Have I Lost It?

This post was triggered by a remark made by Lakshmi about a former colleague whom she used to envy and admire for his intellect.  She believes that this guy was so good at programming that he must think in hex.  For ease of reference I will call him Mr HexBrain.

Years after they parted as colleagues Mr HexBrain has been writing copiously for an e-group that he and Lakshmi and all the other colleagues are part of.  In Lakshmi’s opinion most of his writings sound bitter, sad or harsh.  That made her exclaim: This guy has lost it. 

Coming from someone who does not say much and is surgically precise about the words that she uses I was struck by her observation.  And that set me wondering if that observation would not be true of me too. 

I have been writing a fair bit in these posts:  Sixty two posts published in the three years since I started this, thirty two of those in 2015 alone.  And the year has a few more weeks to go.  Many of these posts are griping or moping sessions.

So have I lost it too?

That is when I started looking for ways in which I was hoping I could claim I am different.  First of all, unlike Mr. HexBrain I am not angry with the world at large.  It is true that there have been instances of intense pain that have led me to write many of these posts for sure.  (I was tempted to say that I was inspired to write, but then I became acutely aware of the exaggerated connotation of that word and dropped it.) 

On a more careful reflection though I feel that the primary motivation for me to write these posts has not been so much the desire to pour my heart out.  It has been more my desire to write.  It is my unending romance with the world of words.  If I had been gifted with a more creative mind I would perhaps have been writing fiction of some kind.  Alternately if I had been endowed with a more analytical mind I would have been writing some analytical stuff.  Or, if I had been of a more curious bent of mind I would have perhaps ended up as a journalist.  But write I would because of my obsession with the romance of words.

I am a sucker for great prose.  Elsewhere I remember writing that in moments of intense depression or anger I sit down with beautiful, elegant prose of any of the masters and before long I lose myself in that world. 

Words are the most important creation of God, only after the life-breath of all living beings.  Words represent the entire mind-brain complex of the human mind.

The mind-brain complex is perhaps the most complex single creative unit of the Lord, far more than all the intricate other things that He has created in nature, including the vast expanses of the oceans, the formidable wildernesses of the mountains or the far-flung other universes of which we know little yet. 

It has to be so until and unless that mind-brain complex stumbles upon something even more sophisticated in another world that we know not of yet. 

Properly decoded words reveal secrets from the inner-most recesses that the speaker may never have intended to reveal.  Words are at the core of our human civilization that we claim arrogantly sets us apart from lesser creations of the Lord.   Words and they have been strung together have helped historians construct the story of human life as it was thousands of years ago.  

Words have spurred humans into degenerative struggles leading to untold misery, suffering and loss of innocent lives, in the form of armed conflict on a global scale.  Words have also been used to express some of the most beautiful thoughts across people of different ethnicity and languages.  Words from the lips of souls that are filled with love and compassion bring succour to troubled and grieving minds.

In short words represent everything that is noble or evil about human civilization at the same time.  It is impossible to say the same about any other facet of the human civilization.

It is that obsession with words that makes me want to write.

That said, I realize that there has certainly been sadness, disappointment, anger and resignation in my posts, all in some measure or combination, even though they were not the reasons for my writing. 

How do I know that for sure?  Well I have been writing these posts for longer than I have been struck by these recent dark feelings. 

Notwithstanding all that, it is time I perhaps exorcised these feelings and moved on.  It is time I found new topics and themes to write on. 

That is more easily said than done, given that pain and suffering have been one of the major factors that have inspired some of the greatest works in the world of words.  Yet I should make a start, just so I can be sure that I have not lost it, if not for any other reason.

Nanni….Namaskaaram

Anticipating a wandering life

I must have listened to this song Aarodum Mindaathe a countless number of times as I struggled to complete grading the mid term papers.  The song depicts the life that I wish to lead in my forthcoming sabbatical.  Here is a link if you wish to listen to it and / or interested in the visuals. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EM5_V-pj8ik

The song itself is from a movie, Chintaavishtayaaya Shyamala (Shyamala, Afflicted by Concern), in which the central protagonist is a character that resembles me a lot.  Here is a link to a review of the movie just in case you are curious.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinthavishtayaya_Shyamala.

The protagonist is a school teacher who is trying to discover a role for himself in life beyond that of a simple school teacher.  In the process he goes through aa variety of experiences, including trying his hand at many businesses, unsuccessfully, because he mistakes his understanding of economics for his ability as a businessman. And that exaggerated and unrealistic assessment of his true calling in life is one of the key points of similarity to me. 

The other point of similarity is his dilettantish approach to the many activities that he tries his hand at, his unwillingness to lay enough on the line for any of them coupled with his escapist attitude.  But the closes point of similarity to me is the struggle that his various flirtations with one fancy after another inflict on his doting wife and their two children, which reminds me of my non-existent contribution to the running of my own family, which in turn is intact largely due to Lakshmi’s toil.  Mine is a criminal neglect for which I cannot flagellate myself enough.

In the song in question, Vijayan the protagonist, wanders across the temples of the state of Kerala, having deserted his family over a disagreement on his latest fancy, namely, pursuit of spiritualism.

I hope to spend a reasonable part of my sabbatical hopping from one major temple to the other, mostly in Northern Kerala, a part of the state that I have not seen much of, a part that has been more affected by the vicissitudes of history starting from the times when the Dravidians tried to settle down there, after the Aryans unseated them from the Northern (Indo-Gangetic) plains, only to find that their animistic religions and more egalitarian societies would be assaulted by the Aryans who pursued them further down not long after.

I look forward to moving around with the bare minimum of clothes and the books that I need and hope to spend time on during the sabbatical. I hope to lead a life of Spartan solitude, both being essential to reflect on the troubled life that I have led in all these long years, a life of conflict and confusion, of a somewhat mindless pursuit of goals that I was not sure I really wanted. 

I hope the solitude and the Spartan life will allow me to contemplate on the Lord and beseech His forgiveness for the countless sinful and indiscreet acts of mine that I know have inflicted pain on the various people in my life, people dear and not so dear.  I hope to ask that the gentle warmth of His loving gaze thaw my frozen innards that have often left me incapable of even the most basic level of empathy. 

Through these many wanderings I hope to take at least one baby step towards emerging as a better human being.

As I contemplate this life my overactive observer ego asks me if this is all about my infatuation with the people of my home state that reared its head in the past year or so.  And I say to myself that such may not be the case.  I think that phase of infatuation is behind me, convinced as I am now that it has been largely unrequited.

That said I do have an unfinished business around the town of Thrissur, where I hope to spend a few days learning more about a phenomenon that has affected my life in a significant way recently.  I am sure I will wander around there like a lost soul harking back to enquire about or even guard its possessions that it had to leave behind before it could sate itself with the joy from those personal effects.

How much of this wish list will I manage to run through during those twelve months?  I do not know, although I do have a strong desire to complete all of it.

If I do I am sure that I will write about my travels.  On the other hand I might just find this whole business of blogging irrelevant when I am done with all those travels.  Come to think of it, that is the ideal state, isn't it:  You have nothing more to say that words can convey eloquently or even meaningfully enough.  Who knows?  In any case, watch this space, as they say.

For now, like my sons losing themselves in their various worlds of fancy, I am in this state of reverie, just thinking about and looking forward to the peripatetic life that I hope to lead during those twelve months.

Nanni….Namaskaaram

A Week that Quite Wasn’t

That is how the week that went by turned out to be.  Many things were not what or how I would have liked them to be.  

To start with, the rains washed away much of the fun and frolic that we siblings had plotted with our families and children for Deepavali.  We threw disappointed looks at the bag of  crackers that we had selected carefully and with great anticipation and then looked balefully at the wet and cloudy skies outside my brother's balcony.  We swore and protested at the rains that we considered so untimely.  We cursed our luck.

And then we thought of the worse misery that the rains may have wrought on the less fortunate people in our society and our own disappointment looked trivial if not ridiculous.  After all, we were all safe in the confines of our homes, stuffing ourselves with food that was well beyond safety levels.  That was a lot to thank God for.

And then arrived the text message that triggered my earlier post wherein I brought the curtain down on one other recent chapter of my life.  Calling curtains on something that I was looking forward to with a sense of anticipation isn’t pleasurable even for someone as pragmatic and occasionally unfeeling fellow like me.  But then on objective reflection I felt that it was my doing after all – both the setting up and unwinding of the expectations.  None of the people involved expected it from me, much less demanded it.  They probably did not mind or care either way.

And then came the final straw – the episode that made me withdraw from teaching a class that seemed to be going reasonably well.  A student committed an infraction that to me appeared inexcusable.  As I thought about its fallouts I came to what appeared to be a cold and practical decision to request a colleague of mine to run the rest of the course in my place. 

The incident caused me tremendous agony.  First was the pain of coming to the decision to abstain from the class.  And then came the even more difficult part of informing the class and the various internal administrative units about the decision.  Not to mention the awkwardness of explaining my angst to all concerned, including the colleague I was requesting to take my place.  And the realization that I was perhaps being the affected party here for a mistake that someone else committed, in spite of all the effort  that I had put into the course this far.

To top it all, this crisis was precipitated a few hours before I was to turn fifty six.

Who do I have to blame for this? I am not sure.  Lakshmi, my wife, who has always seemed to think I could never do anything wrong, seemed to think I should have ignored the student’s mistake.  I am not sure I could have turned a blind eye to the episode.  But I do realise at the end that painful consequences are nothing but the other side of tough choices we make.

Looking back it appears that in short, most of the time, what we make of life, seems to depend on how we look at it.  What the week was or was not is just a question of the filter that you choose to wear over your eyes.  That is a hackneyed explanation I guess.  But one that is good enough as long as it helps one come to terms with the minor tribulations of life.

Nanni….Namaskaram…

When Haste Makes Waste

For four nights now I have been grading, adding four more sleep deprived nights to the preceding string of six, as I averaged four hours of sleep for the past nine days or so.  The old bones and aging nerves don’t take as well as they used to sleep deprivation.  I have had to resort to sneaky sips of Red Bull, away from the ever-watchful eyes of my sons, to keep going the reluctant heap that my body seems to be.

For all the fun and joy that teaching is, grading is the comeuppance.  It is intense, lonely and painful, all at the same time.  Let me explain. 

It is intense because you have got to process so many different forms of answer to the same question.  Many of them are the result of truly bright minds that improvise in the exam hall as they deal with questions that they have not come across before.

It is lonely because one shuts oneself up while grading to be able to give the undivided attention it deserves.  Remember, most of these answers are unique and often bright?  They deserve to be examined carefully.  I help myself to get to that level of focus by putting on a headset and listening to some music that shuts the world off and locks me up in a cocoon of melodies.

It is painful because it is also a feedback to you as an instructor.  It is the moment of truth.  The answers tell you the extent you have communicated to your class.  And the brilliance of the students aside these are not always comforting or reassuring.

As I struggled with these nights of grading, with no idea of how much longer it will go on, I heard this voice from the not so distant past, after a long time in the form of a text message.  It set me off on a painful journey of reminiscence.

I was reminded of something that I wrote in a letter some time back.  And I realized soon later that I had been hasty in pouring out my heart the way I did.  I reproduce below a version of that letter, sanitized to hide the context of space, time and objects that might affect the privacy of those involved.

That, in turn, made me think of the title of this post: Haste Makes Waste.

Within a short while, all but two from this small band of people that the letter was addressed to were gone.  What is more we seem to have lost interest in each other faster than I had apprehended. 

As I locked myself in this virtual world of Youtube with my powerful headphones confining me inside an infinite loop of Malayalam movie melodies, I could not help thinking of those few days and the many events associated with those days.  

Associations of the kind that motivated me to write that letter, associations that I hoped for, clearly seem to be the kind of stuff that movies are made of.  Or if they do exist in real life I do not seem to have in me what it takes to make it happen or work.  My unseemly haste in forming those inadequately thought-through associations led to mountains of emotional waste.

In my struggle to get my mind off those answer scripts and the many thoughts that kept popping up like weeds like in my garden of playlists  I thought of writing this post.

The text of the letter that I wrote to my new-found and fleet-footed friends follows.

Nanni....Namaskaaram...

*********************************TEXT OF LETTER***********************************

As I get ready to leave on my vacation, my first in many years, my mind is filled with thoughts and memories of my many meetings with each one of you and your families in the past few days.

This has been an unusual experience for me.  For decades now, since I started working, I have been comfortable in the small reclusive emotional shell I built around myself.  It allowed me to pursue my career, unaffected by human considerations, to take decisions that were entirely consistent with the demands of my business, without being too burdened by the human dimensions or implications of what I did.  If you run into any of my colleagues from industry there is a high chance that they would describe me as cold, aloof and rather arrogant.  All these years I reserved my emotions for those that life cast into a family relationship with me. Even there often I try to go about life more with a sense of duty.

I built that shell early on in my life when I realized that I do not take well to the comings and goings of life.  I was raised in a large joint family, always full of people visiting and returning.  As a child I used to be in misery when relations visited on holidays and went back.  Over time I taught myself not to look forward to reunions because they always meant that there would be separation at the end.  The impermanence of life and relationships has always tormented me, in spite of my growing philosophical inclination towards life.  My shell was my answer to life cocking a snook at my sentimentality with its inexorability.

I carried that shell with me to my academic life, maintaining a fairly clinical relationship with my students too, although I have always tried to be pleasant and treated everyone with dignity.  I have helped a few students who approached me for something or the other.  But then just as soon as I completed the "engagement" I moved on emotionally, after wishing them good luck, not allowing any thoughts or feelings to linger on.

Each one of you on this email changed that approach for me in your own distinct ways.  In a pleasant way, you broke into my shell with your warmth and friendliness.  I am touched by your effort to reach out to me as an individual. 

In a strange irony the thoughts and recollections of these past few days make me realize how unprepared I still am to break out of my reclusive shell.  I have not been able to take well to the fact that you folks will all soon be gone.  Which makes me realize that I cannot afford these luxuries of friendship and emotional bonding, beyond my professional relationships.  Like a sluice gate that was opened temporarily to let a few people in I think I need to shut the door quickly, making me watchful not to allow similar connections to repeat.

But now that you are all on board and squarely inside the gates I look forward to keeping in touch. :-)