Thiruvannamalai Journey Continues- Living in the History House

(Vakkom Palazzo, a five star hotel in my village, Vakkom)

‘Hotel Thiruvannamalai’- while big hotels have their recognizable brand names, the most inconspicuous lodges in dingy alleys have all the fancy names in the world. In my small village Vakkom, I have seen ‘Vakkom Palazzo’, one huge five star hotel near Panayil Kadavu, making people as well as itself wonder why it is there. Vakkom is not a tourist village. Vakkom Palazzo is built with the intention of attracting tourists from Trivandrum, Varkala and other nearby towns where tourism has been developing slowly. The owners of the hotel, I am told, thought that they would get bar license and liquor could be one of the biggest attractions for the patrons. Unfortunately, at least for the investors of this hotel, the Government of Kerala started taking stringent actions against bars and limited the allotment of bar license to new hotels. To make matters worse, the government also started contemplating a blanket ban on liquor in the state. Today Vakkom Palazzo stands like an anachronism in our village. Sometimes, when I pass by that way I smile unto myself thinking that the hotel is built for giving job to a lonely security man in his stylish uniform. People at Vakkom speak about this hotel with reverence tinged with something that moves between irony and sarcasm. Anybody visits their relatives at Vakkom, they are religiously asked whether they have gone to see the hotel. Now seeing the hotel from outside itself is an attraction for many people. Also the village folk call it differently; for some it is Vakkom Palazzo, for some others it is Vakkom Plaza, yet another group calls it Vakkom Palace and some simply refer it as Plazzo. However, you look at the sign boards of the lodges in any of the tourist centers, you may find names like ‘Taj View’, ‘Lake Side’ and so on often referring to the famous monument or place in their vicinity. Recently in South Delhi, in one of the rundown alley ways I found a cheap restaurant with a name ‘Bon Vivanta’!

Hotel Thiruvannamalai, however is neither a five star one nor a very cheap seedy one. It is right opposite to Ramana Ashram and the reason for its nomenclature is logical and understandable. Haunted often by the backpackers, the building looks more like an unplanned residence block rather than a designer hotel. In front of it a man sits reading a Tamil newspaper. His Enfield Bullet motor bike is propped on its stand and it reminds me of a villager sitting on a charpoy in a North Indian village, sipping his morning tea, with a buffalo munching away the cuds nearby for company. Shibu Natesan as he is inclined to many things including Enfield Bullets, HMT watches and Maruti Gypsy, makes a small talk with the person who neither shows overfriendliness nor outright disinterestedness. Apparently, Shibu had stayed here before and he is a good bargainer for rates. But, seasoned in handling such enthusiastic patrons, the man in front of the hotel gives us a half smile. I peer into the hotel and find that the reception is right inside but almost under a flight of steps that go up. It looks like the man has extended his reception desk to the streets so that he could have fresh air, great morning sunlight, his favorite newspaper and a philosophical disinterestedness for the worldly affairs. Though detached he is, almost replicating the philosophy of Indian sages who ask everyone to be detached from the material world, when it comes to money he seems to be too attached to make any departure from the proven materialism. Shibu struggles with his Tamil and enthuses him with some comments on his Enfield Bullet. Unrelenting the man is, he sticks to his price but asks one of his assistants to lead us to a first floor room. Now Shibu seems to have a choice to make. He has stayed in some other room in the same premises and he wants it now also. The man tells him that it is already occupied. But like any other Indian artist who has developed certain peculiar traits in due course of becoming rich, Shibu also has got certain peculiar traits. Despite his repeated pleas the man does not give us the room Shibu wants. Finally we settle in the room that the man has chosen to allot us.

(Abul Kalam Azad, photography artist)

The room is not so big though it could accommodate two people. We look at each other and keep our backpacks down. Slowly, the room accepts us and more importantly we accept our room. Once the mutual comfort level is established between us and the room, we start planning our day. It is just seven thirty in the morning and we exclaim how convenient it is to travel by road at night and reach Thiruvannamalai early morning and save a full day for ourselves. We mark it as an important point for future use. While I go into the bathroom, Shibu goes down to give some advance money at the reception desk and also to ensure that we get his favorite room by next morning. After taking bath we spread out ourselves on the bed looking at the vacant ceiling and bare walls with a sense of resignation. But we are happy for we do not feel any fatigue. We think of several things including going for a cup of tea. Suddenly Shibu’s mobile phone rings. It is Abul Kalam Azad at the other end. Abul has been in living in Thiruvannamali for the last three years and he has contributed immensely in making Thiruvannamalai famous among the Indian artists. He leads the Ekalokam Trust Photography (ETP) at Thiruvannamalai and also runs a small gallery called ‘Kalai Illam’ there. Small scale solo exhibitions take place in Kalai Illam with joint efforts and good will of the people around. Azad, a former Press Trust of India Photo journalist has this exemplary quality of making friends anywhere in the world. Shibu had promised to inaugurate an exhibition of Krigen Ulhman, a former Hippie artist living in Thiruvannamalai at Kalai Illam. Now Azad is there in the line. We have decided not to disturb Azad by pressing on him for accommodation or anything of that sort. But Azad enquires about our whereabouts.

Things change with that one phone call of Abul Azad. Next development of events could only be compared to a well edited film scene. Azad comes and in his booming voice chide us for not letting him know about our arrival in the town. Both of us smile vaguely and mumble things to explain the situation. Azad has come by a scooter. He speaks to the hotel assistant in Tamil. What he says is that we are shifting and they could cut one day’s rent and the rest of the money could be given to us. Sensing Azad’s arrival, I strongly believe, and also knowing Azad’s persuasive nature, the hotel owner has already gone away by his Enfield Bullet. In five minutes’ time we are in a different place. We pack up our things again. We haul it down on our backs. We walk behind Azad like two school kids. Azad is wearing a white dhoti and a white short kurta. Across his shoulders hangs a small leather bag which contains ‘I do not know what’. I like the way Azad walks with a lot of confidence. He picks up his phone and makes a few phone calls, shouting in Tamil. What I gather is that he is engaging some other person to influence the hotel owner to return our money and apparently Azad is successful in that. Following him we reach the next alley, which is just opposite to Ramana Ashram. Shibu shows me the place and I look at it with my unenthusiastic eyes. I am not yet converted to his enthusiasm. I have my reservations. I refuse to think much about my reservations about the place.

(Arthur Osborne)

Azad pushes a gate open. We are now in a beautiful property. On our left there is a huge two storied house which looks like a heritage building but is currently used by someone. However, the building does not seem to have any occupants. On our right, there is a big but modest bungalow with a long verandah sheltered by a roof and netted large windows. Two dogs come to us barking. Azad scolds them in Tamil. They look at suspiciously. Azad opens the house where Tulsi Suvarna Lakshmi, Azad’s commander in chief in Thiruvannamalai is already there. The house looks inhabited by somebody and is exactly the same way. On the walls there are a few paintings intricately done. On the table there are vignettes from Ramana Ashram. The furniture smells of past. The divan linens are clean. The red oxide coated floors shine. The bungalow is designed in a curious way. There is an L shaped outer layer that covers the drawing room of the house which has a large permanent high table in the middle. Around it there are high stools and obviously this place is where people gather to have some drinks, though I do not see any personal bar nearby. We keep our bags on the divans. On the right side of the hall there is an attached bathroom and on the left there is a narrow bedroom with a dressing table and mirror. Just behind the pillared drawing room, there is a bigger chamber with a swinging cot. On the right side of it there are two doors; one opens to the kitchen and the other opens to the backyard. The lights are rather yellow in the rooms which accentuate the oldness of the building. One could use this bedroom and one could use the swinging cot, Azad tells us. We look at each other. We have already decided to use the swinging cot.

We are not there at Ramana Ashram. Nor have we gone to the Thiruvannamalai temple. I have not understood anything of Thiruvannamalai. Yet, we have already touched the history of it. It is better to say that we are living in that history. You are lucky because you are living in Arthur Osborne’s house, says Azad while lighting a cigarette. Arthur Osborne, does it ring familiar? I ask myself. I draw a blank. Arthur Osborne’s house? Shibu exclaims. He seems to have heard of this name. My studies later and conversations with Azad and Shibu reveal to me who Arthur Osborne is/was. Arthur Osborne (1906-1970) was an English writer who became one of the greatest disciples of Ramana Maharshi. It was through his writings and biography of the sage, ‘Ramana Maharshi and the Path of the Self Knowledge’ the western world came to know about the sage. After coming to Thirvuannamalai, Osborne left his teaching and writing career in England behind and devoted himself to Ramana Maharshi. He till his death edited the Ashram journal Mountain Path. Arthur Osborne’s son was Adam Osborne who is the inventor of personal computers. When I know that we are sitting in the same house where these great people lived, I feel a sense of wonderment; a first feel of extraordinary about the place. We were supposed to live in that small hotel room. Azad has brought us here. And we are sitting in a place perhaps, Arthur Osborne sat and wrote his journals and books. Arthur Osborne Estate is huge and it is one of the houses that were built in those days.

(Adam Osborne)

Azad leaves with Tulsi and Leo James, the young photographer who has come from Dubai to participate in a project called ‘Project 365’, an ambitious project to document Thiruvannamalai continuously for three hundred and sixty five days. Initiated by Azad himself, this project currently on has around twenty photographers from all over India engaged in all aspects of Thiruvannamalai as a place. We sit there is silence for a while. We do not know what to do. We consider options. Should we go to the Ashram first or should we go for a walk? Or should we just sleep off on the swinging cot? Finally we decide to make a visit to the Ashram and then go for a walk, and then come back and sleep. We step out of the house and as Azad has instructed we lock it up. The dogs come rushing to us. We walk out and latch the gate from outside. A voice calls out from the seemingly abandoned building, Please close the gate when you go out. It is in Tamil and it has a rustic tone to it.  We train our eyes to see the person who has called out. It is a female voice. But we are not able to see her. So we stand there staring into a dark patch in the building which is a netted door. I notice there is a narrow aero bridge connecting this building and Osborne’s house where we are living. We say, yes to the vacant building, latch the door and come out to the alley. A cow lazily passes by. A young sadhu in his saffron uniform comes against us. Our eyes lock and release. We see an old foreign woman standing and looking at a frog hopping across the road with piety. Her face beams with a smile. Isn’t it a bit too much, I ask Shibu. He smiles. You are going to see more, he tells me. We cross the road, which is now busy with plying vehicles. We are now at the entrance of the Ramana Ashram. I am not going to change, I tell myself. I know this spiritual bullshit. But I am going to play along. As if he could read my thoughts, Shibu tells me, this way, let us deposit our footwear there at that counter. We leave our footwear there. The old men there at the counter tell us to leave it on the floor. But Shibu insists that they should be kept inside the rack and reluctantly the old men take our footwear from us. Turning I step on the earth of Ramana Maharshi Ashram with my bare soles. Something happened? I ask myself. Nothing. Nothing is happening. 

Thiruvannamalai Journey Continues: Women with Flowers on their Hair Buns

(source - net)

Scenes from a strange land appear before my eyes as we start our journey to Thiruvannamalai in a Tamil Nadu Road Transport Corporation bus. Framed by the window of the bus, the scenes run fast backward. It is still dark and the images closer to the view are silhouetted by the early morning grey. I am lucky this time as the landscape artist in Shibu Natesan prefers to take the aisle seat. Dipped in deep silence we absorb the sights and sounds in and around the bus. Women wearing flowers in their hair buns come in and settle down.  Milkmen and vendors walk in from inconspicuous bus stops drenched in idle talk and deep concerns of daily lives. Some people doze off as their journey had temporarily disrupted their early morning slumber. Children, like children all over the world, are excited, exactly the way artists are, by the simple fact that they are moved from one place to another by a moving entity called bus. The interior of the bus is sparse compared to the air conditioned bus that we have been travelling in a few hours before. Shibu had told me that there would be Tamil devotionals playing in these buses generally. I hark for the raw voices of devotional singers but in vain. My ears are filled  with the idle chats between the conductor who has just finished issuing tickets for all and has settled by the driver to keep him in good humor so that the snaking roads of a rural Tamil Nadu that lead us to Thiruvannamalai are negotiated well and safe.

On my left, from the changing grays of morning sky, I gather the feeling of travelling towards north. Cool breeze from the paddy fields touch the faces of all the passengers and the strands of their hairs fly southwards, giving away the sense of seeing a black shredded black flag of an army that wants to survive any kind of adversities. The palate of sky is now more complicated. Dark clouds that have been scattered all over are now given golden and silvery edges by the ultimate artist of the universe. He seems to be very good at wash technique as minimum strokes of light turn the maximum area into a surreal expanse. Somewhere, the source of all lights seems to be struggling to come out as if a shy bride tries her best to come out of loving but forceful embraces of her bridegroom in one of those early nights of her marriage. The love pranks between sun and clouds go on for a long time till the world down there is sprinkled with an even light that helps me discern the people and structures along the way. At a junction, the bus stops and the bus conductor announces that it is a tea junction. A black skinny man with a steel vessel fitted on the carrier of his cycle stands down there selling piping hot tea in small paper cups. We look at each other and decide that we could have our first tea only when we reach Thiruvannamalai.  I see that most of the passengers seem to share our mood. None of them buys tea from this vendor except for the bus conductor. Even the driver seems to be disinterested. After a minute or so the bus starts moving again.

 (Woman making Kolam - source- the Hindu)

We are silent. Shibu may be thinking of his previous visits to Thiruvannamalai, I imagine. I look at him. Though he is very animated while talking to me, now he is sitting still without changing his facial expression. I prefer not to break his inertness; maybe he has reached a sort of equilibrium with the movement of the bus. My mind is not at peace. The skeptic in me surfaces again and again and asks me why I have undertaken this journey. Is it going to be a life changing experience, as hinted by Shibu several times before? Or is it going to be a fun trip? I do not like fun trips. I do not even like the word ‘fun’. Yes, travelling helps one to realize many things. Those are occasions that bring in so many different sights and sounds, individuals and their stories into our experiential zones. They could correct us; they could also lead us to grave mistakes. But nothing is fun about all those things. Fun is for those people who undertake journeys for the heck of it. They live by handbooks and they organize their trips with the clear intention to derive fun out of anything and everything that they do while traveling. I have seen people who are on vacation behaving like monkeys because they believe that they have worked hard enough and it is time to have fun. So if people are going to a sea shore destination, even at the airport or railway station they start behaving as if they have already reached the sea shore. May be seeing them in their pursuit of fun is the real fun for people like me who dispassionately, if not reluctantly take up trips. Maybe this is a very personal view.

Villages along the road are nameless for me. They do have names but are written in Tamil. The time I try my rudimentary knowledge of Tamil alphabet the bus must have gone a few meters ahead. Hence most of the villages remain nameless for us. As I sit at the window seat, I get a clear view of the early morning life of these villages. One thing soothing about Tamil Nadu villages (or even other South Indian villages) is the scene of people doing their devotional rituals before their homes. While the male folk spend their time idly at the tea shops or many of them do their daily chores of tending their cattle, agriculture tools or already on a walk to the fields, women are seen making Kolams before their homes. Kolams are intricate designs drawn in front of the houses in order to welcome a new day. Women take bath in the early morning itself and come out to draw Kolams before their houses. They sweep the surface clean and sprinkle water or some of them give a fresh coat of cow dung paste on that surface. On that they draw intricate patterns with rice powder which is known as Kola podi (Kolam dust). Women bend over the floor and their skilled fingers drop this powder evenly along the dots that they have made on the surface to control the patterns. Though many Kolams look identical and they do have some set patterns, individual creativity could also be seen in these Kolams. Kolams are supposed to be auspicious patterns that invite divinities to home or ward off evils from entering it. Despite these Kolams, drunken men and rude youth walk in and out of these homes crossing these auspicious patterns without heeding much to their divine meanings.

 (Woman with turmeric paste smeared face- Source - net)

I see a lot of women making Kolams. Irrespective of the grandeur or sizes of the houses, whether they are rich or poor, all the houses have Kolams before them. Though, in our popular imagination, Kolams or Kolam making beautiful women are seen as the representatives of god fearing high class or high caste women, the fact is that irrespective of class or caste most of the women in Tamil Nadu make Kolams in front of their homes. Another interesting thing that I notice is the complexion of these women. They are all dark. But in movies women are always fair skinned. The new generation movie makers in Tamil film industry work with a lot of dark skinned actresses and cast them as heroines in order to consciously defy the commercially driven idea about beautiful women. The raw energy of these movies has made them cultic films and there is an added craze for such movies in Tamil Nadu today, as the posters and the television ads show. Here I see the dark skinned women in a different light; they are all tinted with a dominant yellow color. Most of the women look like as if they have just come out of yellow powder box. The reason is that most of the women in Tamil Nadu smear turmeric paste all over their bodies in order to enhance their dark beauty. It not only enhances their natural beauty but also prevents a lot of skin diseases. Turmeric with a lot of medicinal properties is a traditionally accepted beauty aid in Tamil Nadu. It is also connected to the Devi cult. The goddesses in Tamil Nadu are decorated with Turmeric powder or paste. Each woman shares some kind of godliness by emulating the female deities in their vicinity.

(Kerala women in 'nightie'- for illustrative purpose only- source- net)

In the early morning hue, it is not easy to make out the faces of these women. But I could see the general pattern; they all wear very colorful sarees, which in Tamil is called Chela. As a strong contrast to the Kerala women (Malayali women) who are seen in and out of their houses in night gowns which is called ‘nightie’ in general, Tamil Nadu women are not seen in these shapeless gowns. They all wear sarees with different patterns. There was a time in Kerala too when all women wore flowers in their hair. Women or young girls coming out of their homes, freshly bathed and decked with natural flowers used to be a very sensual experience. It emanated innocence, purity and sexual appeal at once. But in due course of time, Kerala women shifted to deos and perfumes and started wearing decorative hair clips than natural flowers. Tamil Nadu, also Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh (at least in the rural areas) still uphold the tradition of wearing flowers in their hair. There is no obscenity attached to this custom as we do in big cities like Mumbai and Delhi, where flower sellers approach the waiting cars at the traffic lights. It is a clear indication that if you are buying flowers for your women or women are buying flowers from themselves, there would be some sexual encounter that night. Because of this connotation, women who think a lot about their modesty do not buy or wear flowers in these cities. There should be sociological reasons pertaining to nautch girls and harem women in these cities who wore flowers that prevent contemporary women from wearing flowers. But women wearing fresh flowers in the early morning and coming out of temples or places of worship is one of the most beautiful sights that I have ever seen in my life.

(Goddess in Tamil Nadu- Source Shutterstock.com)

There is a lot of poetry in seeing flowers on women’s heads. It elevates them to the heights of godliness. How can a woman be so ruthless and brash when she has flowers on her hair? She would be the epitome of beauty. Some may find these are male chauvinistic observations and too much dipped by sexual anticipations. But I would also like to ask how a man could be arrogant and brutal to a woman who wears flowers in her hair and appears as fresh as nature itself? How can a man accompanying a woman with fresh flowers on her hair be looking around to see other women? How can a man be brutal when he is surrounded by wonderful women wearing flowers? Am I asking all the women to wear flowers so that sexual harassment could be done away with from our society? I should be dreaming if I ask so. But what I am saying is that we have been pushed out of such a heaven of poetry where women decked themselves up with flowers and men sung praises for them. We have become plastic people who deck themselves with plastic flowers and people who find their conjugal happiness in plastic dolls. We are the members of a degenerated civilization. I am not asking for women’s role in the society as objects of adulation. I am asking for a society where one could be a poet unto himself and also a worshipper of beauty. When people worship beauty they become calm and once they are calm they look for something deep within themselves than looking for pleasure elsewhere. They all will turn into spiritual beings. Am I asking for a flower revolution so that everyone becomes beautiful and everyone becomes a poet? I do not know. What I know is that the future is going to judge me based on this paragraph. It would call me a chauvinist. But I do not mind because I am a poet.

(You rarely get it right- from Taj- Source - net)

Loud speakers send out Tamil devotional songs. They come to our ears like wake up calls. I look at one of the milestones on the wayside where it is written ’20 km’ to Thiruvannamalai. In another half an hour we will reach our destination. I look at Shibu and he smiles at me and says that I am about to get some glimpses of the great mountain, Arunachala. I look out for the hills and I do see one of them on our right side. I ask him whether it is that mountain. Shibu shakes his head in negative. I feel a sense of anxiety inside me. Is the first glimpse of Arunachala going to be as depressing as my first encounter with the celebrated Taj Mahal? Years before I had gone to Taj Mahal, the memorial of love in Agra. Since my childhood I have been hearing about Taj Mahal, seeing the illustration and the great emperor who built it, Shajahan, who is always seen in profile, sniffing a rose flower. It took so many years to understand that Shajahan has another side as I saw the painting of Abanindranath Tagore, in which he is shown as an old captive, looking at Taj Mahal at a distance under the moon lit sky. Taj Mahal as a package comes to your mind even before you visit it. It is burdened with beauty and history. So when you go there you expect so much and you are clearly disappointed once you see it in reality. You enter Taj Mahal through a side door and a white expanse of marble manifests in front of your eyes, almost blinding you with its glory. You imagine that it is just like what you have seen in innumerable calendars, posters, photographs, fancy prisms and film sets. As you walk towards it, you find its glory diminishing. It becomes just another monument where tourists throng and take photographs. Before the proliferation of the mobile phone cameras and digital cameras, people used to get photographed in front of Taj Mahal by the roti graphers. Rotigraphy is a term coined by the photography artist, Satish Sharma, to qualify the pavement photographers of Old Delhi who clicked the photographs of tourists and local people using box cameras and large negatives in order to eke out their daily rotis; therefore Roti Graphy. One of the attractions of the rotigraphers in Taj Mahal is that their skill in shooting people as if they were holding the tip of the great monument of love. They show you the albums filled with strangers holding the tip of Taj Mahal. Attracted by this technical achievement, people who are lucky to have their film loaded cameras try to emulate this feat only to come up with results showing kids, women and youngsters awkwardly groping various parts of Taj Mahal except for the tip. The camera man always wonders, each time he looks at the album in later years, what he had missed though he had seen the person in the picture holding the tip of Taj Mahal through the view finder. He goes to the grave with this shame.

(Arunachala Mountain- Thiruvannamalai- source- net)

I am afraid that I would be equally disappointed by the first glimpse Arunachala. So I sit extremely cautious and prepared. Many hills come and go and each time Shibu tells me that ‘not this not this’. Neti Neti (not this not this) is the root of Indian spiritual philosophy. What is your soul? What is I? You attach your soul with so many things; your I-ness with so many manifestations. But philosophy says, not this not this. We will come to know about it later in details. And I wait for Arunachala to manifest before my eyes. Finally at a turn, right in front of the bus, at the horizon level there comes up the magnificent Arunachala. It is magnificent not because of its sheer size, but because it looks different and it looks different because it, from this side, looks exactly like a perfect mountain. Thanks to associative thinking I start imagining too many things about its magnificence. It is the seat of Lord Shiva. It is where Shiva manifested as Fire. Eons before it was a volcano. So many things come to my mind and I try to hold on to my skepticism. It is just a mountain, I tell myself repeatedly. And we are going to be around it for a few days, exploring the so called spiritual feel about it. Our primary destination is Ramana Ashram, the abode of Ramana Maharshi. And the life saga of the sage cannot be separated from this mountain. So I keep looking at the mountain, which now moves to my left side and sometimes to the right depending on the curve of the road, unsettling my views about it. Suddenly defying all thoughts about divinity and spirituality, a town appears before our eyes. We are here, Shibu whispers into my ear. How is it different from Villupuram or any other bus stand that I have seen in my life? It is a typical bus stand in Tamil Nadu, I tell myself as the bus enters the Thiruvannamalai bus stand. Thiruvannamalai. The magical word that I have been hearing for the last ten years from Shibu and later from a few other friends. I am finally here. We get down there and propping our bags up on our shoulders we alight there at the stand. Sharp sunlight pierces my eyes. We will have some tea now, says Shibu. We enter a bustling town with tea stalls doing brisk business. Auto rickshaw drivers solicit us. Shibu asks one of them to wait. Shibu’s Tamil is as good as his Hindi; only the intention and gestures could translate the words into meaning. After having a cup of tea, we get into the auto rickshaw. We are in Thiruvannamalai. 

Najeeb Comes back to Meet an Old Friend

(Najeeb Vahid, second from left in red jacket with his badminton mates in London)

My architect friend and well known alternative modern structural designer, Lijo Jose, after reading my ‘Finding a Muslim Friend in You’ that I had written in December 2008, addressing my long lost friend, Najeev Vahid, in the wake of the Hindu-Muslim strife immediately after the Mumbai Terrorist Attack, asks me what happened after my happy meeting with him a day before (3^rd September 2014) in my home at Vakkom where he came to meet me with another close friend, Syam Mohammed Raice, who works in Dubai. Immediately after that happy union I re-posted my old blog in the facebook and it was the reason for why Lijo asked me that question.

A long, enduring and warm hug is what Najeeb gives me as he steps out of the brand new white Scorpio of Syam. I suddenly imagine a scene from one of the popular generic movies of Mohanlal. Rich, powerful and stately Mohanlal comes with Siddique to meet their school time friend, a struggling writer, Sreeraman, who lives in their childhood village. The reunion is filled with unspoken words. I need not tell you who are Mohanlal, Siddique and Sreeraman here.  But I have to say, I see Siddique in Najeeb. They tell me that they have been driving around in the village at night waiting for me to come back from Trivandrum where I went for a drive with Shibu Natesan. I am late and it is quite late. Syam’s mobile phone rings and Najeeb comments that the call is from the Home Department and is a final warning call to Syam.  Najeeb is still in his irreverent best.

(Syam Mohammed Raice's white Scorpio)

Najeeb looks the same. If you wear a khaki shorts and a cream color shirt you could straight away go and attend the classes in Vakkom High School, I tell him. That was the color of our uniform. He has not changed at all. Except for a little darkening around his eyes and close cropped hair that hides his otherwise curly hair, he looks the same. He squeezes by back and shoulders and he feels the same. I warn him not to beat me with his rough palms. He had this habit of beating my thighs where baby fat was refusing to fade during the high school days, with his strong and rough palms. I used to cringe when he did that. I heard you had escaped from Dubai to London, I tell him. He glowers at me and clenches his first. Suddenly he becomes Mammootty. I hear him saying the famous dialogue of Chanthu in Vadakkan Veeragatha. “Chanthu, the one who used reed needle instead of iron needle. Chanthu, the one who bribed the blacksmith. Chanthu, the one who gave a faulty sword to his friend. What else the gossip mongers say?” Najeeb does not ask this, instead he punches me softly on my stomach and asks, what else I have heard about his mythical escape from Dubai to London. I smile into the darkness.

I apologize to Syam as I am not talking to him that much because Najeeb has taken over the scene of reunion. He is in his irreverent best. Slangs fly thick and fast from his mouth. Each time he utters a word that could be eminently beeped out and gleefully stored in our memory, he looks around in the darkness to see whether some elders have listened to his harangue. Old village boys in us have not died out yet. They are still careful. They still respect the elders around though irreverence is the underlying theme. Najeeb and Syam wear white dhoti and they have adequately double folded it above their knees. I wear a saffron lungi and a white kurta. Najeeb asks me whether it is my ‘usual’ dress. I tell him that it is my dress for the night, may be for the time being. Syam is not surprised at my dress code as he has seen my various avtars in facebook. Syam is an ardent fan of Kerala Transport Corporation. He always posts the pictures of Transport buses, picking them from the site of a group of IT professionals who spend their money to even rebuild and conserve the bodies of some of the old transport buses. We all carefully protect something from our past; it could be busts or buses. Syam wears a white shirt with lines and Najeeb wears an olive green shirt with white vertical stripes.

(Syam Mohammed Raice in Dubai)

Najeeb tells me that he had a struggling period in London and now finally he has found his foothold. He has two children, a fourteen year old son and seven year old daughter (am I right there?). They must be speaking very accented English, I muse. Yes, says Najeeb. But they speak to me in Malayalam, he adds. Also he adds that they speak to his wife (their mother) also in Malayalam. “Otherwise there will be bloodbath,” he says with twinkling eyes. Najeeb’s accent too has not changed. His accent, like his body remains unchanged. Vakkom seems to have this blessing of making its people to be original in their manners and language. If we are bad we are bad to the core, and we are good we are the best. But when it comes to language, we are puritans. We do not mimic any accent though some of us thanks to habit spice up our talks with some broken English sentences in between. Najeeb when he swears positively looks up and takes the name of Allah, let his name be praised. He remains the same even in that aspect.

Out of curiosity I ask them how they thought I was at Vakkom. They were moving around in their huge SUV making many necks turn even if it was night and there at the SN Junction they found Sunil Lal, our beloved friend (I have devoted one full chapter to him in my To My Children Series’. “We found a snake at the junction, with it hood open and shaking,” Najeeb tells with a laugh. In our village the drunken yet standing ones we call, snakes (paambu). “Which one was that snake?” I ask, though I know the answer because I have just seen him while passing the junction a few minutes before with Shibu as he comes to drop me at the gate. “Sunil Lal, who else that could be?” Najeeb says. Sunil Lal, the moment he saw them had told them about my presence in the village. In village things travel fast than facebook virals. The other day I had seen a woman at the bus stop. I suddenly had a feeling that I knew her. I went and asked her whether she was so and so. She was just getting into bus and I too was taking the same bus to a nearby town. Once she settled down, she came to the edge of her seat and asked me whether I was the same Johny who used to live at Vakkom. I said yes. She told me that he came to know about my presence in the village another friend who had told her about meeting me quite accidently when I went to see the flooding of backwaters almost a week back. Friends remember me and I remember them, that is a good feeling.

It is time to go as Syam’s mobile screen glows again. One more warning call for Syam, Najeeb says. How will you escape the wrath of your wife today, I ask Syam. “I am going to take Najeeb with me as a shield,” Syam laughs. Najeeb’s family is in London. So he decides to go with Syam ‘specially for protecting him from his wife’s wrath.’ We all laugh. When shall we meet again? The question manifests amidst us. They are all leaving in a week’s time to Dubai and London respectively. “I may come to Dubai in December,” I just tell them. “You are my guest,” Syam says. “You just need to let me know, I will fly down to Dubai from London for two days,” Najeeb assures. My head reels and I am overwhelmed by their love. I am an avadhootan, the one who without home or money. They are people who have gained things in their lives their hard work and determination. I say thanks to them for visiting me. And the words sound hollow as Najeeb gives me a warm hug again and squeezes my hands. In that half an hour we remember so many friends who have left the village for building up their career and life. “Amongst us you and Kamaneesh became big,” Najeeb says. “No” I say.  “We have become more refined human beings,” I want to add. But I remain silent in humility. The white Scorpio takes a turn and with a boom it goes and fades into future, only to reemerge in another ‘present’.

Women in Metro: Photographs of Manoj Bharti Gupta

(Photograph by Manoj Bharti Gupta)

Inside the metro rail compartments, people hardly get time to act. They are in their vulnerable best. Before they enter the metro coaches, while waiting for the trains to come they are almost like trained animals who are ready to obey the whiplashes of the trainer. Once they are about to get in, they all lose their control and their primordial animal nature comes out in full play. Those who want to get in do not mind to squeeze the ones who are elbowing their best to get out. Trained by daily practice, many know how to get in and how to get out without getting hurt or without hurting others. But the novices make all the attempts to create ruckus and many others deliberately do that. Once they are in, whether they get seats or not, they are a different lot. They lose their animal nature and become trained human beings. In the circus of life, they are the willing animals of performance. Human beings generally do not ‘behave’ inside bathrooms and lavatories. They are simple and natural being stripped off of all egos. Inside the metro trains too they tend to lose their ego by entering into a total dialogue with themselves. Sometimes, it is the same case with those people who are left alone in the platforms, especially in late or very early hours, waiting for the trains to come.

(Photograph by Manoj Bharti Gupta)

Manoj Bharti Gupta has been recording the people who travel by metro in Delhi for a long time. His photographs are candid shots of people who are totally unaware of a photographer amongst them. Each moving person in a city is a potential camera. He/she has always been like that. Whether he has a camera with him or not, a person who walks along the streets or travels by a vehicle doubles himself as a camera recording the visuals and events through his eyes and storing them into his memory. Today, every human being is a photographer, willingly or unwillingly. I should say that most of us are willing photographers when it comes to taking selfies and belfies (selfies of one’s own butts). Armed with mobile cameras everyone tries to become a photographer at some stage in their lives. The new motto should be, after Descrates, “I click therefore I am”. Manoj Bharti Gupta clicks photographs of the metro travelers in Delhi not because he want to collect the images of interesting people but he likes to see them being themselves. It could be purely my way of looking at Manoj Bharti Gupta’s works, but I would like to see them as capturing of images that are engrossed in their own selves.

 (Photograph by Manoj Bharti Gupta)

Out of several bodies of works that Manjo Bharti Gupta has created out of the metro travelers, I like a particular body works photographs, aptly titled ‘Women in Metro’. One may suspect him of having some strange sense of voyeurism. Voyeurism is a curse of the photographers and a good photographer cannot be born without a heightened sense of voyeurism. However, in a scenario where we are over burdened by theoretical awareness, voyeurism in and by photography could be a bad human quality. If the voyeur is a male then he could be treated as a criminal. Voyeurism becomes severe when it is seen as male gaze. All the photographs have a voyeuristic aspect in them. But gaze is peculiar to the male photography that makes the subject’s gaze nullified. Though Manoj Bharti Gupta takes the pictures of the women metro travelers as immersed in their egoless states, he does not employ his male gaze. Instead, he uses his lens as a dispassionate capturing device. He almost lets his eyes go innocent. As an art viewer and art critic, I fail to see any kind of male gaze in Manoj’s photographs. They are voyeuristic in a sense that he turns almost existential and poetic in his frames.

(Photograph by Manoj Bharti Gupta)

I look at those frames/photographs, where women are seen in different locations of a metro rail. They are inside the compartments or in the platforms. They are alone or could be in a crowd. They are accompanied by men at times, and often they are alone. There are women who share light moments with their spouses or boyfriends. There are women who sit alone and sleep or brood over something. There are women who listen to music. There are shoppers, there are wanders, there are nuns, women in military outfits and in their many guises. I particularly like those images of women who stand alone in lonely platforms. One of the most sensitive pictures taken by Manoj Bharti Gupta shows a small girl child standing alone near a metro mascot that prods the parents to take tickets for their kids who are more than three feet tall. There is another very sensitive image where he captures a pair of beautifully manicured and booted female legs. The most interesting pictures are those show women alone in the platforms; I can’t help if I am repeating it. They, surprisingly, in Manoj’s views do not look vulnerable. They are ready to face the world ‘all alone’.

 (Photograph by Manoj Bharti Gupta)

Aditya Dhawan is one of the photography artists in Delhi who keeps a consistent interest in photographing people inside the metro trains. His pictures show the social contrasts and social contracts. But Manoj’s pictures have sheer documentary quality, without leaning towards any kind of ideology. He does not make any value judgment of women or their contexts in his pictures. Manoj Bharti Gupta takes a lot of interest in the human ‘aloneness’, which is unique and lonely at the same time. Before closing this short note appreciation, I should say, I have not yet seen Manoj in person though both of us live in Delhi. 

A Journey Starts: Going to Thiruvannamalai

(Picture for illustrative purpose only- source internet)

When the faithless sets off for his journey, not too many people find it interesting. When the faithful packs up even for a small trip outside his home town, it is generally seen as a pilgrimage. The ones who believe in pilgrimages and the ones who believe in the divinities in those places naturally attract the attention of the people who have not crossed the thresholds of their own houses for a real pilgrimage. The believer who goes out to holy places carries a part of holiness in him/her. When he goes out, it is an expectation of the others that makes his trip so important and when he comes back he brings back a bit of divinity that he himself has witnessed. Our land is full of such moving holy people who in their daily lives really do not claim to have such divinities. They are just ordinary people indulging in ordinary things. But something makes them different. They have so many stories to tell and some miracles to perform. At the same time our country is filled with faithless people who are also in their own pilgrimage. Perhaps, their trips are not called pilgrimages. They are wanderers in the lonely terrains of negation and restlessness. As they go on, they too imbibe a bit of divinity without their own knowledge, though others do not acknowledge it. There are instances when believers go for pilgrimage and come back as non-believers and there are non-believers who go for pilgrimages and come back as faithful people.

(Shirdi Sai Baba Mandir)

I think I have gone through both these facets of belief. When I went to Shirdi, the seat of Sai Baba, I did not have any particular belief in me. My friend had wished for my sake that he would take me to the feet of Sai Baba. I liked my friend more than any other divine personality at that point of time so I decided to go along with him. He took me there in his car after a long drive from Goa where we all had gone for spending one year ending and for witnessing the beginning of a new year. I was ready to believe in the power of the place but the moment I came to know that ten thousand rupees that one of us was carrying in the bag was picked at the sanctum sanctorum of the Shirdi Temple by organized pickpockets operating from within the temple premises. We went to the police station and there were a few like us who got stolen during the temple visit. Policemen took it so lightly and they said it was a usual occurrence. If it was a usual occurrence, I thought there must be beneficiaries within the police force and temple authorities. Someone suggested that the money lost must be taken as an offering to the Baba as the Baba had wished so. What was that kind of a demand from a holy man from a person who was taking a family comprising of two small kids to ‘see’ him? And even if it was a forced offering there, then I should have been benefitted from that incident in the coming days. Contrary to my belief, I lost a series of jobs though gained a big project only to lose it forever after conducting it successfully. We all, including my friend chose not to talk about it ever since.

(Artist Gayatri Gamuz)

This time, however, when I decided to travel to Thiruvannamalai with Shibu Natesan, I had a different feel about it in my mind. I took it as an experiment. Friends who had gone there before me told me different stories about their visit, sojourn or stay. Shibu has been visiting Thiruvannamalai for the last ten years and if given a chance he is ready to buy a house and settle there, a move that according to him would solve his issues regarding the ‘right’ place to live and work the way he wants. I have been hearing good things about Thiruvannamalai for a long time not only from Shibu but also from a few other people. When I say good things, I do not make a judgment about the place or the people who tell me these stories. For me, good things mean, stories about peaceful and affordable life that they lead there. Anand and Gayatri Gamus, an environmental activist and poet and his Spanish wife who became Gayatri long back, have been living there for a long time. They live in hutments created by them in their own farm. Anand does farming, writes poetry and involve in environmental activism in his own style. Gayatri Gamus paints in her studio there and exhibits in different parts of India. Three years before Abul Kalam Azad, a noted photography artist (former photo journalist) moved there and set up his studio. Now with the help of Tulsi Suvarnalakshmi and many other friends he became successful in setting up Kalai Illam, House of Art and Ekalokam Trust for Photography. ETP is now involved in a huge year long project where a set of selected artists document Thiruvannamalai throughout the year. Anil Dayanand, another artist also has moved to Thiruvannamalai.

 (Abul Kalam Azad- Photography artist)

Azad has been inviting me to Kalai Illam at Thiruvannamalai for a long time. Each time I received his invitation I declined it as I was not feeling the true calling had yet come. An unwilling traveler as always I have been , postponing a trip is a joyous thing for me. It does not have anything to do with people or place; I simply do not want to travel. I do not even want move out of the room where I sit. But things are like that I travel quite often, mostly for work. But I like to wander around in the small alleys and sit silently in temples where people do not frequent that often. Destiny is a different thing altogether, you believe in it or not. I always feel that you undertake a journey when the time is ripe and you are mentally prepared. That’s why when Shibu called me and offered me a trip to Thiruvannamalai, which he said would change my life completely. I smiled at the offer though I did not reject it completely. Slowly I started thinking that it was time for me to go. With severed ties with many in life, I started believing that it was time to undertake a trip to Thiruvannamalai. And I was happy that it was with Shibu who always have a lot of things to tell me. He talks sense except when he is not pulling my leg. So instantly I agreed to travel with him. My happiness was also due to the fact that I could meet Azad and other friends in Thiruvannamalai without feeling the guilt of rejecting their invitations earlier. Shibu was supposed to inaugurate a show of his old friend Chrigen Ulhmann at Kalai Illam. The time was perfect as I too had a good reason to visit Kalai Illam with Shibu.

(Kazhakkoottam, entry to Trivandrum City)

It is a reunion sort of thing for Shibu Natesan and myself. He is a declared spiritualist but I am a declared materialist. But the materialist does not have money to purchase a travel bag that could accommodate a couple of dresses and the basic things for a weeklong trip. So Shibu offers me one of his shoulder bags which I think should not be returned in the near future. Hence, I go to his palatial house in Attingal with a few clothes packed up in a small polythene cover and transfer them into the bag that he gives me. I am happy to have a new bag on my back though it has to go back to its owner in the near future. I write this with the hope that out of shame he will not insist that I should return the bag. We are dropped at Kazhakkoottam from where we are supposed to get into the Volvo bus that would take us to Villupuram. From where we have to take another bus to Thiruvannamalai. At sharp six in the evening the bus comes and we get in. We instantly strike friendship with the bus driver and the attendant. They promise that they would take care of us during the rest of the trip including dropping us safely at Villupuram. The bus heads for Chennai which is another four hours drive from there.

(Film star Vikram)

Shibu, as we all know by now, is a very famous landscape painter also. That makes him the natural claimant for the window seat. His argument is simple; he is a landscape artist so he needs to see a lot of landscape. I take an avuncular position and let him take the window seat. It is good to see him enjoying the passing landscape. As we cross Trivandrum and enter Tamil Nadu, which is made conspicuous by change of language from Malayalam to Tamil in the hoardings and posters, also by changing the faces of the actors and actresses in those posters, the bus attendant switches the LED television screen on and plays a movie called ‘Dhool’. It is a film with Vikram in lead. Vikram is one of the success stories in Tamil film industry. With none to back him up, he started off his career as a struggling small time artist to find his way to the top rungs of the Tollywood industry. He found his success when he crossed the age of forty. His Annyan, which is dubbed as ‘Aparichit’ in Hindi made him a national success also. I decide to watch the movie and let Shibu indulge in his romance with nature which has been growing darker by time. Though I like Vikram, I feel Dhool is a very boring movie. The same old story of a simpleton moving to the city is repeated with the same masala ingredients. At some point I could almost tell what would come next. The bus is in a rush to take us to Villupuram and many others to different destinations, therefore the attendant tells us that there was no ‘formal’ stop for having dinner. They give us five minutes in Nagercoil to freshen up ourselves and have a tea and a bite from the available array of snacks. Men rush to one of the dark corners at the edge of the bus station and liberally ease themselves. Hapless woman scramble here and there in group and finally they find a proper paid loo just outside the bus station.

(Shibu Natesan)

Back inside the bus the air condition has been stepped up. It is one ploy to make the passengers sleep as early as possible so that the driver could step on the accelerator without letting the passengers know of the horrifying speed of the bus in the highway. They provide us with a blanket and we have comfortable push back seats. A graphic rendering of the people sleeping in such bus would show a series of strangers sleeping on the lap of the ones who sit just behind them. I look at Shibu and he is not in a mood to sleep. He just wants to look outside and lap in everything that he sees. But after sometime he too grows tired of watching outside and prepares himself to sleep. We say something to comfort ourselves and crack some jokes in hushed up tones. Slowly, with the steady rocking of the bus on the smooth highway, we fall into a deep slumber. We are woken up by the benevolent bus attendant who has been giving company to the driver throughout the night. We pick up our bag and get down at Villupuram. Once we are out of the bus we still have a steady rock feeling. Dazed and amazed at the scenes of a sleeping town we look around us in three sixty degree. From the lights seen at one side of the road we recognize the bus stand. There are no people on the road to ask for directions. But we trust our instinct and walk towards the light. We pass two arches and mark them as landmarks when we come back to take the bus for Trivandrum. At Villupuram Bus Stand, suddenly the world looks different. People have parked themselves on the floor and even on the platforms. Stalls selling flowers, tea and plastic toys are very much alive. I recognize the consumers; women want to wear flowers even if they are not washed and cleaned there at the bus stop. Children bawl for toys and toys are immediately bought and peace is maintained amongst the squatting families waiting for their buses to places unknown to us. Men want to drink tea, standing and women do the same sitting on the floor. We also feel like having a cup of tea from there. But people with regular habits often find it difficult to have a cup of early morning syrup like tea rich with milk. The moment you consume it, your bowels are ready and you need to ease yourself. We ask ourselves how much time would it take us to reach Thiruvannamalai. It is hardly two hours, says a bus conductor who stands in front of a bus ready to depart for Thiruvannamali sharp at five in the morning. We have a few minutes left for having a cup of tea. But both of us are skeptical about it. The conductor assures us that there will be a tea break in between. We reach a silent agreement on skipping the morning to saving ourselves from some undeclared embarrassment by our own bodies. We get into the bus and we thus start our journey to Thiruvannamalai.

People Who Leave Things Behind for Greater Freedom and Happiness: Some Un-Celebrated Stories

(Anton Chekhov)

You all may know that famous story by Anton Chekhov, in which he tells the story of a young barrister who gets into a bet of entering into self imposed solitary confinement for  fifteen years. Titled ‘The Bet’, finally sees the young lawyer who argues solitary confinement is better than capital punishment, after his prolonged confinement in a sealed room where one could give him food and books through a small window that shows only the hands of the giver, leaving the room unnoticed by anyone before the formal ending of his tenure in confinement, even eschewing the bet money of two million rubles. Dawning of wisdom has prompted his fleeing. He realizes the flimsiness of human life and the futility of money.  He does not feel that he was making a great sacrifice. He could not have done otherwise. He is destined to be ‘free’ after those fifteen years of asking the pivotal questions: Who am I? What money would do to me? You may also remember ‘The Walls’, a story by Vaikom Muhammed Basheer where by the end of his jail term the freed protagonist asks, Who wants freedom? He is in love within the walls of the jail, with a woman in the women’s ward, whom he ‘sees’ only by her voice heard from the other side.

(The Bet in an artist's imagination)

Not in everyone’s life such wisdom makes its appearance. None realizes the fact that life cannot be replaced with life and freedom or love with ‘freedom’ at all. One could find freedom in confinement and once they are freed, they no longer want the freedom that the materialistic world offers to them. They have found it elsewhere; mostly in themselves. It is surprising to know that even today there are people, often unsung and recognized, who leave their vocations and careers for ‘freedom’ after realizing the triviality of the pursuit behind the so called happiness that comes only with the accumulation of material wealth. They, after a prolonged self questioning, one fine morning decide to leave everything behind and become something else. They recognize their real calling at some point in their lives and decide to quit what they have been doing so far. If you read the book ‘Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish’ by Rashmi Bansal you would come across many such people who have left their colorful and rich careers for something down to earth and more humane. Rashmi Bansal shows the examples of a few sharp brains, who after graduating from  cream institutes like IIT and IIMs, and also after pursuing a career that gives them hefty pay packets, doing something totally different and finding their freedom, satisfaction and of course success. However, even in this book success is something that is related to their wealth generation, if not for themselves but for a larger community. But the fact is that we cannot outrun material wealth or negate it altogether for total deliverance and liberation. Then, success and freedom should be seen in context; maximum happiness to maximum people, perhaps unto the last, through the ways one is capable of.

(Cover page of Stay Hungry Stay Foolish by Rashmi Bansal)

‘Stay Hungry Stay Foolish’ could be another way of telling you how you could also become ‘successful’.  Their success is measured by what they have achieved after their transformation. But there are people in small little corners of our country (as seen elsewhere), totally unassuming and doing something absolutely different from what they are ‘cut out’ for through their education. They may not make ‘good’ copies or worth following examples as they do not make too much of the alternative market they have either created or entered after their sojourn in the mainstream market. They are happy in their small little rented rooms and are also happy in doing what they are doing. It is a way of finding freedom and happiness. I happened to meet one such person one of these days as one of my young friends decided to take me to a person who he thinks that I should have met even earlier. This young man, Amritjude Vijayan, a Siddha doctor came to know about me through his mother who was my high school teacher. He started following me in facebook and blogs and became an ardent admirer. He admires me, in his own admittance, for the way I take things without getting too excited. Our friendship developed through facebook conversations about the history of our village.

(Shantakumari Teacher, her husband and grandchild)

Amritjude comes home sharp at three in the afternoon. I sit ready as I know that as a doctor he would keep his time. He picks me up from my home and we go to pick up his four year old son from his school and reach their home within fifteen minutes time. I meet Shanthakumari teacher, who looks a little bit aged but keeping her enthusiasm like a very strict teacher that she always has been. She is an ardent learner and speaks a very dignified Malayalam. Amritjude’s father is also there and he knows me only from ‘stories’ he has heard about me. I recount the stories of my school days and remind her how strict a teacher she was. She gives me a benevolent smile and tells me that she had taken a policy to keep the boys under total ‘control’ by terrorizing them. “If boys are under control then teaching becomes very smooth,” she tells with a smile. I look at her.  Years have made some changes on her face, but I think she remains the same teacher, who used to wear round gold frame reading glasses. May be today, the frame of her spectacles is different in shape and color but I see her as she used to be in those days. We all look at the school building that is seen from the sitting room of their house and for a moment all we go silent. Years come landing silently between us and take off in another moment giving a fleeting sense of those good old days. I humbly mention about my attempt to do a PhD and she is so happy to hear it. Then she tells me that at the age of fifty four, at least five years before, she took one more MA in Sociology. This time it is my turn to feel proud of my teacher and I note it down in my mind that next time, perhaps, she would tell me that she has already enrolled for another MA or even for a PhD.

(Dr.Amritjude Vijayan and Dr.Divya Amritjude)

Receiving her blessings with all humility, I get into Amritjude’s car and he is eloquent on Siddha as a discipline. He tells me how he uses his knowledge of Siddha to create a holistic life style for his patients. His wife too is a Siddha doctor and both of them live a simple life, by doing right from cleaning their hospital to giving physiotherapy to the patients all by themselves. Amritjude also records medicinal plants with his video recorder, edits and gives a voice over as if the plant itself is speaking and posts them in youtube. Besides, he writes a blog and posts in his website titled www.siddham.in . He and his wife do free consultation online for patients who approach them through their website or facebook. Amritjude recognized his calling almost ten years back, when he was an Information Technology professional. He left a lucrative career behind to study Siddha medicine and now he tells me that he has found his calling. With the help of a few like-minded people he conducts workshops about holistic living with no ‘religious’ hangover attached to it. He believes in a kind of spiritualism that comes from the primary belief that body is a temple. If the body is treated like a temple then the spiritual pursuit becomes much easier. As he drives on, he tells me more about Siddha medicine not as a doctor but more like a budding philosopher. He tells me that when he finishes shooting a medicinal plant with his video camera, by the time he finishes with it, he feels that he is touched by a gentle breeze and he completely believes that this is the way the plant speaking to him. I tend to believe it because I can believe in it.

(Sreekanda Kumar Pillai)

Amritjude tells me that he wants me to meet Sreekanda Kumar Pillai. The name sounds a bit long and I imagine that I am going to meet an ‘old man’. But in Kazhakkoottam, a small town near Trivandrum, near a temple, there is a row of buildings and on the first floor of one of them in a small room but complete with an air-conditioner and two desk top computers when I meet Sreekanda Kumar, suddenly I feel that he is very young and he is really young. Hailing from a not so rich family he did his schooling in a village in Karette, near Attingal. Good in studies and inclined to technology, he obtained admission for computer engineering in the Regional Engineering College, Trivandrum and once finished with his degree soon he found himself in the US working for Infosys. Ten long years he spent there in the US and came back without picking up an ‘accent’. He did not want to be leashed by the covetable name tag of a techie. He did not want to eat too many burgers and also did not want to spell names in the US way. He came back to Kerala and he knew that he could start his own ‘business’ in a small way by writing a technical blog that offered solutions for software issues. It was not holding his mind for long. He was yearning for something else. He wanted to become much simpler. So he became a web designer; many rungs lower than a computer engineer would like to stand even without a decent job. As he was doing web designing, as he was/is inclined to Indian spiritual literature and traditional literature, he found that not that much ancient wisdom was available online that too in Malayalam language.

Sreekanda Kumar Pillai, whom his close friends call ‘Sree’, realized that collecting ancient and spiritual literature and making them available online in Malayalam language was his life’s mission. He started doing it in a small way, initially with the help of a friend and later with occasional volunteers like Amritjude, and later all by himself. He titled it www.sreyas.in. Today, you could read a treasure trove of spiritual literature in Malayalam online free in this website. It offers biographies in pdf, in word format, and also homes a lot of enlightening articles, essays and scholarly studies. A section is particularly devoted for recorded spiritual and literary discourses in mp3 and videos. Anybody who even searches in such topics in English and happen to be a Malayali could reach this site as it is designed for other language crawlers too. Now he single handedly runs a foundation called Sreyas Foundation in order to popularize ancient and spiritual literature in Malayalam. He finds funds for his activities from his web designing job and also from the money that he gets by doing some consultancy job. Sreekanda Kumar is just another young man in the street, one may find if one happens to see him in the street. But he works relentlessly and with all diligence. I think he is happy and his happiness is reflected in his smile and demeanor. Importantly, in our short but meaningful meeting we never talked a word about money!

Haven’t you seen such people in your village too, who have not be celebrated so far? Yes, but they do not do any of their activities to become celebrities. I think I have found two young friends who want to give what they could gather to the world rather than taking too much from it. Their taking is in a different sense; they take from what we do not often heed; from plants to palm leaves scriptures. And I sit silently as Amritjude drives back home under a thick rain and a cover of darkness that is dispelled by a pair of strong headlights.

Art and Healing: An Unknown Artist who Dares Cancer

On the fourth platform of Eranakulam South Railway Station, the superfast train that runs between New Delhi and Trivandrum which is popularly known as ‘Kerala Express’ has already arrived. At the entrance of the railway station a huge crowd stands in waiting for someone important to come. A white banner hung casually across the tasteless concrete window that conspicuously stands in contrast with the impeccable white uniforms of the officials gathered there announces the arrival of the central Railway Minister. For the time being the railway station and the authorities seem to be less concerned with the passengers as they expectantly wait for the mighty one to alight from one of the trains that would chug in a few minutes’ time at the platform number one. Policemen and security personnel stand alert but their facial expressions betray their weariness. I imagine the minister as a responsible authority and an earnest passenger who has boarded the train two days before from New Delhi and travels all the way to Eranakulam in order to get a firsthand experience of the plight of the ordinary passengers who have to make up with dirty loos and substandard food in the rundown rail bogies. However, commonsense tells me that the minister must have flown in from Delhi and after landing at the Nedumbasseri Airport, he must have taken a train from the nearest railway station, which is Aluva.

Usually I reach railway stations and airports well ahead of time to avoid last minute confusion and above all to keep my blood pressure under control. But today I arrive late, leaving several conversations with scholarly friends half way, saying that those would be continued when we meet in Trivandrum again after two days. A benevolent auto driver takes me to the railway station and he does not overcharge me. At the ticket counter, the booking clerk, a black Mamma, takes her sweet time to punch in a ticket. At the enquiry counter, a young lady whose voice turns into the sound of an android when it passes through a speaker tells me that my train has already come at the platform number four. Steps on the flyover literally fly past under my scurrying feet and I reach a compartment next to the pantry car. Fragrance of various food items waft in the air. The pantry attendants are now relaxed as Eranakulam is the last major junction where a majority of the passengers get down after a forty eight hours long trip. I get a comfortable seat and I try to focus on myself before focusing on other people in the compartment. Last two days were really hectic with animated and spirited conversations till midnight. I try to gather myself and my thoughts, and then try to kill the thoughts one by one till I become vacant. That is a difficult task. But I feel peace and slowly I go into a deep, no not meditation but sleep.

Seated opposite to me there is a young man and a woman whose age I cannot determine vis-a-vis the age of the young man. When I wake up from my comforting slumber, I see this young man and woman. From the paraphernalia that they are carrying along with them I understand they are headed to a hospital for the large envelops are typical to medical reports and X-rays. For a moment I feel that both of them are healthy and their purpose of travel must be different. However, when the young man gets up to go to the washroom, I see him slightly labouring himself to control his body. He gets up and straightens his body with considered efforts. I imagine that he is the ill one. But the lady looks extremely silent though her face shows some kind of tiredness that is not a result of either travel or fatigue. It is the kind of silence and tiredness that we see on the faces of those people who undergo some sort of deep sorrow. She is neither young nor old. Some white hair along the hairline that borders her forehead slightly betray her age. The young man comes back from the washroom and whispers something to her and she promptly takes out the large envelope and pulls out a transparent file. I see a bunch of papers and receipts and to my shock I read the print on one of the papers: ‘Regional Cancer Centre’.  

(The Book Cover of Ram Kinker and His Works by K.G.Subramnyan)

I feel a sharp sense of anxiety cutting though my innards, for no reason. I recognize that this young man is suffering from cancer. I still do not know what this woman is to him, mother or sister? She looks too young to be his mother and too old to be his sister. I study their profiles and facial features; they look alike. Now I am sure about their relationship; they must be brother and sister. He picks up a couple of papers from the file and takes out a ball point pen and sets to work. The woman gives him a popular weekly which she was seen reading when I entered the compartment. He starts something on the paper with serious concentration. I watch him working on it. Now I know that he is sketching something. I get this eerie feeling that he wants to sketch me. But he does not look at me. He keeps drawing and covertly I glance at the movements of his right hand. Initially I think that he is drawing a woman sitting at the window. But he does not look at her either. Then I think that he is drawing an imaginary girl who is wearing a skirt and blouse. As he draws the legs, I immediately get this feeling that he has lost it. Soon he finishes his sketching and starts giving some highlighting touches here and there. I cannot hold my curiosity any longer. I ogle at his drawing and find that it is the picture of a Roman soldier, may be a sci-fi character; a sort of memory drawing. He hands over the drawing papers and pen to the woman, she takes it in her hands and looks at it without any change in her facial expression. Then she keeps the papers back inside the file and keeps it inside the large envelope.

Once again the young man gets up laboriously and goes to the washroom. I feel like asking the woman about him but resist myself and wait for the young man to come back. Soon he comes back and the silent conversation between them takes place. As he settles down, I prepare myself to ask my question. I ask him whether he has studied art formally. And he replies in affirmative. I ask for the school’s name. He says the name of a private art institution in North Paraur near Eranakulam. I have not heard about it.  He asks whether I am a painter myself or not. My answer is in negative. But I tell him that I am an art writer ( I did not want to confuse him with the titles like art critic or art historian) and explain it further saying that I write about art and artists. Why I do not paint or draw is his next question. I tell him that I do not know how to paint or draw. He tells me that he took out pen and paper to sketch me as he thought that I looked like an arty person. He also says that he recognizes arty people by looking at their hands. I think here he has gone wrong. My hands look more like those of a worker than that of an artist. I remember someone commenting at the Baroda station ticket counter as I was standing in a queue for my ticket and was speaking to a friend in English, saying that these days even the working class people speak in English. With my chosen Spartan looks of all time worst during the student days, there was no surprise that stranger took me for a labourer.

As he speaks on about art, his liking and disliking, I ask him why he did not choose to study art. The woman leans backward and moves her lips in order to tell me that ‘he is unwell’ and I tell her in the same way that I understand. I come to know that she is his mother and he is thirty years old. His father is a tailor working in North Paraur and his brother works in some gulf country. He left his studies by the time he finished his schooling (tenth pass) and did not try for admission in art schools as he did not have the required basic qualification. But since then he has been practicing art and been working as a graphic artist and animator. He has contributed his artistic skills as an animator in one of the recently released movies in Malayalam, he tells me. Soon he moves to the technical matters about art; how to know more about colour mixing, is there any book of tips on line drawing available in Malayalam language etc. I search in my memory for information and I fail miserably. May be there are no technical books in Malayalam about learning how to paint or draw. I ask him why he needs to go through those books at all. He says that he wants to ‘learn’ more about techniques. I tell him technique is perfected as he goes on sketching, drawing and painting. He goes silent for a moment. Then I speak of him about artists who have gone beyond techniques and suddenly I remember that I have a couple of copies of ‘Ram Kinkar and His Art’, a book by K.G.Subramanyan which I have translated into Malayalam. It was released a couple of days back in Kochi by the cultural minister of Kerala.

(The title page of the translated 'Ram Kinkar and His works)

I offer him a copy of the book. He takes it in his hand and looks at me some kind of disbelief in his eyes. I tell him that the copy is for him. He, with a great enthusiasm goes through the pages and I sense that he has been hooked by the images of Ram Kinkar Baij’s works. I tell him more about Ram Kinkar Baij and how he worked without heeding much to technique as he was a master craftsman by nature and by practice. This young man has too many questions and I answer them patiently. I ask him whether he keeps his drawings and sketching for future reference. This time the answer comes from his mother. She tells me how he destroys his drawings periodically after studied review of his own works. I tell him about the need for preserving his works. He says that his main ambition was to make a bust of Lord Shiva in cement and concrete. Not so big, but still big enough, he adds. Then he goes into silence. His mother tells me that it was then he was detected with cancer; he is affected at the lower end of his spine. Doctors have advised an operation. But they have not given any assurance, says the mother. He could even go paralysed from waist, if the operation fails, she adds in a matter of fact way. I do not know what to tell her. Soon he changes his tone; once again he becomes enthusiastic about his opinion on art. Interestingly, he even talks about art market and the kinds of money that art could make. Then he asks me the crucial question; is it necessary to conduct exhibitions to become a great artist? The question is naive, I know. But I tell him that exhibitions are perhaps not necessary but having a body of work is important.

Superfast Kerala Express has been running like a local passenger train and it is already a couple of hours late from the scheduled time. I realize that my station is approaching. I take the book from his hand and scribble down on the title page the following lines: Art heals the body, art heals the mind, art is the ultimate medicine that heals the deadliest of diseases. I write in Malayalam and sign under it. He takes the book back and reads it. His mother too reads it and her expression remains unchanged. I get up to walk towards the door. I hold his long fingered palm with my worker’s hand and tell him: You will go back healed. And you will make your Shiva.

I want to believe that my words come true, though I am an ordinary mortal with no divine powers.