The telephonic affair with a mysterious lady

Cochin, Kerala

27 April, 2010

Dear Chacko,

This refers to your observations about the recent reports on the alleged affair and marriage of a Pakistani cricketer to a Hyderabad girl over the phone/internet and subsequent allegations of impersonation and denials. This calls to my mind a rather incongruous “affair” my friend Ravi had with one of his telephone friends at the beginning of his career. He would claim later that there was no romance in it. Yet, one may not fail to notice some trappings of an affair in it.  And it ended in a totally unexpected and disillusioning anticlimax.

Ravi says he crossed her path for the first time and the last time in 1971. He had just joined the services of a financial institution as a ‘direct recruit’ that summer. Initially he was given the responsibility of documentation for newly sanctioned loans. You may be aware, Chacko, that large projects are almost always financed by consortia of financial institutions and banks. Hence it is necessary for each lender to ensure that the clauses in its loan documents do not contradict with those of the others in the consortium. They would iron out the differences through personal discussions.

My friend tells me that in a couple of days after he joined the institution he received a phone call from a young lady officer of another institution who introduced herself as Persis Gandhi. She sought certain information about the terms of one of the loans in his portfolio, and he gave her the information with the help of his assistant. What struck the young man then was her extra-ordinarily feminine voice. Her diction and accent had the flavor of what was described in those days as “convent education”. And her agreeable telephone etiquettes had the stamp of business-like maturity. He was impressed.

Persis must have been impressed with him too, for she called him again the next day. The same honey-dripping voice, the same mature diction, the same etiquettes and the same business-like, efficient talk. She asked him correct questions, and she responded to him with exact answers. No superficial mannerisms, laughing or giggling. And no curiosity-driven questions or references of a personal nature. Clearly, Ravi thought he had many things to learn from her.

Now, Chacko, when he said that such exchanges became an everyday routine, I was inclined to reckon that ‘something’ was in the offing. And you too might be getting ‘ideas’ now. But hold on till you come to the end of his story.

The daily calls were mutual, and Ravi said their conversations certainly benefited both of them. Her searching queries inspired the young man to study his cases carefully and in advance so as to be in readiness for answering her unpredictable catechism. And she acknowledged on more than one occasion that some of his thoughts had benefited her as well.

My friend says, for long their conversations were strictly official and brief. However, as happens most often in such circumstances, such daily conversations, howsoever formal and official in content, invariably lead in due course to the informal and the personal. A kind of quasi-official friendship develops. So there were times, not infrequent, when they digressed to the personal. And he soon found she was unmarried. She said she didn’t like the men who proposed. And those who proposed included some of her “big bosses” too. Ravi says he took care to impress her that he was a family man. But this information about him did not seem to make any difference to her. Her tone when they discussed such personal matters, he says, was one of disinterestedness and she spoke with the coolness of information-passing. And this caused his admiration for her to go even higher.

There were barren days, infrequent though, when she didn’t contact him and he didn’t contact her. Her absence was invariably noticed by him, but he says he never missed her. And, on the next possible occasion she would explain to him the reasons for her silence. 

Days passed and it was soon December. The country was at war with Pakistan. The duo would critically discuss Indira Gandhi’s war plans, Nixon’s infamous ‘tilt’ towards Pakistan, the Soviet Union’s possible intervention, etc. To Ravi’s delight he found her to be well versed in current affairs. Her passion about the war was based not on the kind of mindless patriotism of the common folk but more on her awareness of India’s history and her perception of the country’s destiny. And her exultation when India won the war on the 16^th of that month seemed to surpass even that of the Prime Minister herself, and my friend suspected for a moment that Persis might somehow be   related to Indira Gandhi. In any case they had a common surname. And, for the rest of the month she had only words of praise for Indira Gandhi.

Now, Chacko, by then they had been telephone friends for some seven to eight months. I asked him if they had not met face to face even once. Well, he said an opportunity soon arose. And it was the young lady who took the initiative. It was decided that Persis would meet him at his office at 12 noon the next day. How could he know then that it would be the end of their 'affair'!

Ravi was looking forward to her arrival. But she was not to be seen at the appointed time. However, some 15 minutes later there came in to the hall a slim elderly lady who was an exact replica of Indira Gandhi with the same hair style and the same little gray patch on her hair, the same proud, self-possessed gait, and dressed in soft elegance. Ravi was puzzled. She was seen consulting the security guard who pointed his finger in the direction of Ravi. Straightaway she approached him and introduced herself in her familiar, honeyed voice, “I am Gandhi - not Indira but Persis”. Her words fell on him like a bombshell. 

I could not help laughing when he came to this stage in his narration. Instantly he asked me to spare my laughter. A thunderbolt was in the offing, he said. She told him the purpose of her visit. And that was to bid adieu. She would retire from service the next day! Yes; that was a thunderbolt.

So, the “young lady” was 58, twice his age! Noticing his acute discomfiture, she coolly exclaimed with a hearty laugh, “Oh! Now the mystery is lost! What a shame!”

“Yes, it was a real shame”, Ravi would recall later. He said with some resentment in his voice that, by denying him all those days even a hint about her age, she was perhaps unconsciously exercising an element of passive deception on him. Some kind of timely clue could have helped him position himself rightly early on in their relationship.  

“Of course, ours was a quasi-official friendship with no sentiments attached, and hence no regrets and no damage done. And, truth to tell, I had no guilt feeling.”

*                    *                    *

Now, Chacko, I can only guess why the lady came to see him for the first and last time in the guise of Indira Gandhi. In the first place she was proud of her close semblance with the Prime Minister. And then her surname. To emphasise that semblance she might have given herself a few touches. That was perhaps her way of demonstrating her admiration for her icon who was being hailed by the world in the aftermath of her victory in the war as the new queen-empress of India. And she might have been moving around in the last few days of her career in that guise bidding adieu to her friends and receiving their attention and accolades for her being Indira Gandhi's 'dupe'. I can’t make any other guess about this otherwise mature lady's whim. Nor could Ravi.

*                    *                    *

Dear Chacko, this happened some four decades ago. Now, I am not surprised about Shoab Malik’s case which you have referred. I get the impression that the young fellow had some vague infatuation for that unseen girl on the phone. But did she intentionally fool him? And if she did, for what purpose? He avers he had not even seen the girl. When I read about it, I thought it was a ludicrous story especially because of its many loose ends. So, leave it at that, and let me join you now in wishing the young couple Sania and Shoaib a happy married life. It could be one more drop of friendliness in the dry ocean of Indo-Pak friendship!

Warm regards,

K X M John

27/04/2010

Human side of population control

When the Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus observed a couple of centuries ago that population finds its level based on fertility rates, famine and diseases, he could not have imagined that the last two factors, namely famine and diseases, could be eradicated in such a spectacular manner as has been realized in recent times. In such a changed context, the fertility factor if unchecked could trigger a population explosion far surpassing possible growth in livelihood, thus making life difficult and progress impossible.  Hence the need to control population by downsizing the family.

Such need was most keenly felt in independent India which had a fast-growing population living at subsistence level. Hence the justification for state intervention in controlling fertility to adjust to the new realities. And it was India that took initiative first among the countries, in 1952, under the visionary leadership of Jawaharlal Nehru, towards adopting population control as a state objective.

At the same time, social norms were changing. Joint family system gave way to nuclear families, and women began to work for money. It became difficult for working couples to look after more children. And all of a sudden a competitive culture burst upon the society. Children demanded attention, not only in material terms but equally so in emotional terms. Their educational and healthcare demands have made each child a precious project to be taken up with delicate care. If children are God’s gift to parents, what they make out of the children has to be their return gift to God. And it becomes difficult for parents to give themselves to their children if their number exceeds a critical level; and two is considered by most parents as the optimum.

Therefore, if population control is a state objective, then family downsizing is a keenly felt need of the people. That means there is no quarrel between the state and the citizen. What the state thinks at the macro level, the people want at their personal level. To go by a saying in Malayalam, what the doctor has prescribed and what the patient had eagerly desired happen to be the same. So, what the state is required to do is to create the needed ambience to help people achieve their goal of two-child family.

That being so, why the state and its spokespersons often take self-righteous stands and become indignant and intolerant whenever they fancy that people might transgress their own self-accepted ‘norm’ unless under constant threat of penalties? And why is the strident tone often adopted by state agencies and even well-meaning lawyers to express their disapprovals in the matter?

This habitual intolerance is exemplified in the recommendations of the Kerala Law Reforms Commission headed by V R Krishna Iyer for the purpose of protecting the interests of women in the state.  It had recommended that any movement, campaign or project which would stand against the said norm would attract penalty. And there are lawyers who would uphold this kind of recommendations, unmindful of the fact that they have become anachronistic and redundant in the context of states like Kerala. (See the article on the subject that appeared in NIE on 7/11/11.)

Kerala is the one state in India which has recorded decadal growth in population below 10 percent. Its growth rate was 9.43 percent during 1991-2001 and still lower at 4.86 percent in 2001-11, matching with developed countries in the world (e.g. USA: 7.26% and China: 5.43%). The growth percentages at pan-India level were 21.54 in 1991-2001 and 17.64 in 2001-11. Then why this legal activism in Kerala?

In the article cited above, there are justifying references to judgments upholding state cruelties to employees who had ‘violated’ the two-child norm. There is mention of a Supreme Court order upholding the termination of services of an air hostess because she became pregnant for the third time in violation of her service rules. Instead of declaring the rule draconian and unconstitutional, the Court upheld her termination of service on the grounds that, paraphrased, she was unfair to the country by adding to its burgeoning population!

It may be observed that India’s decadal population growth has come down from 24.8 percent (in 1961-71) to 17.64 percent now. (The improvement was better in the case of southern India and the adjacent states of Maharashtra and Orissa.) This reflects people’s realization of the benefits from smaller families and not from any imposed norm. Compulsory sterilization attempted by the Government during the Emergency misfired because it went against the grains of the people; in fact it only caused to harden their attitudes although for a short while. (If China lifts its dictatorial grip on its population, that moment there could be a backlash and the population may grow berserk for a while.)

Therefore, it is time the state plainly recognize the premises that family size is the prerogative of the parents, that people are increasingly realizing the benefits of the small-sized family, that they would self-adjust accordingly and that the Govt’s role be limited to educating/sensitizing the people about its macro implications and providing conducive ambience. Of course there are rural pockets in India especially in the North where this realization is yet to strike roots – areas marked by higher fertility and mortality indicators.

According to a recent report of the National Health Survey covering 284 districts in the North, there are severely handicapped districts in places like UP where the crude birth rates and death rates are several times higher than in neighbouring districts. For instance, while the birth rate in Bageshwar district in Uttarkhand is 14.7 children per population of 1000, it is 40.9 in Shrawasti in the neighbouring UP. If the death rate in Dhemaji Dt in Assam is 4.5 per population of 1000, it is 12.6 in Shrawasti. Rudraprayag in Uttarkhand reported infant mortality rate of 19 per 1000 live births; it is 103 in Shrawasti.

Obviously places like Shrawasti need Govt’s special attention in the form of education and healthcare. Once this is ensured and development take place, people could be expected to be sensitized about their family’s welfare in the modern sense; and family downsizing will naturally follow. Surely, crude pressure from the state will not yield the desired results from under-developed areas such as Shrawasti.

To summarize, family sizing is primarily the family’s concern.

In the modern context, people increasingly realize the benefit of small families, and they will adjust themselves accordingly, thereby ensuring national interests too in the process. No developed country in Europe or America had to apply state pressure to bring about the desired result.

K X M John

13/01/2012

(This article was published in the New Indian Express on 16/01/2012)

The Old Monk with twenty-five children won the Royal Award

I could not but marvel when I first heard about one of my remote ancestors who was ‘blessed’ with as many as 25 children, all from the same wife, and all living at the same time. And my curiosity got the better of my disbelief when the narrator added that the tale of this rare feat reached the ears of the then Raja of Cochin, who promptly awarded him a gold medal!

The first whiff of the legend

I was young when I heard this, and those were the nascent days of Indian democracy. The nation was busy debating over such exotic ideas as socialist pattern of development, centralised planning, commanding heights of public sector in the national economy, restriction of the family size through planned birth, and so on. Of these, family planning captured the immediate attention and imagination of the common man. For better or worse it could bring an irrevocable change in the family life and culture of the nation.

 “What kind of benefits could this so-called family-planning movement bring to the people?” wondered my grandmother’s kinsman Pappu Master, a bachelor of seventy then. “Don’t you sense some kind of evil in that? It certainly runs counter to nature. All these years we have held the large family as the ideal - larger the family, greater the social prestige and economic security for the family.”

He added as if to make it easier for me to appreciate the point, “And you must be familiar with the legend in your own grandmother’s family about a heroic ancestor who had won royal favours for begetting as many as twenty-five children!”

My immediate response was rather cynical. “He must have had more than one wife!”

Uncle Pappu said he thought so too. “But, to sire so many children from more than one wife would not have merited royal attention.”

He could not throw any more light on the story, and the conversation ended there. But the legend of the man with twenty-five children winning the royal award excited my curiosity. And I turned to granduncle Mathootty for his ‘professional’ help.

The legend being explored

Granduncle Mathootty was an unconventional character. The third amongst his five brothers, he was given to idle preoccupations such as amateur philosophy, speculative history, folk culture, research into family genealogies, and the like. While his industrious brothers made money through agriculture and trade, he lived off his heirloom.

The man was undoubtedly a genius of sorts, a charismatic figure. His philosophical discourses attracted to him many a teenager in the village. His booming voice had an affectionate timbre, and those who listened to him were dazzled by his vision and outlook. His narration had a certain dignity, and his poetry was heart-warming. Youngsters would spend hours in his company. Busier people would briefly listen and pass on with a knowing grin.

It was this old man who painstakingly went into the genealogy of his family and reputedly identified his ancestors twenty-one generations upstream! This epic journey into the past had taken him through many years of diligent research on an ongoing basis including examination of ancient palm leaf records and good many visits to distant families some of whom were not exactly friendly.

So, I had approached the right man with my new puzzle. He said he too had heard about the legend of a native of Mattancherry who had won the Veer Shrinkhala (meaning: Hero’s Necklace) from the Raja of Cochin towards the end of the Dutch Period in India. But he was not sure if my grandmother had any connection with his line. Uncle Mathootty promised he would investigate.

The legend unfolds

Meanwhile, I thought I should consult my mother. If grandmother was born in the line of the hero who won the award for begetting twenty-five children, my mother too might have had some tidings about it. But she gave me a huge snub – as if I were uttering blasphemy against an ancestor! I turned to my grandmother. Her response was an understanding smile. So, grandmother had heard about it after all!

Uncle Mathootty reappeared not long after that. Yes; what Pappu Master had suspected was still a familiar story among the older generation in Mattancherry. Sometime during the third quarter of the eighteenth century, there was a rich and powerful family there. One of its members had attained the celebrity status by winning an award from the then Raja of Cochin for his patriotism and loyalty to the crown. What pleased His Majesty was his prolific contribution of as many as twenty-five healthy progeny to his royal domain. Of those whom Mathootty came in touch with in the course of his investigation, including the hero’s direct descendants, good many had affirmed having heard the story. And their narrations broadly agreed on vital details.

“But, as a student of history, I would have had greater satisfaction if only I could trace the Necklace presented by the Raja and read the inscriptions thereon. None of those whom I had contacted could give any kind of clue to it. And one more source remains yet to be explored. And that is the Royal Archives at Ernakulam. But it is not easy to get access to it; and to search for any documentary evidence would be, as the saying goes, like searching for a pin in a haystack.”

As for my grandmother, Mathootty was happy to announce his discovery that she descended from the hero in the male line for four generations, followed by two generations in the female line.

Gossips chase celebrities

Gossips have relentlessly chased celebrities everywhere in every age. And our old man too was not immune to them. Come to think of it, a man who had the fecundity to annually sire children from the same woman during the entire span of her reproductive life and recently honoured by the Raja with a Hero’s Necklace was a most natural prey for such gossips. For, his accomplishments and the royal attention he received must have kindled both jealousy and amusement among friends and foes alike. And it must have ignited curiosity, and even longing, among women in his known circles.

Uncle Mathootty had heard several juicy stories about the man during his investigative tour. And he observed that the root of all gossips went into his instant fertility. Word spread in no time that a single look from him could ‘endanger’ a woman. So women, beware - especially the maidens! At first people took this as an innocent joke. But when a girl in the neighbourhood became pregnant and she swore that she had had no male contact, someone murmured his suspicion.

Our hero was regular in his evening walk for years, his beat taking him through the main thoroughfare in the elite residential area in town. Being a familiar figure in the neighbourhood and a socially amiable and handsome person, women in the area would often stop him on the way and engage him in small talk. And on attaining celebrity status, his daily rounds were attracting increasingly more of the female folk living along the street to hobnob with him. Good many of them would reverentially gaze at him while some crazy ones would even ogle at him.

Then he noticed the female folk disappearing from the street all of a sudden. It was then that he came to hear about the canards growing behind his back and of the ‘virgin birth’ in the neighbourhood. At first he had a hearty laugh at what he thought was a practical joke. His close friends too laughed with him.

But the ‘fun’ prolonged and it turned serious. He even fancied that the doors and windows of the houses along the street were shut as he passed. He also noticed that the female crowd regularly seen at the Church services that he attended was progressively thinning. When his friends confirmed his suspicion, it told upon his composure. And the last thing he would ever give up was the spiritual satisfaction from attending Church services. So he sought the intervention of the Parish Priest.

Uncle Mathootty added, “According to what I heard, the priestly intervention had its effect, and gradually the gossips lost their sting. He continued his evening walk, and noticed the doors and windows open as before. The female attendance at the Church services too was restored. But the man previously known for his sanguine disposition had now become rather withdrawn. And he preferred to be discreet with his former admirers. Thus he earned the nickname ‘The Old Monk’.”

Uncle Mathootty said he had enquired about his wife. No one knew. Sad the self-effacing mother sank into oblivion. “It was a patriarchal world. The dear delightful lady had to content herself with the thought that the award was meant for her too.”

K X M John

18/04/2010

The Old Patriarch who died for his daughter-in-law

"Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13)

Here is the heart-warming story of a committed old patriarch who braved gravest risk to his own life by guarding over the life of his small-pox-afflicted daughter-in-law, as her own young husband and parents took a practical view and fled from home abandoning the young woman to her fate.

In those days, smallpox used to erupt overnight and spread rapidly as an unchecked scourge that would wipe out whole villages in no time. In ancient Kerala, where the disease was intertwined with frightening superstitions, it was almost a certain killer. The sick used to be abandoned overnight, their family and the entire neighbourhood fleeing to faraway relatives’ places to save themselves from this evil disease. And the patient’s remaining few days on earth would be a horror. Rejection by family and chilling loneliness; hunger and thirst; desolate nights with no electricity to provide  light; hungry and frightened country dogs intermittently howling together at night; eerie moonlight creating weird patterns on the landscape; superstitious beliefs in evil spirits sowing pepper-like seeds of smallpox far and wide throughout the night and benevolent spirits continually chasing them on horseback with lashes in their hands; and, above all, the fear of impending death – these were enough in themselves to frighten and kill even the most stout-hearted of men. In the circumstances, an abandoned smallpox victim was destined to die unless some miracle intervened.

A miracle did intervene to save this young woman. The bold father-in-law, who was years senior to her grandfather, stubbornly refused to leave her, much against the entreaties of his family. The patient was shifted to the Annexe house for sick members of the family. A few ruffians who were lucky to survive an earlier epidemic, thereby developing immunity to the infection, were deployed for nursing her. The old man stayed indoors regularly monitoring the patient’s progress. The men shored up their courage by drinking country-liquor all the time. One late evening, the drunken men reported the patient’s death. The old man permitted them to go and get drunk further at the faraway toddy shop, as they would need to muster extra courage for wrapping up the body in mats and burying it in a remote corner of the compound.

The old man stood in front of his house, alone, with his dazed eyes focusing nowhere. He had lived his fruitful years without regrets, and now he had no appetite to live any further. He was now willing even to die. One eye-filling glance of her dead body – that was all he wanted now.  He threw caution to the wind, and his legs took him to the Annexe. He peeped through the half-open door. In the flickering light of the primitive kerosene lamp, he saw her motionless body. He calmly regarded her for a while. Suddenly, did he notice her lips parting a little? Or, was it a trick played on him by the flickering flame of the lamp? He flung open the door and rushed forward with his heart leaping to his throat. No, it was no illusion. Her tongue moved to wet her lips. He snatched the nearby bowl and carefully poured from it drops of water into her mouth. The drops slowly sank in.

His ecstasy was abruptly disrupted by the advancing sound of discordant singing by the drunken men returning from the toddy shop. These brutes would soon bury her alive. He grabbed a kitchen knife and threw himself upon them. Surprised, they fled.

The young woman survived; it was the old man who died.

At the end of the narration, my maternal grandmother’s eyes were moist, with tears of pride. The old man was her great grandfather!  

K X M John

21/04/10

The young man who could not laugh in English

He was too original a teacher for his students to understand. We received his “simple” words of wisdom with immediate joy, and immediately did we forget them as plain jokes for the moment. Yet, with the passage of time, and on leisurely reflection, those words begin to shine like the proverbial “apples of gold in settings of silver”.

We were 10-year-olds then in the fifth standard. He taught us English. His jokes ranged from the trivial to the serious. One of his most memorable jokes was about the “folly” of a rich countryman who sent his son for higher studies at Oxford, but was disappointed because the son returned without learning how to laugh in English!

This was the storyline. The rich, rustic man’s son made him proud by graduating in English literature from Madras University in first class. And he sent him for higher studies at Oxford. The young man eventually returned as a Barrister-at-Law. To celebrate the occasion, the proud father arranged a feast for his countrymen and an exclusive dinner for his son’s friends. The dinner guests included some of his white friends from England. The old man was gratified with the confidence and ease with which his son conversed with his friends in English. All of a sudden, however, his face fell, as if from some private disappointment or pain.    

When the guests departed, the old man’s trusted friends gathered around him and discreetly enquired about his abrupt mood shift. With disappointment marking his voice, he said, his son had failed to meet with his expectations. How? He had not yet learnt to laugh in English! No one understood. Now enter the son in high spirits. He was dismayed to see his moody father in the midst of his silent friends. The youngster suppressed his laughter when the reason was revealed. Soon every one in the room, other than the father, was laughing uncontrollably. The son tried to reason out. The old man peremptorily commanded every one to leave the room.

The father explained the next day, within the limitation of his vernacular vocabulary, that his son was behaving in the manner of an uneducated country kid. His white guests moved, gestured and laughed differently, while his own gestures and laughter matched neither with his English education nor with the lounge suit that he was wearing at the dinner. The contrast between the disciplined smile of his English friends and the apparently meaningless, irrelevant laughter of the young man was conspicuous. The youngster gradually saw wisdom in his father’s observations. Today, in modern idiom, we would say, the young man’s general demeanour and body language remained that of a rustic youth of early twentieth century, despite his exposure to higher education.

Obviously, we, ten-year-old lads were not ready to grasp the essence of the story. What remained in our minds was the old man’s “foolish” complaint about his son’s inability to laugh in English. How could any one laugh differently in English!

I recalled my teacher’s wisdom on seeing a minister from the South on TV a few years ago. He was in a lounge suit with a beautiful necktie and a matching pocket kerchief addressing a group of businessmen at Dubai. Seated at the head table, he was addressing them with the body language of one who was relaxing on a kitchen chair at home with one arm hanging behind him over the backrest, and his head tilted awkwardly!   

K X M John

02/04/10

My Unmarried Cousin

I had a cousin, now no more. She was ten years my senior, then teaching in an English medium school in Kochi. I had often wondered why she remained unmarried despite her good looks and cerebral endowments. Proposals were aplenty even in her fifties, but she would reject the suitors one by one after giving them an ‘interview’ opportunity. Her reasons for rejection were strange. One Mathew she rejected because he introduced himself as Maathew! Another man had a mole on his chin, which might as well have passed as a beauty spot, but not for her. She liked dimples, but rejected a dimpled man because it did not suit his particular personality.

I once worked as the Chief Executive of a Management Institute. We advertised for a senior faculty. Short-listed applicants were called for interview. One question we asked a brilliant candidate was a seemingly ‘irrelevant’ question. Such questions, when asked systematically, serve the purpose of bringing out the candidate’s reaction pattern. The ‘irrelevant’ question on the occasion was why Australia and New Zealand were collectively referred to as ‘Down Under’. He smiled and shot back: “Do you want to know that?” and neatly explained the phrase. The Chairman was annoyed by the candidate’s ‘impudent’ counter question, although satisfied with his explanation. The other members just smiled.

 At the end of the interview, the ‘Down Under’ man was adjudged by the members as the best candidate; but the Chairman vehemently opposed his selection. We faced a stalemate. But, since the need was mine as the head of the institute, it was required of me to initiate the needed charm offensive to make him see wisdom.

Tea breaks are time for calming nerves and ironing out differences. During the lobby talk, I casually recalled to the Chairman the story of my cousin that I had light-heartedly shared with him when an occasion had presented itself the previous year.  He had then ponderously observed that no one could expect to find a perfect partner.   She herself might not be perfect in the eyes of her suitors. “Take the southern delicacy you call ‘appam’. It is baked on a pan. The heat provided under the pan may not get distributed uniformly and, as a result, the bottom of the appam may be baked unevenly, with brown patches showing here and there. You don’t throw away the dish because of such little blemishes. Some of you might even relish the appam more with dark spots under them. So, advise your cousin to ignore the ‘Maathew’ in Mathew, the beauty spot in the spotted one and the dimple in the dimpled guy and choose one of them as her partner.” With a twinkle in his eyes, the old widower added, “One is never too old for marriage.”

It was my turn now to ask him, “And, so, why not we ignore the brown spot in the ‘down-under’ man and choose him as recommended by the other members of the committee?” It dawned on the old man that I was tricking him all the while into declaring that the down-under candidate as the ‘winner’. He was large-hearted enough to accept his ‘defeat’ with a chuckle, and everyone, including himself, emerged ‘winner-winner’.

Months later, when he learnt that the selected candidate was doing extremely well, he candidly exclaimed, how often do we reject deserving candidates purely on subjective assessment! “As the proverb goes: How often do we unwittingly reject hard stones, and lay inferior ones in their place as the cornerstone for the edifice, thereby weakening its very structure itself!”

K X M John

24/04/10

An intriguing admirer in London

Tara was a voluntary receptionist at a prestigious Indian hostel in London. In the beginning, I thought it was prejudice at first sight. And prejudices, as the very word connotes, have no rational basis. One might even say she was prejudiced because she didn’t like my face! From her reception counter, she would closely watch me passing the foyer with her rather cold, suspicious eyes. Her apparent hostility was a riddle.

But, to be fair, in the aftermath of Indira Gandhi’s assassination, Indians in UK were so insecure as to suspect, and even to be paranoid about, new inmates joining Indian hostels there. And the overzealous receptionist was probably keeping a dutiful eye on newcomers like me. This was a plausible explanation, as I eventually noticed that some other inmates too were receiving her cold gaze. So I dismissed her from my mind. I was in an executive position in India, now on a few months’ visit to London; and she but a rotund, middle-aged woman, the wife of a senior employee at the hostel. Obviously she was not worthy of my attention.

But how unexpectedly perceptions can change! Just in a couple of weeks into my sojourn in London, I was lucky to be invited to speak at the weekly prayer meeting at the hostel. The hall was half-full with normal attendance, and my semon was well received. Another invitation followed. Such repeat invitations, the hostel director confided to me, were exceptional and not the custom; apparently my previous address had generated a strong demand to invite me for yet another meeting.

And on this second occasion the hall was full to overflowing, with many parents present with their children. The post-meeting fellowship was heart-warming. The receptionist Tara’s husband, who was cheerfully moving around, pointed his finger at his wife and said that it was at her insistence that I was invited for the second time and that it was she again who had mobilized the large audience from the City, with women and children outnumbering men. And then he dropped the bombshell, “You see, my wife is a fan of yours!” Surprise of surprises. But greater surprise was awaiting.

Next evening I had a dinner invitation at their residence. There she bluntly revealed in the presence of her husband that she was fully aware of my previous discomfort with her, and blamed me, and most men including her husband, for being myopic in seeing and understanding people. Are you not selecting candidates for services based on their examination marks and general knowledge alone, without assessing their all-important attitudes and aptitudes? You recruit administrative officials going by their competitive exam results and un-insightful interviews. The successful candidates are often high on intellect but not so high on attitudes. Medical students are likewise selected without ever reckoning their attitudes to the poor and the patients; and medical colleges therefore produce doctors whose eyes are in the commercial possibilities of their profession. So, the important thing is to understand the person. That needs intuition, not intellect alone. “You didn’t have that intuition; and that is why you failed to understand me in the beginning.”

What wisdom this, coming as it did from seemingly a very ordinary woman! I had never before felt so humbled in my life; nor so much at any time thereafter.

K X M John

06 Nov 2009

(First published in New Indian Express in November 2009)