Sentimental Chameleons—Part III

Another day blossomed in the Plant of the Universe. The sun was young; a cool guy—yet to become a tyrant. Sharma had left home for the station much earlier. On the way, he bought a sweet packet from a Sweet Meat stall. ‘Why, I couldn’t speak to the motorman so far? I must speak to him today by all means and hand him this packet as a token of my gratitude for what he has been doing to me and my family’, Sharma thought, grinning.

Stepping into the platform, Sharma went straight to the place where the motor cars of the unit trains would halt. He sat in one of the rugged cement benches and focused his eyes on the tracks.

A few seconds later, a unit train chugged into the station with its motor car halted at its usual place with a thud. Parking himself comfortably near the car, he looked through the window, holding the sweet packet tightly. Gosh! His man was not there. Instead, he saw a sturdy young man sitting behind the wheels. Sharma’s face went pale. Disappointed, he returned back to the bench, perked up his ears, waiting for the hooting of another train.

Two hours went by, but it seemed a decade. Sharma flitted about the station for some time, had seen many trains screeching to halt at the station and then chugging out of the station with screams. But, he couldn’t see his man … his benefactor’s face. He became restless; the agony of waiting got into his nerves. ‘May be, the motorman is on leave today’, he moaned not taking his eyes from the tracks. His eyes became heavy with fatigue; he felt something tugging at his heart. Finally, after some more waiting, he abandoned his ‘Operation Dharshan’ with great reluctance. His heart whined; he became nervous.

Dispirited, he began rambling on along the platform again. When he came near the SM’s cabin, he saw a big crowd milling around therein. An old woman was wailing inconsolably, her hair disheveled, eyes swelled. She was sitting on the floor, beating her chest with hands and crying endlessly. Lying in state near her on a bench was the body of an old man.

Sharma bent down and looked at the body. He shuddered, his heart collapsed. He couldn’t believe his eyes. To make sure what he saw was not an optical illusion, he looked again at the body. No doubt, it was the motorman. He could very well recognize the goatee trimmed haphazardly. The face, full of creases, wrinkles and scars, was familiar to him. Sharma turned his head away from the body in disgust.

‘I saw him yesterday. He looked fine. How come he died so suddenly today, sir?’ He asked the SM [he is Sharma’s long term acquaintance] when he came out of his cabin calling out the wailing old woman, the motorman’s wife.

‘He’s Daniel sir, one of my best friends,’ the SM spoke in a whisper, his voice broken. ‘Dany had his off today. He came to see me. We were talking about his daughter’s marriage. Suddenly, he complained of chest pain, started throwing up. We scurried a doctor from a nearby hospital. But before the arrival of the doctor, he collapsed and breathed his last. Life was not kind to him. His financial hiccups got better of him.’

Sharma stood transfixed for some time. The unexpected death of his favorite man began to oppress him badly. But, he stood strongly on his ground. It only took a few minutes for him to recover himself from the shock … to make up his mind. Having got rid of the sagging spirits, he walked out of the station hurriedly after throwing the sweet packet on the tracks. ‘I got to live, no matter how many skies are falling around me,’ he thought. When he got home, his mother knitted her brows in wonder and asked him: ‘Why, Sharma? Why did you come home so early? Are you alright?’

‘Aiyo, Amma, I saw a dead body in the station. An old man. He looked so decrepit and ugly’. Sharma spoke smugly, his face contorted. ‘I couldn’t bear the sight of his face. It’s disgusting. I felt like throwing up. The moment I saw the body, I felt as if some impurities had crept into my body. I want to get myself cleansed. I must take a bath now. That’s why I rushed home without going to the office.’ Sharma went to his room, took of his clothes and draped himself in a towel.

‘Did you see the motorman today? His mother asked. Her face was writ large with anxiety; thoughts were hovering over ‘Boomi Puja’.

‘No, Amma. I didn’t see him today, nor do I want to see him hereafter. After all he is a human being, not god. I heard a Sadhu from Kashi coming to our Hanuman temple tomorrow. We’ll go and have a Dharshan of him.’ Sharma said after stepping into the bathroom and slamming its door.

[Concluded]

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Sentimental Chameleons—Part II

‘Magic! I don’t have any magic wand, Ram, Sharma said with a guffaw. ‘But honestly, it’s that face … the power of the motorman’s face that does all the magic … that brings me all the luck and laurels. I had been to the railway station; saw that translucent face before walking into the Bank. And that did the trick … that got me the loan.’

‘Cut out that crap, Sharma’, Ram snorted, his face changed color. ‘You’re an idiot … a sentimental idiot. I sometimes get puzzled thinking how  a post graduate in Science can talk and act like a crank. You read too much into accidental happenings and attribute the causes to what you call the power of a man you’re constantly meeting. All bullshit.’

 ‘Don’t blabber, Ram’, Sharma snapped at his friend. He became furious hearing Ram taunted his honest faith as idiosyncrasy.  Sensing Sharma’s mood, Ram backed out; he had no inclination to lock horns with his friend over his foible. Ram left the canteen, saying he had to go and arrange for the GM’s farewell meet.

‘Go to hell,’ Sharma shouted at the Ram’s retreating figure. He was still furious, sitting lonely at the canteen and brooding … cut chewing how he met the motorman; he could still remember with gratitude the day of his meeting with him. That day, a few weeks ago, did not dawn well for him and he felt like sitting on an inferno. His mother, keeping the pink of health until then, had a massive heart attack early in the morning. Perplexed, Sharma admitted her into a nearby hospital. Doctors attending on her told him that they could say anything about his mother’s condition only after 24 hours.

Sharma wilted; panicked at the possibility of losing his mother; and smelt disaster sitting at his doorsteps. He felt blank, came out of the hospital in a trance. The summer sun, outside the hospital, was, like a ball of fire, blasting the metro.

He rambled on along the streets adjacent to the hospital in a stupor before reaching, by reflex, to the Egmore railway station. Sitting in one of the shabby wooden benches placed on the platform, he closed his eyes and not his mind which was hovering over his mother battling for life in a hospital. He came out of his reverie when he heard the hooting of a unit train and the fuss and clamor it had created on the platform.

He saw an old man waving hands at him from the motor car. His smile was ingratiating. Sharma’s cell phone rang when he too was smiling at the motorman. His sister spoke on the phone rather excitedly, saying that their mother had since recovered completely and the doctors called her recovery a miracle. Sharma hung up abruptly and saluted the motorman. ‘Mother must have been recovered at the moment when he was having the Dharshan of the noble soul. Can a human face have such an amazing healing power?’ Sharma said to himself.

So, from that day onwards Sharma plunged into quite a new world … a world of blind faith. His trips to the railway station to look out for the motorman became frequent. He went to the station at the time of fixing the marriage for Rohini, his sister; at the time of getting college admission for his brother; at the time of writing promotion test and at the time of Rohini’s delivery of a male child. For all and sundry things, Sharma was going to the station to take a look at his godly-figure. In fact, this had become one of his daily chores … an inseparable part of life.

When Sharma got home it was late in the night. It was at Ram’s insistence that he attended the GM’s farewell meet. It was a dreary affair. All those who called the GM a moron in the past, now showered praise on him eulogizing his business acumen, managerial skills and his Good Samaritan attitude to the staff members. ‘All euphemistic wise cracks’. Sharma thought.

Sharma had a quick shower, came striding over to the dining table where his mother, after having laid the table, was waiting for him.

‘Amma, I have good news for you. Today, I got our home loan sanctioned by the Bank’, Sharma said setting the plate on the table.

‘All god’s grace’, his mother replied, holding aloft her folded hands, a gesture of thanks to her gods.

‘No, Amma. It’s all due to the divine face that I see everyday’, Sharma quipped, his eyes glowed with pride.

‘O.K. Let it be’, Sharma’s mother smiled. ‘Now listen to me Sharma. The day after tomorrow is an auspicious day. Having got the loan, why don’t we have ‘Bhoomi Puja’ on that day?’

‘Good idea, Amma. I’ll make arrangements for the Puja tomorrow. But before that, let me go to the station and have the Dharshan of our man.’ Sharma stood up, walked over to the sink and washed his hands.

[To be continued]

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Sentimental Chameleons— Part I

Sharma was known for some bizarre idiosyncrasies. A hopeless sentimental stupid and a repository of blind beliefs and superstitions, he was regarded an eccentric creature or odd man out in the circle of his friends and relatives. However, he stood his ground; cherished being sentimental no matter how his friends taunted him and poked fun at him for his idiotic behavior. When questioned about his sentimentality, he would blurt out: ‘Tell me, who isn’t sentimental? Life sans sentiments will be a dreary affair.’

Sharma was in a hurry. It was time for his rendezvous with the ‘godly figure’ at the railway station. He became tense, restless, looking frequently at his wrist watch. ‘Time is running out,’ he moaned and shut down the computer.

When he was about to leave the office, Ram, his friend and colleague, approached him and reminded him about their GM’s farewell meeting in the evening. Sharma blinked. He was completely out to lunch. He looked through Ram and said: ‘Sorry, Ram, I can’t attend the meeting. I’ve an urgent work at the railway station.’

‘I know what it’s. You’re an incorrigible sentimental idiot’, Ram quipped, went on his way.

Panic-stricken, Sharma ran helter- skelter on the railway platform unmindful of the sweat that had drenched him from head to feet. Clusters of people standing haphazardly on the way did not deter him from reaching to the dead-end of the platform where the motor car of the Tambaram-bound unit train would usually halt. He dried his sweat-laden face with his hands, got his eyes riveted on the rail tracks.

‘Could I get the Dharshan of the godly-face today? He muttered. ‘Have enough time to go to the Bank. If I get a glimpse of that face, I’m sure I’ll get my home loan sanctioned today itself’. He was upbeat, gazing joyfully at the rail tracks … happily waiting for the train.

He now spotted the Tambaram-bound train chugging into the station. Its ear splitting siren created a melee on the platform, making the passengers push up and pull down one another so that they could board the train easily as soon as it pulled at the station. Sharma hopped from the shabby wooden bench he was sitting in. The train did not stop at its marked place. Sharma had to run along the train to park himself near the motor car. He gasped for breath, but was all smiles when he saw his man Friday behind the wheels of the motor car.

The motorman was in his fifties as thin as a robe. With receding hair, sunken eyes and wrinkled face, he looked decrepit more than his age. Even the goatee he was sporting looked shabby as it was trimmed haphazardly. But, Sharma liked the face. For whenever he saw the face, he felt like being filled with an aura of light, both clear and lucid. Sharma would always call the motorman’s face ‘divine and angelic’. To him, it was luck-laden and god-sent. He believed that whenever he saw that face he would get all he wanted. The Dharshan of the face would untie all the knots of life’, he would think.

‘Hello!’ Sharma greeted the motorman. He was standing close to the window of the motor car. The old man at the wheels nodded his head briefly with a bland smile, but the smile flashed like moonlight on Sharma, sweeping him off his feet. He tried to speak to the old man. He wanted to tell him that his mother had miraculously recovered from her illness the moment he had the Dharshan of his cherubic face weeks back. But, Sharma couldn’t speak what he felt since the train left the station in a flash.

When Sharma got to his office, it was late in the afternoon. He was so excited that it did not occur to him to have his lunch. On his way back to the office from the railway station, he dropped into the Bank to enquire about his home loan. Seeing Sharma entering his cabin, the manager told him that his loan was sanctioned.

Sharma was all smiles. ‘I know I’ll get my loan sanctioned today’, he replied nonchalantly. ‘How?’ the manager asked, raising his brows. ‘It’s all due to the mystical power of a man … the divine grant of a face. I saw him at the station before coming over here.’ Sharma left the Bank in a hurry leaving the manager in a quandary who called Sharma a nut since he couldn’t figure out anything from what Sharma had said.

Ram was dumbfounded when Sharma told him that he got his home loan sanctioned. They were sitting in the office canteen. ‘You’re lucky Sharma’, Ram said, his tone a bit envious. ‘I know that Bank. They’ll take ages to process a loan application. Come on, Sharma; tell me what magic you did to get the loan sanctioned just like that.’

[To be continued]

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American Hospitality

Fire works lit the sky

I had my maiden trip to the US, the land of perfume, in June 2006. The purpose was to visit my brother in LA. But, just before boarding the flight, I was a bit nervous. For, besides visiting my bro, I planned to attend Prem Rawat Maharaj Ji’s [also known as Guru Maharaj and Balayogeshwar, is a native of India, who teaches a meditation practice he calls Knowledge] meetings to be held in and around LA; meet the congregation thereat and have interaction with them.

Raised in a closed and conservative environment and tied to a restrictive cultural stake, I had been an introvert for long … a pants wearing frog living in the well. So, I worried about my shyness … worried about how the Americans, as they belong to a high-strung, no-holds-barred, permissive society, would be disposed to a brawny Asian. I knew it was only my misconception. Nevertheless, it was nagging at my mind all through my journey.

 4^th of July, 2006. America was celebrating her Independence Day. I saw congregations of well-dressed white people standing or sitting in the meadows in a park. Children were screaming with joy and some of them peddling their tiny cycles around the park. A happy, festive mood hung in the air. All necks remained craned to the sky, eyes too riveted on it.

My bro’s family and I were sitting in a lonely meadow shawled with mists. Since we felt the place was not comfortable to watch the fireworks, we shifted ourselves to another place strewn with dried and dead leaves. When the show was about to start, we found we’d missed our car keys in the place where we were sitting minutes back. We rushed to the spot and started googling for them. We got disappointed thinking we would be missing the fireworks if we would search for the damned car keys.

When we were wringing our hands in utter helplessness, I saw an American lady coming to our rescue. She introduced herself as Dorothy Lessing -- may be a Brit American. She said:’Hi, I know what you are searching. Please go watch the fireworks and let me find out your keys.’ She smiled at us and then engaged herself in ‘the operation-search-keys’. We were a bit hesitant and then, at her persistent insistence, moved reluctantly a few yards from the meadow and started watching the grand sky show.

Lit by the fireworks, the sky looked more ominous than ever with a potpourri of colors. Sparks of light traveled across the sky; they suddenly transformed themselves into shapes of lions, tigers, elephants and deer. Then we saw a fully blossomed flower with honeybees swarming it. There were shadows of men and women holding hands; an American flag was found fluttering. Crowds screamed with joy and excitement. We stood mesmerized, unable to take out our eyes from the sky.

After regaling the crowds with their amazing feats of lights, the fireworks came to an end and the sky became grey again. People started leaving the park and the cacophonies of car horns brought us out of our trance.

‘Enjoyed the fireworks,’ Lessing asked us. She stood before us letting out her captivating smile, our car keys in her hand. She didn’t watch the fireworks, but spent her time in tracking down our keys.

‘Sorry, Lessing’, I sputtered as I was intrigued by a sort of guiltiness. ‘It’s because of us you couldn’t watch the fireworks.’

‘Oh, no, she laughed. ‘I can watch the fireworks next year, but you can’t. You’re our guests … going to be here for some time.’

‘What a hospitality,’ I exclaimed, overwhelming with emotions.

 ‘Please say American hospitality’, Lessing laughed again, and in no time disappeared into the crowd.

While the sky still remained calm and grey, I had a lot of fireworks going on in my mind which ultimately burnt out all my misconceptions about US and the citizens. The country now seemed not the land of perfume, but the land of hospitality.

I could still smell the perfume of Lessing’s hospitality.

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Doctor, Heal Thyself

[My childhood memories, both sweet and sour, are many and varied. They still linger in my heart as I cherish them and safe keep them from the onslaughts of Time. One such dramatic and sad experience that stands out still in the vault of my memory is my encounter with a quack. It happened when I was early in my teens.]

Faced with pecuniary hardships, DU [Doctor Uncle, my neighbor], had decades back, discontinued his medical studies and become a doctor … a self-made-pseudo doctor. His working in a clinic as a paramedic gave him the audacity to call him a doctor.

As luck had it, he soon became famous and most sought-after doctor in my area. For, people believed that he had some mystical healing power in him and his mere touch on the patients would cure them of their ailments. However, aunty [DU’s wife] never gave a fig to such beliefs, calling them rubbish and DU a quack.

Though past 50, DU looked smart with his French goatee and neatly groomed hair. [Hair!!! He had only strands and that too at the back of his head, which, with much effort, he had combed it and brought it to the front just to hide his gleaming pate]. I always saw him wearing dhoti in a Diwan-like style, sporting a black coat over his shirt.

Saturn led my dad to take me to DU when I had an earache for days on end. Leaving me to the doctor’s custody, my dad went on his official tour. DU peered into my ear with the help of a flashlight and tweaked it gently. He then became contemplative for a while and said: ‘Only people afflicted with brain tumor will have such unbearable earache.’ I hardly heard what he said as I felt like blasted and blown into pieces. I screamed my head off and my body trembled.

However, DU was cool. He consoled me saying that he could cure all kinds of tumors, both benign and malignant, with his ‘Touch Therapy’, a device he had acquired after a long research. I stood wonder-struck. Later, when I was watching the film Munna Bhai M.B.B.S, an involuntary thought about DU flashed my addled head.

More grueling was the following day. I went into tears and refused when DU asked me to get a tonsure. He then took me to a dingy lab and had me undergone all the medical tests he knew by his books/journals. We also went to an ENT specialist as DU wanted a second opinion on his diagnosis. ‘Hell with his diagnosis; this cad only takes me for a ride,’ I moaned.

The ENT was a baldie, had untrimmed bushes of hair falling on the sides of his head. I was scared of his bushy mustache and pock --marked face. He had a cache of medical instruments displayed on his table. Not allowing me to take a second look at his ‘stockpile’, he lifted up my chin and peered into my ear as DU did before.

To my great shock, the ENT took out a small tong from his cache, shoved it into my ailing ear, twisted it a bit and pulled it away as fast as he could not minding my screams. Gosh, out came with the tong was a bit of a broken pencil, which I recalled I had thrust into my ear a week back. ‘Had been searching this bloody stub for long’, I shouted with joy and tried to release me from the grip of the ENT.

But, he didn’t let me go. He poured some stingy jell into my beleaguered ear and covered it with a big bandage, which ran across my face and covered my left eye too. I felt looking like another Moshe Dayan. ‘Sure, it’s a value-added to my semi-deafness’, I moaned again.

‘Who the nut?’ the ENT snarled at me throwing the pencil bit into the dustbin. ‘Who got you into all those bloody tests when you’re in perfect health?’

‘Doctor Uncle’, I mumbled.

‘Why, did you call me uncle?’ the ENT growled, twirling his mustache. ‘Yes … no’, I sputtered. He looked at me sternly for a moment and then blared out, ‘uh, you mean that old bloke with a black coat. I saw him sneaking out of my room when I was taking the pencil bit from your ear.’

Aghast I stood, cursing DU and calling him names. I didn’t know even today how I escaped from the ENT’s ominous spell.

 I went to the DU’s house again after six months. Aunty was persistently inviting me home as she was outraged over the ordeal I underwent due to her quack husband’s wrong diagnosis. I was puzzled seeing DU sitting on a bench in his room which was once his clinic. He was clean shaven. His pate was more gleaming than ever due to the conspicuous absence of even a few strands of hair. ‘Who robbed his black coat?’ I thought.

 His table too was clean and tidy. There was no trace of medical books/journals. It was now decked up with volumes of Ramayana and Mahabharata. Reading my mind, Aunty said: ‘Easwar, I’ve banned his doctor business; I’ll never allow him to play that game again after what he had done to you.’ She went to the kitchen to brew tea for me.

I smiled triumphantly at DU, but he, the maverick, took a bunch of papers from one of the volumes of Ramayana and showed them to me. No doubt, they were patient’s call sheets tucked away cleverly in between the pages of the two epics. The call sheets hinted DU’s calling on the patients at their homes instead of having them called him at his clinic.

‘A mobile clinic. Tell your dad that he too can call me to your house if you people like,’ DU murmured and smiled at me rather impishly.

And that triggered my running away from his house abruptly without waiting for auntie. I ran home so swiftly and recklessly, which I never did in the past nor would do it in my lifetime.

Look at the Ocean, not at the Waves

We fail to see the Ocean for the Waves

That ‘true love triumphs’, a time-tested belief accepted by the human race from the days of Adam and Eve, still stands tall giving testimony to the power of love. Love has many connotations; many hues and colors like the working of human minds. Well, efforts put in by etymologists to define the term love go flat since it is not defined by words but by one’s feelings and emotions.

But then, our shimmering passions for love only make us look at its pinnacle since most of us are not able to reach it because of varied reasons. ‘Love is God; love is divine; love is bliss and peace; and love is blind too’ are some of the emotional outbursts we indulge in all through our life without experiencing or feeling all the dimensions of love or without our being able to reach its crest.

To many of us, love is the foam crested waves that are lashing at the shore. We always look at the waves only and not at the fathomless depth of an ocean. It is so easy to look into dots and miss the sight of the picture. Our mental vacation is so crude that it happens without our knowing it.  

An ailing, but obstinate child nags her mother for a cup of ice cream and cries her head off when it is denied. Seemingly, the mother has a heart of stone in not yielding to the demand of her child, but truly she is the incarnation of love as she is more concerned with the health of her daughter than her crying for ice cream. A father is too revealing his concern and love for his teenage daughter when he reproaches her for speaking on her cell phone at midnight. Such a father and mother are on the crest of love since they think their mollycoddling of their children may spoil their well-being and safety.

Sometimes, you may see a man, with good physique, standing at a street corner and craving the passers-by for alms. Instead of giving him a few bucks as your counterparts are doing, you may get him a job and make him live decently. Through such an admirable action you show your love for the society. Sure, your noble act makes you reach out to the pinnacle of love where the Angel of Love welcomes you with a curtsy as she is happy with your displaying of a rare gesture and responding to the unexpressed needs of a beggar.

Lee Kuan Yew, the former Prime Minister of Singapore, showed an altogether different dimension of love for his country when he brought forth a host of capital punishments to rein the occurrence of crimes and to make Singapore a heaven of peace and one of the developed nations in Asia. He did this with an iron hand for the well-being of the people.

It is not uncommon in life to see a person make the other suffer. But, if the cause for making others suffer is to see them happy ultimately, then such an action can be called love … love in disguise. Lee Kuan Yew did this to his country and god, too, is doing this to many of us quite often.

There are people with questionable characters who get things done for others by dubious means: from a drunkard by making him tipsier and from a crazy woman by giving her gold and diamonds. This is always done in the name of love. But, love can never be manipulated. It must never be used to make others do what you want. When you love someone, you must never ask them to sacrifice even a part of themselves in the name of love. This form of manipulation contaminates our love for others.

Eventually, love is the name of the relationship we are trying to have with someone who are closer to us. Rather, it’s a sort of fine feelings … an intention to serve the well-being of others, which may, sometimes, get crowned or crucified. Just read what Kahlil Gibran has to say about love:

“When love beckons to you, follow him/ though his ways are hard and steep/and when his wings enfold you, yield to him/though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you/And when you speaks to you, believe him/ though his voice may shatter your dream as the north wind lays waste the garden.”

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Money Speaks

That money talks

I won’t deny.

I heard it once.

It said, ‘Goodbye'

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Poetry: Richard Armour