Birth at funeral

I would have said that I am the happiest man under the sun, if it was yesterday morning. Today I’m not sure whether I am under the sun or not. I am pretty much surprised at the events I witnessed today at home. Instead of blaming the lorry driver I would rather hug him tight. I’m also upset at the mad people who threw stones at him as he was trying to run away from the spot. Everybody including my parents is cursing him for everything without knowing the fact. How do I tell them that the stray dog that was saved by his kind behaviour is lying near the corner teashop feeding her newborn puppies with sweet white milk, without knowing anything about her saviour’s situation. His wife is in a confused state, not knowing what to do. She is weeping with her baby close to her breast looking at her husband who came home late at night with a bleeding head. He was shivering badly. She was about to cry loud, but he quickly covered her mouth and whispered “Don’t give me to anyone!” As she stood in a frozen state he dissolved in the state of coma hugging his son on the floor. I was with him yesterday whole night since the time I found my body dead. It took a few minutes for me to accept the reality that I am no more a part of the blood and flesh that protected me from the real world. I followed him immediately. Ironically today is my birthday too.

I attended my funeral today morning. Unlike every other good and bad events that happened at my home, this is the only time I experienced myself as a silent spectator to the expressions of the people who came to see me. My body was the filthiest thing I had even seen in my life. Being a doctor I had seen many such bodies in front of my eyes and I was always been famous for being so merciless. I could be the best actor in the world for that matter. I kept my emotions so passive towards the newborn babies who opened their eyes to me and to the old men who closed their eyes to me. I felt like a God inside and behaved like a man outside. In psychiatry they say that the brain registers every single image that comes in front of our eyes forever. I always carried this pride inside that all those babies must be retaining my face in their subconscious minds as their first connection to the world and the old men having my face as their lost connection to the world. While closing the eyes of the dead bodies of those old men, I saw myself there. Both the babies and the old men said, “Thank you.” I suppose…

You must be wondering why I thanked the lorry driver. It is because of him I could revisit everybody who was been in my life, as a third person. I attended every single conversation they had among themselves. I could read their minds too. My wife never cried until an old friend who happened to be our best buddy in Medical College came to see me from America. I heard their conversation. Heard from him why he never told me the reason for living as a bachelor even today. Whenever I asked he gave a quick look at her that I never noticed when I was alive. But it is strange that she who remained my twin soul and back born in every single moment of my life, kept it as a sad secret. I am not sure how I would have reacted to it even if she had let it out. Today morning as he came in, she ran to his shoulders and cried like a baby. I saw the same face I fell in love, in the corridors of medical college that I lost sometime somewhere in later point of time. Nurses from the hospital whispered, “He used to be their best friend since college. Isn’t he smart?” There are many moments I regretted for making her my wife from a friend. She was good as a friend. Wasn’t she struggling as my wife? Yet, we remained ideal husband and wife for our parents, son and society. We belonged to the same ‘caste’ and ‘religion’ and our horoscope had a good match. Moreover ‘I loved her', nobody asked whether she loved me, including me…

My parents kept crying whole the time since yesterday. Well, how do I tell them that I am feeling happier than ever before in this state. May be they are the next to smell this aroma of incarnation. When I was alive I always had a concern about their life. Old age was eating their body and mind. Like everybody else I could not have imagined parents leaving me on a day that cannot be written by me even as a doctor. I was too worried about such a state. Now as I float around in an invisible animated ‘some’ form that I'm neither solid, liquid or gas with no sense of touch or smell. I am in a state of no ‘state’. I have no surface. I have no depth. I have no future, present or past. My only state is ‘happiness’ – complete happiness that I always kept searching for when I was alive. How do I tell this to my parents? I am not worried about you any more like any other ‘living’ human being.

I saw my son playing with friends of his age from the kinder garden. He was found so happy to see all his cousins at home. Right now, I want to hug the writer of this story and say that my son is the only one who is enjoying my present state of mind. I wanted to tell him that he doesn’t need to be worried about anything. I saw my son acting smart in front of other children as he always did. He was searching for everyone’s attention that brought smiles even to the face of my crying parents. He was also worried that his American uncle didn’t get him chocolates. He hated the silence around. He was not worried about his ‘sleeping Daddy’. His little mind found the reason for the silence - ‘Daddy is sleeping’. He remembered his mother's voice, “Shhhhh……. Daddy is sleeping.” as always.

Unlike every other occasion in Kerala there was good discipline in people’s behaviour. They all came in a perfect queue that stood long to the road. I saw a Minister and a priest too somewhere in the queue. The minister was showing people the meaning of democracy and priest, his decency. Both of them had a mask - only I could see! I saw the unhappy face of Mr. Avarachan too, who helped me with some money. He looked at the half finished house at the next compound that was a dream for me till yesterday. I am not bothered about it today… They all had flowers in their hands and varied expressions on their faces. The nurses who fancied me, on purpose, kept the flowers over that part of my body they wished to see… but missed… as always. They missed me because I was a sensible human being till yesterday and today I was seen as a senseless human body. My life or death didn’t serve any of their fantasies.

Tomorrow my wife and child might leave to America; my parents might have to spend rest of their life in an old age home; the minister might be winning another election; the priest might become Pope; the little babies might grew up as young men still retaining my image in their subconscious minds; the nurses might continue to fancy my photograph and get naughty; the people might be standing in many more queues with flowers… and the puppies might grow up as annoying stray dogs that leave many more lorry drivers in coma… all that doesn’t make any difference in the system of life and society. They still carry stones in their hands. I am not concerned about any of them.

At present I have only thing do - stay with the lorry driver who saved the dog. If the God willing to give me a chance to enter another body as a new life, I would rather choose his body… and continue his journey… protecting many more dogs... Wish you happy birthday.

* photo - Abey Abraham

Animated, Inanimated & Partially Animated

I don’t know whether he was at the right place or the wrong one when he got that phone call, or whether he started drinking before that phone call or after that. He did react to it exactly the same way I expected. First he decided to throw his mobile off from the cliff and then he thought he should throw himself off. But he didn’t follow either of those instant thoughts but sat down sipping his sixth peg of Gin and Lemonade, smoking the last joint left in his hands.

Joy Kuttan was born as ‘JOY KUTTAN’ for those proud orthodox Christian parents from Kottayam district of Kerala, who believed them to be the successors of one of the disciples of St. George. Unlike the other babies born around the globe at 10.30 AM on 21st Dec 1982, he was considered as a surprise… He surprised everyone by a laugh instead of cry as if he was so excited seeing the first light outside. Doctors claimed that he came out much early too. The next thing he did was winking at the nurse who cleaned him. The priest, Mani Achan, from the nearby church who happened to be there by chance, with all heart, wished him with the name ‘Joy Kuttan’. All the Malayalies thus started calling him ‘Joy Kuttaaaaa….’. For a few years he lived as ‘Baby Boy. Joy Kuttan’. When he once shared screen with Superstar Mammootty for a film as a child actor, his name was scrolled in the credits as ‘Master. Joy Kuttan’. Since then it took many years for him to grow up to the status of Mr. Joy Kuttan.
This is the history, geography and cultural background of this character. I had to stop for a while to clean the utensils in kitchen. While doing that I was thinking on what made him plan his tour in his dirty modified Mahindra Classic Jeep to the suicide point of Kodaikanal from his rich rubber estate in Kottayam… and that too all alone. I really don’t know… may be some kind of instinct. Well, we all do follow instincts! Don’t we? What do you think is the basic instinct behind Cockroach’s plan of writing about one Joy Kuttan in joy that no one seems to enjoy?

Though his intention was not clear, he was obviously not in the mood or the mode of killing himself. But the phone call did knock him down. The intoxication of Gin was so tight too. The phone call could be a rude one, an unexpected one or an unexpectedly rude one… what ever. He smiled at the sky and the dead-end for his jeep and the life, lying down alone at the tip of the cliff. After a while he did something really crazy. Even I didn’t expect that.

He opened his bag and pealed a paper off from the book that first got caught in his hand. (I forgot to say that Joy Kuttan was an avid reader.) It was the first page of ‘Broken Glass’ by African writer Alain Mabanckou where he had written the golden phrase ‘in Africa, when an old person dies, a library burns’. He hardly bothered to read it but scribbled “good bye” on the empty sides of the paper and said this loud in an insanely shivering tone “Thanks for those tiny indecent reasons of your own, that I am on my own from now on.”

In a few seconds, a paper rocket flew up from the suicide point of Kodaikanal. It had no emotions. It sailed in the sky- in the air- so aimlessly. The paper didn’t know the meaning of any African phrase. But it had a rich history of its own. It was once the part of a forest tree at Valayar region in Kerala. The tree was stolen and exported as forest wood, later cut and processed at various places. The paper that became the rocket in the hands of Joy Kuttan was once that portion, thrown as unwanted useless priceless pieces, carried away as waste wood and processed at Punaloor paper mills. A different fate was waiting in the hands of small time printers who sold replica of famous books. It thus became the first page of ‘Broken Glass’ of Alain Mabanckou carrying the famous phrase from Africa for a reader like Joy Kuttan, who never believed in gathering knowledge for big money. As I said earlier, that paper didn’t have any emotions by itself. With the wind it continued its journey towards yet another fate… as it was been always…

Neither the emotional Joy Kuttan nor the emotionless paper rocket found the presence of the third character in this story - ‘Joy Kuttan, The Rocket and Chinnu’. Yes, it is Chinnu, I don’t know her exact name so let me call her Chinnu. Well, we humans have this weird habit of giving names to anything and everything without their permission. (I am thinking of all those pets in our lives – David the dog, Ruby the kitten etc…) For my convenience I am taking the liberty of calling her Chinnu. She was a beautiful black ant, and the queen of her colony. Just like her companions she was living a simple life gathering food and bringing up her children. Her fate was quite simple and certain, until Joy Kuttan threw her into the complex and uncertain. It was not intentional. She was caught in between the gap of the paper rocket.

Chinnu’s colony was very near to the place where Joy Kuttan’s jeep was parked. She was disturbed by the noise of jeep while feeding her children, and thus came out to face the intruder. The tyre of the jeep was very near to her colony. She was not capable to understand what would have happened if it was parked one step ahead. For that matter, she was not familiar about anything else other than her little world around. How many of us actually know the ‘Actual World’? How much of the world can be explored by a small little ant, who has nothing other than a colony that can be placed under the tyre of a jeep, living with less than a hundred adult inhabitants and a probable thirty little ones.

The wind carried Chinnu caught in that paper rocket, to her uncertainty… I can’t explain what was going on her mind during the journey. Being a nonliving object, I am pretty sure that the journey didn’t make any sense for the rocket. But the black ant is a living being capable of thinking. May be she is not as intelligent as a human being, but she definitely had emotions. Chinnu was the protector of her children and her colony too… May be she is a creature not capable of keeping memories on their realities… but she definitely had a reality and the sense of existence.

The paper rocket floated up in the sky like a feather. A lot many times huge birds like the eagles and vultures tried to grab it confusing it to the pigeons and sparrows. But it escaped with the difference in the pressure of wind as they approached each time. Swinging and swaying it took nine days for that rocket to reach the surface of land… a village nearby… but by then Chinnu was dead and dried, stuck to the surface of the rocket…

I did imagine a situation a few years later… One day Annamma Saira Philip who was by then Mrs. Joy Kuttan, discovered a black stain right on the nose of the photograph of famous Dr. Joy Kuttan featured in an article that came in the Sunday Suppliment of Mathrubhoomi Newspaper. There was no more African Phrases by Mabanckou except for an always-dull photo with a black stain on the nose … and the paper didn’t have any emotion to carry by itself…

The Squirrel of Ramayana

“They say that I am handsome only because of those three white lines. In fact, I haven’t even seen them as they are stamped on my back. To be honest with you, they didn’t make any difference in my life.” The squirrel replied for cockroach’s compliment, munching some cereals scattered on the courtyard.

“Does anyone remember me now? I am the Squirrel of Ramayana,” he continued moving around in a hurry as if he has just one more day to live. Cockroach looked surprised at his antics, with his mouth wide open.

“For many centuries I walked through the pages of Ramayana, as told by the saint Valmiki. I had grown old now. Still remember that day so fresh in my eyes.” He wiped his face with his tender hands, shaking his body cleaning the grains caught in the grey coat of thick fur. “I guess, the Lord noticed me only because of this habit. I was just helping him to build a bridge over the sea. Saw him so much in pain, missing wife Sita.”

“It was a rainy day in the forest. I woke up listening to a buddy bird chirping loud the news of some monkey’s march to the beach. I was so deep in sleep coz of the routine tiring day gathering food for dear little ones and my sweet heart. In sleep I didn’t even realize the heavy rain that socked me deep in. The whole forest was coloured green and grey with the water splashing from leaf tips and tree branches. Sunlight was struggling to find the way in through the dense green layer that protected us like a mother. Yet a few beams intruded into our world through hollow hallow spaces, blessing us with another new day of action and passion.”

“I shook my body to get rid of the water stuck to the skin. A few drops thus fell into my mouth. That day- for some crazy reason- the rainwater tasted salty like tears. Was the sky kept weeping for someone?”

“Curiosity is my colour by birth. True to that nature, I couldn’t resist the instinct. Rushing through the wet slippery branches I found my way targeting the seaside. I was new to those parts of the jungle and hence a bit scared about the owls and eagles possibly hiding here and there. Each day someone among us needed to be sacrificing our lives being the meal of their children. Now that is the general rule of the jungle, a city dweller like you might not understand.” The squirrel looked at cockroach, “It is all about sustaining the cycle of life and protecting a precious specious.”

“As I moved on, the appearance of the land and trees changed. Instead of monstrous ones like the bearded Banyan tree or the perfumed Jackfruit tree, there were more palms and coconut trees revealing the fact that I am quite nearer to the sea. In a few hours, along with the sound of rain, I heard the cry of monkeys in the air. Whether it is talk or action, no one can be as good as the monkeys. They were considered to be the most restless beings in our forest. But hardly anyone understood their talks; interestingly they themselves did’t seem to have any clue of their own conversations. Whatever ill we say, its them who had the will to support the Lord in his pain and thus the mission.”

“I reached the last layer of trees right near the beach. Sitting on top of a huge coconut tree I had an aerial view of the land underneath. I must say I had never seen anything like that before; it was stunning. As I told you, the monkeys were naturally active, but I had never seen them that active ever before. On the vast sand of the beach, in that continuous rain of agony, they were so busy in building the bridge across the sea. The whole monkey population was there including the old and the little ones; even the young elegant pregnant ladies to the ones who already had their babies hanging on their shoulders. On the extreme end of the beach I saw the Lord. He was obviously dull with the pain reflecting in his eyes. The birds were right; he looked so incomplete without his woman. For that matter, any man is incomplete without his woman by his side. Only the luckiest ones could have a good fate. Sita was still the part of his body and mind. The sea could be a physical barrier, but it couldn't be capable to fence their hearts. I knew the whole story about him and Sita from the gypsy migratory cranes that often visited the pools inside our forest. They all were philosophical in their talk because of genuine knowledge and understanding of the world. An old crane once told me that even the Gods needed to undergo the same struggles as of any other being, being a part of the living world. Hence Rama, the Lord too…”

“Among the monkeys I couldn’t identify most of the faces. But I recognized the monkey hero of the forest Hanuman and the leader of the lot, Sugriva. Without any sense of hierarchy they all were equally involved in sharing the tasks, carrying big rocks, sand etc for the construction of the bridge. The passionate engineers among them worked out many brilliant options to get it done fast. I heard that the big monkeys had to consult with the craftsmen of the jungle, the red ants and spiders, on tips for construction.”

“Immediately, a sense of responsibility stuck my mind and I crawled down the tree and ran across the sand towards the plot. I knew that they still needed more people, and I thought I could be of some help. I carried some sand in my hands and walked towards the bridge along with the other monkeys. They were all so involved that they didn’t realise me walking underneath. I had to really struggle between their massive inconsistent leg movements. As I threw the sand, I understood that it is too less compared to the huge sacks carried by the monkeys.”

“My little hands didn’t help me much. I had do something else. Probably that was the only moment in life I actually looked at my size. I wish I had bigger hands and body like them. While looking on my body, an idea flashed in. In the rain I was wet… I also had so much fur on my skin. Now that could work. I didn’t think much but followed my intuition plunging into the seawater from the bridge. Then swam back to the beach, twisted and turned on the sand, so that the it got stuck on my wet fur. It did work, my entire body including the face was covered by sand in seconds.”

“I then walked towards the bridge. Over there I shook my body, so that the whole sand falls on the bridge. It was quite a good plan and I felt so proud of myself. Yet deliberately, didn’t look at any monkey’s contribution. I knew that mine wouldn’t match them. I didn’t want to get beaten by that complex. So consciously avoided them and continued with what I was capable of. So many plunges in sea water… so many times crawling on the sand… so many times carrying the sand on my body to the bridge… the day just went on, busy on the task.”

“There was so much of energy and enthusiasm among the monkeys, that oozed into my mind too. We all had only one aim and one heart. Slowly, I somehow felt equal to them. I saw all of them, but no one seemed to have noticed me. I was even faster in my movements. In the time a monkey carried his sack of sand to the bridge, I almost finished with three of my rounds.”

“I didn’t even realize the passing time… I guess no one did, but the sun god was done with his ride in the sky for the day and was ready to hide himself in the sea. The horizon lost the blue, turning it red orangey.”

“I felt someone’s hand on my back and in no time I was lifted up from the ground. I shivered in shock. It was definitely not the catch of an owl or an eagle. A few among us who had narrow escapes from the clutches of the owl, had already explained to me how it felt on their skin. I was held so smoothly in the air. Ironically, the alarming shiver of my body changed to a sense of weird security in those hands. But still I was unable to look back and see the one who lifted me.”

“I felt the touch of another hand, with the fingers slowly moving on my back. A touch of care, love and gratitude… I closed my eyes for a moment. It was like seeing the whole world coming into me and me dissolving in the world. All the uncertainties became certain… all the questions changed to answers… I saw my little ones chirping and playing on my body; I felt my sweetheart’s breath on my chest. I realised that they are my world and I am for the world. My duty is to make my family happy... My duty is to make the world happy…”

"The tender hands that held me up, left me down too. As I touched the soil, my mind returned back to the reality of life - being the same little squirrel, crawling on trees, gathering food for children and loving his woman. The Lord did his duty to his parents, wife and the world, living as a normal human being experiencing all the struggles common for mankind.”

“They say that I got the three white lines on my back by the touch of his fingers. I had never seen the Lord close; I had only experienced that smooth soothing touch. Well, those three lines didn’t make any difference in my life. As the visionary gypsy crane said I am born in this world for that experiences of life, both the good and the bad - simple and straight. The Lord himself had to undergo all those hardships!”

“Centuries passed and I am still the same little squirrel of Ramayana… doing all that I am capable of doing. You are right Cockroach; I live as if I have only one more day to live.” He jumped over the fence of the courtyard and vanished in the green, just like any other squirrel.