Life’s like that as August gets underway

There are some good blog posts and mostly also-rans. The best ones are those that are descriptive of a place or events while the also-rans are analysis. This one I am serving is unfortunately the latter.

            I am past the midway point of my earthly innings. I feel in my bones that death would suit me better in the present timelines. I would be mortified to be around to blow my fiftieth birthday candles in five years time. I have lived a whole life already.

            I started my life in the early seventies being an absolute moron born in an indifferent family where love and bonding came hard and miserly, not even drips of water of a faulty faucet. My mother is a prized idiot more to be pitied than censured. That meant I grew up on the sidewalks of life in a sewage pipe as it were. 

            The first twenty years of life were ignorant years. I was standing in front of a canon but I did not know it. Ignorance is such bliss! It was only when I slipped into adulthood I knew at once the damage the mind was steeped in. I knew my case needed a serious look over and I need to rely on myself and myself alone for rest of the trek. That requires a man’s heart and I had those in large quantities. Some glorious lessons unfolded as I learnt the virtues of patience, humility and forgiveness as the years filed past.

            This is a long somber and even morbid introduction to the things I had in mind when I started to pen. Let me waffle no further:  2014 has been one of those good years in which I find the life lessons served more congeniality rather than at gunpoint as most of my previous lessons were. 

Gratitude: First I owe my living to any person who cooks my food. For last seven years I am blessed with cooks of great characters: Meera was a friend who cared, Thangam is more an aunt who blesses. I feel privileged to have known both of them. I would even wish them to be my mothers and sisters in my next birth. I keep telling my eldest sister,” If I had such a mother, I would have done something meaningful in life than the wastrel I have turned out to be.” Both these humble souls are endowed with such a family orientation that they know how to build a family.  

Meera has a son and he probably earns more than me as a Vaidika bramin. Thangam has three daughters and all of them are either technologists or engineers. It is the sacrifice of the mothers that the family pyramid is built on. My mother had a good fertile ground to construct but she let it pass. Meera and Thangam got terrible odds but their children are engineers and graduates (they have single-handedly ensured that their family got into the next higher economic layer). Hence I sing their paeans all the more.

But if I were to be indebted to one person in the last 25 years then it is my dad. But for his largesse of this Besant Nagar flat I would croaked and died of penury a long while back. Having a rent free house, and such a beautiful one as this, has been one solid stabilizing factor. I can’t thank my father enough, someone I think more often these days. Ajit, a friend, said,” Home is where I am” but in my case it is “home is when I am at Besant nagar.” I have many things going here.

The third person I am grateful is my eldest sister. We fight like cats and dogs, I have my crosses to bear. She never taught her sons to respect me, she never invites me to festivals (these two aspects grate me) but she looks after me daily with a telephone call. She looked after my savings and the house when I was away in Abu Dhabi. We fight every other month promising not to bother with the other but each time after a week our hearts melt. I also realize that we live in such selfish times that one should not set his/her expectations high. Take any warmth that comes in the flow and that leads me to the next lesson.

Forgiveness: As the years flew past and as my body gets more ready for the grave – I heard it is better to arrive at the ghat worn out than fresh and I certainly am decrepit here – this forgiveness is a dimension I am proud to discover in me. Not many people have wronged me for I live alone and well. My last two bosses were from a circus band: Panneer Chelvam at India Cements took malicious pleasure running me down for no better reason than amusement. Then Mohan Natesan, Adline Advertising at Abu Dhabi was more a demon and asura than a human being. The way he went after Sabeesh Yemmay would give me pain in the coronary regions for days on end. I did not linger more than a second to forgive these sods.

At home Kaushik, my nephew, took a crack at me saying,” U idiot” in a sms over a forgettable trifle. I really took a fancy to this kid but after this chagrin my affections dried up. Now I do converse with him keeping arm’s length distance. He has already clocked two years at TCS, he’s preparing for go to US for higher studies and even spends weekends teaching English and Maths to slum kids for a NGO. Last month I told him,” I am getting to be so forgiving that I am even talking to you.” He has the grace to smile and say,” We can’t undo it now.” 

Writing: When I started creative writing as a career in 2007 I had dreamy visions of penning masterpieces and public acclaim. I was such an idiot that I would prepare acceptance speeches in my mind such was my optimism and belief in my skills. Now my mind is purged of any creative urges for writing. I have so many creative ideas that I don’t even develop for my blogs. I have taken an easy way out here, I am more a content writer for blogs, social media, newsletters etc. I am past the stage of marketing my writings or chasing newspaper and magazine editors. I finally realize that their daftness is more solid than rock.

Music gets me going, I still love my Campbell, Joel, U2, Springsteen, Carpenters, Dire Straits, Mercury, Jackson, Rodgers and the list is very long indeed. Of late I am beginning to enjoy the classics of a Beethoven or the virtuoso of a Izhak Perlman. In fact I love my music more than the written word. I strum my guitar more like a mad man but these are harmless pleasures.

My sense of people and events have never been better. T H Iyer is a friend of over 16 years, he has watched me grow over the years. I like the affection I get out of him. Dr. Rajaram is the one I meet rarely but each time he gets out my best humour (I am surprised at the frivolity that exists in the cranium). Ranga is one I count as a friend who'll dash down and get me admitted if I ever were to suffer a heart attack. Then Prabhakar who makes me discover my inner reservoir of humour. Then a good doctor in Saharanpur, another in Lajpat Nagar

I was telling Manisha, another reliable friend,” Didi, I have lived to the full with my stories, music and people around.” It would be nice for me to return to the gulf and maybe get my guitar going once again. That would be a complete cure and till then I can congratulate myself for keeping afloat.

What makes me heroic is I have been at it for over 7 years now. On my own as a writer in India. What can be worse than that! I barely managed to earn my expenses and stay in this place. Something of a world record on a Usnain Bolt scale you might say. 

 We learn our lessons not in the comforts of our drawing rooms but in the tumult when the heart churns in anger, fear, pains and more. And if I talk of death it's the fatigue of fighting too long. But the magic of living is such that you get hooked when your train slips back on rail. Waiting! As American civil rights activist Bernice Johnson Reagon says," Life's challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they are supposed to help you discover who you are." That is the spin I give myself now.