JOIN USAs a child, he played with goats and calves. He went to municipal schools, fared poorly in studies and failed in examinations. Somehow, he stumbled into college. His parents used influence to get him an engineering seat. It ended hopelessly. Careers took the same route. He lost jobs as fast as he got them. The family shrugged him off as good for nothing.
He spent his time in second-hand bookshops, absorbing the finest thoughts ever written. He bagged no ranks or medals but glimpsed at the wisdom of great minds that shaped his own. They also shaped his priorities. He discovered the joy of owning nothing. He left the door of his one-room tenement open, knowing that thieves would be wasting their time breaking in. In his penniless days, he turned to music. Since he could not afford teachers, he bought himself a bamboo flute on which he practised for hours, days, weeks until he was able to coax the masterpieces of great composers out of the cheap little contraption. Owning neither money, titles or position, he was able to walk free and live as he pleased.
A curious fate thrust him into the highest circles although he still counted auto drivers and vegetable vendors among his friends. A short stint in C Rajagopalachari’s “SWARAJYA” established a lasting friendship with the Governor-General of the country. Marriage opened the door to the Governor of the Reserve Bank of India. But he did not feel awed. He had a healthy irreverence of titles. He kept distinguished guests waiting on his wedding day while he went to invite his barber who was an important person in his life. He could ignore a VVIP guest during a wedding to sit with the gottuvadhyam players and compliment them. He epitomized Bernard Shaw’s dictum of treating flower girls like duchesses and duchesses like flower girls.
When he died yesterday, in a faraway country, in the plush surroundings of his last home. I remembered him saying, “I am the poor father of a rich daughter!” He accepted the new-found wealthy life with the same indifference as he did his earlier poverty and hardship. The person who failed in examinations flopped in careers and written off as a fiasco had found the greatest gift in life – wisdom to live happily in all circumstances. And, to see the absurd in every situation. I can see him chuckling somewhere at this moment “So I finally made it to DH after all those rejection slips!”