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)

Male immunity to Ghosts!

Who said that supernatural beings frighten women, but not men? Conceded, even innocent ghosts can scare women while making men laugh. Like the familiar story of the helpless ghost on probation, who was cringing in the dark in the wee hours of the morning as he forgot the key yogic posture for returning to the world of ghosts before sunrise, and who was successfully helped by trial and error by a drunken, boisterous youngster returning from a bachelors’ party. The young fellow’s hilarious narration of his morning adventure at the local club next evening startled the women there, while men roared with laughter. However, while demonstrating the yogic posture at the urging of the applauding crowd, he himself vanished from sight, and it was men who fainted first!

And what happened on the night the murder took place at the bachelors’ hostel in T’puram? That evening, after being stabbed by a derelict, the victim collapsed in the courtyard and gave up his ghost.

Unaware of the tragedy, I returned from the theatre in high spirits after watching the movie Dracula, followed by supper at my favourite restaurant. On the way to my room, I had fleetingly noticed that the other rooms and their windows were all shut and no one was around. Clearly, the buggers had all gone for the ‘night show’ of Dracula, which they had all been looking forward to with great excitement. I took to my reading, keeping the door and window wide open as usual. I would read well past midnight, as was my custom in those carefree bachelor days.

In the midst of the reading, did I hear some soft, rustling sound outside the room, perhaps that of some tiny bird delicately flapping its wings? I got up to check. It was a small black bird flying back and forth in the long, vestibule-like veranda. Obviously, the confused creature could not see its way out. Gently I tried to help it towards the open end of the veranda, but the foolish bird continued its to-and-fro flight. So, when it was flying past me, I extended my hand and lightly touched it to guide its way out. And the bird instantly disappeared into the dark night. Resuming my reading, I casually glanced up at the clock. It was midnight, when “time was out of joint” as the Bard would say. Funny!

I went to bed with high satisfaction of having seen the much-awaited horror film and having covered several short stories of D. H. Lawrence.

In the morning, I was awakened by the tea-boy, who abruptly asked me about my neighbours whose shut doors and windows had astonished him. Not knowing previous day’s incident, I flippantly quipped that perhaps Dracula had taken them all. Yet, somehow sensing life’s vibrations in my neighbour’s room, I called out his name. There was response. Surprise of surprises, they – five or six of them – were huddled together in that closed room, being scared of the dead man’s roaming ghost! It was then that I heard of the murder story. They said they were all concerned about my safety last night, and asked me if I had noticed anything unusual at night! I refrained from scaring them further by disclosing the blackbird interlude. That would have given them ‘instant evidence’ for the existence of ghosts and vampire-bats. Certainly, no coincidence supposition would make sense to them. Later, when sanity returned, I teased my neighbour, a Marxist, for his huddling together with the superstitious gang. He had his justification: “Ghosts have no respect for ideologies”!

So much for male immunity to superstitions in modern times.

K X M John

02/02/2010

(First published in New Indian Express in February 2010)

Loneliness as a collective sentiment

On an overnight journey to Chennai last week, I came across a few interesting fellow-passengers. There was a woman of mature age dressed in elegant simplicity, reclining on her lower berth and browsing through a slim book, with a half-open handbag by her side revealing a bunch of booklets of similar size. And there were two healthy, modern, middle-aged persons who, going by appearance and body language, passed as husband and wife.

The couple were of good personage and were chatting with some excitement as if they were reunited after a separation. With great self-confidence and self-assurance they both spoke modern, professional kind of English with good cheer and gave the impression of being mid-level business executives.

The title of the book the mature woman was reading was partly visible to me; and I noticed that the first word in the title was the oft-used Malayalam term ekaaki (the lonely). I have always felt dismayed by the opiating influence of this term on the Malayalee mindset and its overdose in their literature. So the book’s title aroused my curiosity, and I made it a point to find out what it was about. An opportunity soon presented itself. She had covered several of its pages when the tea vendor broke her reading. She laid it aside and took up the cup.

Gently did I gesture my interest in having a glance at the book. She responded with a diplomatic smile and offered me another book from her stock for my reading. Apparently she suspected that, once the book presently in use were handed to me, I might not put it down, thereby depriving her of the satisfaction of completing it at one go. Thereupon I casually brought up the term ekaaki and observed that loneliness and melancholy seemed to continue as favourite moods of the Malayalee even these modern days, the term ekaaki itself having charmed Malayalam writers and readers alike over the decades.  Someone had written a couplet with this opening line:

Light brings sorrow, my child;

And the lady promptly completed the couplet by quoting the concluding line:

Isn’t it darkness that is comforting!

And she followed up her statement by enunciating the “truism” that love begets sorrow, that the end of love is misery.

At this stage, the husband-&-wife team joined the conversation with obvious curiosity and relish.

I asked her to elaborate. She said she had deeply loved her husband, but in the end he gave her pain and sorrow by dying young. I said, if she truly loved him, she would be grateful for the joyful years she had with him rather than being wrapped up in the self and being sorrowful about her loss after his death. Honour and celebrate the memory of the deceased, instead of wallowing in self-pity after the event. Your sorrow comes from your own sense of insecurity and weaknesses and not from his death. His death opened your eyes to your dependence on him and laid bare your own weaknesses, and you wrongly attribute your present pain to his death. In other words, blame not his death for your sorrow, but blame yourself for your present plight.

And the two executives wholeheartedly and cheerfully endorsed my views.

Self-pity and insecurity-complexes seem to be scripted into the Poetic Unconscious of the Malayalee. Perhaps the higher rate of suicides in Kerala has something to do with this propensity. And Kerala’s litterateurs even today seem to romanticise and hallow loneliness-related moods. Is the Malayalee so weak-minded that she can’t cope with stressful situations?

When love breaks down, when infatuations are abruptly shattered by disillusionment, when trust is betrayed, the weak experience the earth caving in under their feet, and tend to wish the earth swallow them up. And they seek refuge in self-fulfilling sorrow.

Love is enabling; not disabling. Malayalam fiction is full of this silly disabling stuff; Ekaaki is a beloved theme for fiction writers. The question is: In spite of the recent shifts in our cultural paradigm, how long more will it take for us to become truly liberated from the shackles of such disempowering thoughts?

The business executive said, “Look at the Americans. They teach their children never to give up. Never quit. Their self-improvement books, a best selling branch of their literature, exhort people to persist till they snatch success from the very jaws of defeat. That is how the moderns should live. That is how one should live a lively life.”

His wife supplemented him, “Socio-cultural leaders and writers always influence the community and are honoured as their gurus and prophets; and it is all the more reason they desist from inculcating negative attitudes in their communities. Instead, they should prepare the people to be strong-willed enough to brace themselves to face challenges with quiet courage and equanimity. The poet who would run away from light and take refuge in darkness is no guru.”

The lady was intelligent and graceful. She listened with empathy and was non-committal and non-judgmental, without showing any trace of dissent. However, the wise lady expressed the view that prose and pragmatism alone would not make life wholesome. No one could live by prose alone. There should also be some poetry in one’s life as a balancing factor.

All the three of us wholeheartedly agreed with her.

This lively evening session was concluded with a brief exchange of personal information. And I learnt that the graceful lady had authored several books and got them published by reputed publishers. The books, she said, had had reasonably good commercial success. Her husband was a renowned film director who died at a relatively young age a couple of decades ago.

The delightfully intriguing couple turned out to be colleagues working for a foreign firm in India, then on a brief official visit to Kerala. They were married, but not to each other.

K X M John

20/07/09

(First published in New Indian Express in July 2009)