As some of you might know, Charu Nivedita is a fiery writer. Some of his writings have been branded as down-right anti-establismentarian, almost-pornographic etc.. Mind you, the operative word in the previous sentence is branded :-)
But that is not the point... He writes nicely. His writings want you as the reader to contribute to the overall fulfilling experience and hence I like him.
For more of Charu's writings, read him at www.charuonline.com and for a beautiful tamil Translation of this letter, please check this out --> www.charuonline.com/kp122.html
Here we go...
For a change, we had planned everything nicely to go to Sri Lanka in late November for a week. We managed to enjoy the place immensely as we had a very good Singapore-SriLankan friend who was with us through out the trip. She is from one of the southern-most parts of Sri Lanka - a place called Matara - which alone seems to have lost more than 1000 lives due to the tsunamis. Fortunately, she is safe, but her house - she slogged for nine years in Singapore as a part-time maid to get that done - has been damaged badly, I believe. A great pity!
Then we were in Thiruvananthapuram for a week - hob-nobbing with the relatives... I like Kerala very much. At least that capital city seems to be working reasonably.
A few interesting snippets that happened during that trip in TVM:
1. Auto drivers are honesty-personified. For a distance of about 5 km, the guy at 10 in the night, wanted only Rs 30 !!!! I had braced myself to hear Rs. 150!
2. Kerala's literacy rate and the literature-intent is legendary. But I was surprised/impressed to see a car driver (we had arranged for one to go to Coutrallam from there) reading a translated version of Sherlock Holmes (Engineerude Vieral!!) Of course, life is always throwing a curve-ball at you... I remembered your words about the Kerala 'real literacy' - the fact that ZD has been translated and known more in Malayalam than in 'Semmozhi' Thamizh and about the auto-rickshaw (or was it normal rickshaw) driver who spoke to you as if he knew your works by-heart!
3. The apathy that we (as in Paandis = derogatory slang that the Keralites use on Tamilians), show towards our own things is again crazy. On the way from Thiruvananthapuram to Coutrallam, the driver (same Sherlock Holmes man!) said that he rather likes a lesser-known Paalaruvi in Kerala than Coutrallam. I took it with a big load of salt and attributed it to regional parochialism. Mind you I have never been to Coutrallam. (this is tiring to type the full name again and again... I shall refer to it as C Falls hereafter). So I had a pretty high hopes of the place. I even asked him, why he felt so. Interestingly, he said that I would know once I go there.
He was true. With touts everywhere for everything starting from oil massages to toilets to changing places to food to what-not - it was almost a nightmare to reach the waterfalls... The maintenance of the waterfalls in itself is another story... But then I will be branded as a bad traveller if I do that. So I shall let it pass...
That is when I realized that the Holmes driver was not comparing the Natural beauty of C Falls, but rather the un-natural ugliness of human behaviour. Perceptive...
One interesting sidelight in C Falls was the attempts of men-folk to take photos of the water-falls... (I assume that you have been to C Falls. The main falls (as does others I believe) has a male section and a female section...with very strict demarcation.)
There were two policemen standing next to the water-falls, whose main job was to prevent people from taking photographs of the women-side. From time to time, they were letting out cautions such as "Antha pakkam camera thirumbichinna, unakku camera thiruppi kidaikkathu" etc.. It was hilarious. This is the land of Delhi Public School scandals and Trisha Bathroom scenes...and the one that gave Kamasutra to the world !!! Irony, mate!
We also touched Kanyakumari during that trip and went to some pristine beaches around that area. I am sure those areas are all under sea now...
The trip, as they say was, so far, so good.
When we landed in Chennai. I was planning to be there only for five days, to attend a wedding and to manage a meeting with you in between. The trip was short because of the fact that Bhargav had to go to Penang for a conference arranged by United Nations on environmental issues.
But the trip was marred by a very tragic death of my cousin - all of 28 years and just finishing his PhD in Chemistry and the only son to my aunt. It has been a great tragedy to that family as he was to be the sole bread-winner for the family. Reason: Sudden Heart Attack. Death in 5 minutes. Heart Attack for a 28 year old strapping young man? Un-imaginable.
That screwed the entire set of plans...
There were the usual questions that came to my mind, such as...
** Who am I? Why am I here? What happens after death? What will people say after my death?
I also saw different facets of people...
- There was this man, who was reading newspaper throughout the day, sitting 10 feet away from the body.
- There was this lady, who was worried about her husband, 'oh, he has not eaten for the whole morning' and sends him off to eat and come back...
- There were countless recountings by various people, how somebody-they-knew had died mysteriously
- There were a few, who were suspecting suicide when they saw blue-tinged finger-tips...little do they know that when a particular part of the body is deprived of oxygen for sometime, then it turns bluish...
- There was my aunt, who kept on asking 'Will you be able to answer my question? Why him?"
- I even found a man dozing off, in that hulla-bulloo..
Life goes on...
I remembered you reading books when Avantika's mother had passed away (except on the NDP day). I could even reconcile myself then, thinking that probably you have become indifferent to the whole thing because of your past experiences both with respect to Avantika and her parents and other Delhi experiences.
I have seen lots of death and destruction in the form of 9/11 and still feel that a non-compassionate act in the face of death is highly galling. The question might be: "What can I do?" The answer is not in "sitting and crying with the people" and definitely not in "reading news papers or dozing off or going out and eating"... The answer is to THINK about what can one do to better the situation. Very few people seemed to have done that. If you do that, then strangely enough, you stop crying.
In the midst of it all, my (another) cousin brother's wedding happened, but with much less fanfare from the heart .The marriage could have been stopped but it would have been a great blow to the bride's side as they had done all the preparations etc.. We also decided not to tell the bride's family about the sad demise as it would put them through the wringer... bad luck, bad omen etc. etc... Not all are rational in the family....
Funny, isn't it?
P.S#1. Now this is NOT funny... we had touched Sri Lanka, Kanyakumari, Chennai, Penang in the past one month or so... all of them have been affected by Tsunamis!!! Have decided to stay put for a while; seems to be taking bad luck all over the place...
How rational is it???
