  And that he would occasionally “believe” to be living in a “real” world, all of his own imagination.

The more I thought about my friend and his affliction I began to wonder would there not be a lot many others among us that do suffer from this difficulty, even if to a lesser extent?  How many of us can answer this question with integrity and without a shadow of doubt:  Which is the real me?  Not me at least!

Nanni….Namasakaaram…

End of Summer Break 2015...A Sequel

The second leg of Summer Break 2015 has been more defining than I had imagined, more despairing than I would have liked.

I have been happy, if not proud to describe myself as a Mallu.  I expressed my sentiments unapologetically in this post of mine. http://sgchalayil.blogspot.in/2011/03/why-i-am-mallu-and-shall-always-remain.html.

My principal source of pride has been the simple life style of the Mallu.  I have looked upon Mallus as a people who are not known for conspicuous consumption.

You might ask how does one then explain Lu Lu Mall and the hundreds of flourishing jewelries in the state.  My honest response is that I had thought that they were frequented by a certain gentry that did not represent the average Mallu whom I proudly describe by my coinage: ethnically leftist.

The display of jewelry and the waste that I saw in weddings that I attended during the second part of the break dispelled all those notions that I held about the Mallu’s minimalism.

I am equally disillusioned by the conduct that I saw and read about from my comrades in the cadre.   I am now led to believe that they are a shame to the ideals that Karl Marx expounded.  Poor Marx would turn in his grave if he were to hear about the comrades in West Bengal and Kerala today.

It is true that there are a few comrades that are still honest to the cause.  But I do not believe that they matter any more to / within the party.

I will no longer declare my Kerala identity that I proudly used to in my classes and my few other public appearances.  I will not make any effort to hide it either.  Hiding it is not easy anyways, with my accent giving away my nativity in less than ten minutes flat.

I have also had to rethink my somewhat parochial love for people from my state which I have often worn on my sleeve.  (I never let it come in the way of decisions in my professional life in any event.) I am beginning to suspect it is often misconstrued by the very targets of my warmth and friendliness. 

This is not an entirely new experience.  In an earlier post I had lamented about something similar.  Yet I persisted with my feelings for people from my home state, because of my love for the language and the leftist simplicity of the people from the state.

All of which make me wonder if I will want to come back to Kerala for another summer break or to lay my bones as I noted in my earlier post. http://sgchalayil.blogspot.in/2012/07/letting-go.html

I am not sure yet.   I do not look forward to bringing my sons to immerse them in the culture of Kerala that both my wife and I used to think of so highly.  (I am fortunate that my wife, also a Mallu like me, clings to the traditional values that seem to be fast disappearing from the Mallu society of today.)

I still value the relationship with some wonderful Mallus I know.  May be this despair too shall pass, given some time.

But as of this night, as I ride back home in the crowded and cramped unreserved coach of one of the more neglected trains, late into the evening, at well past nine, back to TVM from a social commitment that was very special to me, perspiring like one of Earl Emsworth’s pigs, I can think of two reasons that I would want to come back to my home state.

One, its nature is still pristine in spite of all that its people seem to inflict on it with seeming vengeance.  It still stands as testimony to the Creator’s sense of aesthetics.  Second, its temples still preserve the minimalism that I cherish so much, notwithstanding the spreading rapacity of some of the humans who serve there who claim to be able to intercede between the Lord and man.

And then of course, if I do decide to complete my novel I will need to spend my probation period as a writer in Kerala where the novel is partly set.

With regret I thus write the final post for the summer of 2015.

For somewhat connected reasons I continue to shrink the circulation from its peak of thirteen to nine to six with effect from this edition of my blog.

Nanni….Namaskaaram.