The uncommon man

Reflections

No one ever knew when Laxman would come into town on his way to Mysuru, or return from there except for one person — Parthasarathy or Pachu who lived in Palace Orchards, who was also a childhood friend. By nature, Pachu was a touchy person taking umbrage at innocuous comments and thus he was quite a loner. And yet he was the one friend with whom Laxman spent time with when passing through Bengaluru. I had maintained a kind of precarious balance of intimacy with Pachu. I owe it to that ‘Wisdom’ that one evening he called me. “What are you doing?”, “I am listening to music. Why?” “Well do you mind if I drop in! There is someone who wants to meet you”, “Who?” “Well, you will find out.”

When he walked into the music room with a friend, I died of shock. Laxman! Both of us had loved Mysuru in our time. Though he had left the city by the time I had gone to study there, we lived on the same street, in a manner of speaking, whenever he visited Mysuru.

That was Lakshmi Road in Jayalakshmipuram, at one end of which his brother R K Narayan lived, and at the other Sandhya, a Kannada actress, more famously the mother of Jayalalitha who at that point of time was either a child or a dream! I lived in the middle of the street. We knew each other of course, I mean Laxman and I. We met on many occasions, mostly in seminars. But this was the first time he had come home.

Laxman loved talking in Kannada whenever he could, “Yenu nimma guhe na?” (Is it your hide out?) I was flustered. My music room is a carpet spread end to end and me as well as my visitors sat on it. Laxman was in a suit and no one would dare to ask him to take off the shoes. So quickly I got a chair and placed it in the middle with two of us sitting at his feet. The leads were more from Pachu reminding Laxman of various highlights in conversations gone by and Laxman confirming and adding delightful bits.

Just then there was a tap on the door. The watchman had barely said something like ‘Saheb’, and in walked my old friend Aziz Seth, one of the most affable of politicians I have known. He came in all of a twitter and collapsed on the carpet holding a bolster under his head and called for a drink, urgently. I introduced him to Laxman as the minister in the Devraj Urs cabinet. The name of Laxman meant nothing to him. There was no need to break the ice. Sait was in turmoil. What began as a gentle whimper soon turned into a torrent — “I have just resigned as minister!” was the shocking revelation. And then began a heartfelt cry of agony of his closeness to Urs and how even now he admired him.

But why oh why should he ask him to resign. “No, No,” he said, in quick response to Laxman’s mischievously plodding enquiry whether he felt depressed. “I am a soldier and the CM is my leader. How many times I have mixed vodka in soft drinks at his important meetings?” Laxman, now in his elements, with four eyes gleaming, prodded him further. Eulogy after eulogy of Urs. And then, suddenly, as he had downed his Nth drink, he broke down sobbing.

I knew from his shining eyes that Laxman had found his quarry in an evening of endless joy. Barely a month later, the Illustrated Weekly carried a centre-page article recounting the joys of that evening, accompanied by a great sketch of a politician spread over a carpet, watched by four gleaming eyes. Laxman, you see, was not only a great cartoonist, perhaps the greatest, but a great writer as well!