A cousin and
I were studying Engineering in the same college. He was my senior by a
(academic) year. When the examinations appeared far away we both read novels, mainly
popular novels. Those were the days when Alistair McLean, Arthur Hailey, James
A Michener, Harold Robbins, to name a few, supplied a large part of our
reading. One day, the two of us were talking away about some of the books we
had recently read. My father and this cousin's father were listening to us. But
we were unaware of it.
Suddenly a
soft voice asks, "ಅವನು ಯಾಕೆ ಬರೀತಾನೆ?" (Why does he write?). It emanated from a diminutive
man with unkempt grey hair, clad in a faded white cotton, perhaps khadi, dhoti
and an un-pressed, nondescript bush shirt. An expectant pair of inquisitive
eyes stared at us from behind fairly thick, glasses. We were stumped. We
struggled for an answer. Did not find any, convincing or otherwise. Eventually
I came to the conclusion that he/they wrote for money, fame and so on. Did they
really have something to say? Perhaps Michener had. Did we get an idea of what
the characters in the novel felt deep inside them? The answer surprised me –
perhaps Harold Robbins’ characters did. Did the problems the characters faced have
any bearing on my life? I later read about literature and art and got a ghost
of an idea of what makes good literature. Perhaps this question had a lot to do
with it.
That innocuous sounding soft question triggered a lot of things.
The man behind the question passed away recently, aged about 96. When I
looked back at the times I had with him
and what I had heard about his life, as happens when we lose someone, my
admiration for and fascination with and respect for him were all renewed.
My sisters and I called him ಅಣ್ಣಣ್ಣ (aNNANNa). He was the
elder cousin of my father, whom we called ಅಣ್ಣ (aNNa), which
means elder brother. Being aNNa’s aNNa, he became aNNANNa. He was one of
the most well-read people I have met. His formal education ended perhaps at intermediate
(12 years of formal education). Though he had to take up a job, (as a ticketing
clerk in a touring kannaDa drama company, if I remember right) he kept in touch
with his deep interest in literature, mathematics, philosophy and politics (leftist
philosophy) and life and the world in general. When younger, he read
mathematics in his spare time.
Later, he managed the agricultural
lands of a landlord, in a place called kilAra. He bought a small house in
Mysore to enable his children to study further. That is when he became more of
a regular visitor to our place. He came home and talked to my father about various
things. Sometimes the discussions would get really heated and voices would be
raised. My mother had to come out and calm them down – “The neighbours will
think that there is a fight on!” The discussions were most illuminating.
He was shy and unobtrusive. After talking
to my father for an hour or so, my mother would offer him something to drink.
Invariably his drink of choice was hot water as he suffered from Asthma. He used
to drink coffee, once upon a time. He was an ardent Gandhian. Once he was
trying to make a man from his village give up alcohol. That man challenged
aNNaNNa “it is easy for you to ask me to give up drinking. Let me see if you
can give up coffee!” He never touched coffee again.
It was almost impossible to make a
biased, sweeping, generalized statements in his presence. With a sweet and
inquisitive smile on his face, he would challenge it. I had to either withdraw
it completely or modify it so much that it was no longer as broad or as
sweeping or as biased as it once was. I have a feeling that it taught me to
weigh my words before I speak. And eventually it made me wary of almost all
kinds of generalisations and biases. My
father had a very big role in this too. But what aNNaNNa did was different.
He passed away when I was on travel.
I was back for the 13th (?) day rituals. At lunch that day, along
with the usual “tAmbUla” all those who attended were given a copy of DVG’s “mankutimmana
kagga”. I thought that THAT was a befitting way to end those rituals.