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Tales from beyond

One of the scenes from my past that simply refuses to go away is about this swanky, squeaky-clean, newly-installed gadget. There had been a kind of debate within the family about resorting to it. While one branch of the argument was all in favour of the new-fangled thing -- for the usual reasons: it is modern so it is good; it is ecologically friendly; non-pollutant; etc -- the other, led by me, ever the traditionalist, argued in favour of not abandoning rituals and practice. I was, I am glad to say in retrospect, voted out after the mater used her casting vote.

Thus it was, that torrid summer afternoon in Madras, I came to be holding an urn full of ashes that had been ejected by the new electric crematorium. All that remained of my father, after batting for 71 years in the Lord's team was an urn of ashes, a couple of largish bones that refused to be vaporised by the intense heat. It is a godawful feeling for a son, to be holding the remains of his father, with the knowledge slowly sinking in that this is how everything ends. The petty battles one wages every day of one's life, the ego clashes, the scraping, the bowing, the wheeling and dealing, everything comes down to just this.

A handful of ash, or a fistful of mud...

Not that I was hopelessly lost at my father's demise. He had led a full life, a satisfactory one, seen his grandchildren kick him on the chest as all grandparents dream of -- or so the lore goes -- and died relatively painlessly. In fact, I daresay, rare, and fortunate, is the son who shares a 'normal' relationship with his father. Let Freudists grapple with that one, but all anger, disillusionment, irritation directed at the sire breaks down the moment you find him reduced to less than a kilo of ash.

The tragedy is that, from now on, there is no physical target to direct one's true feelings at, to "take it out" on the old man. For how long can one focus on a concept, a thought, and blame it for all ills in one's life, real and perceived? Thus it is that sons continue to have the bile fester in them with no outlet in sight, till their own turn comes soon enough.

What caused this strange stream of consciousness is the death of my former editor, Janardan Thakur. No, this is not my instalment of 'The Janardan Thakur I knew', but a cliché-ridden, already well-known narrative on the suddenness of death, that is being published by rediff.com only because my column is due for today.

I had met Thakur 10 years ago, when he relocated to Mumbai from Delhi, as the editor of a publication I was in the process of leaving. After being in the thick of the political jungle, the financial capital, with its different work ethos, must have been an alien creature for him, but to his credit he soldiered on. Moving on to the Free Press Journal, he managed to turn it around editorially, proving that an unresponsive management is no hurdle for journalistic effort; if anything, that lack of support would only show in the circulation figures, not in public esteem. Thakur left Mumbai some years later, got back again, proving that this transformed Mumbai Dilip Kumar and others are complaining about, still retained its legendary magic that brings back those who leave.

Through the years, I remained in touch with Thakur, and often marvelled at his spriteness. Never one to say 'no' to do a write-up, Thakur remained, till the end, a compendium of political lore. His death was sudden -- only a couple of days before, he had dropped in on the office to hand in his latest article for us.

Life is so funny, I can't help thinking about my ex-editor. The minute you start believing that you have got everything under control, comes the knock-out that shows you who's boss. Death is the serpent that destroys one's private Eden, the ultimate spoiler against which there is no defence.

Whoever wrote the corny line 'the dead tell no tales' was either untouched by death, or did not love enough to feel a sense of bereavement when death came knocking on a door nearby. What greater pain, what more vivid reminder can there be, than eternal absence fanned by shared moments, but obviously, ad-libbers are immune to this and other kinds of feeling.

Another myth about death is that it affects you only when a near and dear one is claimed; if that was true, footage of grieving yet proud families of our fallen soldiers in Kargil will not move us, bring a tear to our eye in silent acknowledgement of our own cowardice and another's valour.

One of the most surprising moments in my life was when the news of Rajiv Gandhi's assassination reached me minutes after the event. My first reaction was to break down, as if it was a personal tragedy, while the truth was Gandhi did not mean anything to me. I had never voted for him, was part of the media hype when it went hammer and tongs at him over the Bofors thing, and always thought he was a Lilliputian who had blundered into a world of Brobdingnagians. And yet, I wept at his death. Was it at a life cut short? It can't be, for urban life exposes one to any number of premature deaths, many more tragic than Gandhi's own. Yet, there was something about the way the ex-prime minister's life was cut short that made me grieve for him.

And, one could be calloused by one's experiences, repeated tragedy may sear the soul, but it is moot if any number of encounters with death could prepare one for the next. As long as there is life to be celebrated, there is death to be feared in its wake.

One of my most enduring images was from years ago, when a young friend met her end in a swimming pool. Ironically, she was, to fall back on a cliché yet again, the life and soul of the party, and naturally she was the apple of her father's eye. The next time I visited them, it was with shock that I saw the laughter and the joie de vivre encapsulated in a photo frame, with grief leaving its imprint on the father's face. The next time round, there was immense joy in the room. Both the cheerful faces were inside the picture frame.

Death has only one antidote. And that is death.

Saisuresh Sivaswamy