December 19, 2011
Today will be remembered for the face-to-face meeting with another good facebook friend!
Shyam came home before noon to invite us for his sister's wedding. I have "known" him for years thanks to technology but never shook his hand till today. As brothers tend to get before their sister's wedding, he was busy covering the "invitation" ground. Still we managed to chat for a few minutes.
"If engineers cannot find jobs in banks, they will become car salesmen," he said. He had had a recent car buying experience with mechanical engineer-turned-salesmen. I think an engineering degree has become the default educational qualification of the 21st century Indian, like the matriculation in the 1950s. It is only a matter of time before all middle class Indian youth will be doctors, medical or philosophical!
Leny chechi's son came visiting this morning. For last few weeks our communications had been restricted to waves from across the street. He had been busy and away writing all the management entrance exams. Now he had a small break before taking the next one on January 15th.
The most recent MBA entrance that he wrote had a General Knowledge paper. "Most of the questions were about banking and finance, like what is the new scheme launched by SBI for senior citizens? Other questions were about CEOs of different companies. I could answer most of those because Appa has been subscribed to Businessline newspaper for years."
We moved onto discussing movies that he had missed due to the exams and I had missed due to the hospital stay. Before he went back home across the street, I expressed interest in meeting the beast called Businessline. I had heard a lot about this financial publication from the house of The Hindu but never seen a copy. Back in the 90s, we used to subscribe to The Economic Times. I wonder if that paper is still printed on brownish paper and has challenging cryptic crosswords.
Businessline turned out to be faithful to the Hindu standards of quality articles. But Rs.4 per copy can be saved because their website contains pretty much everything that is in the paper except the ads.
Mar Chrysostom's autobiography remained interesting till the final page. He dedicates short chapters to his days of missionary work in coastal Karnataka with the local tribes. Having grown up near Pamba river, he was always excited about swimming, even in the ocean. Once he ventured into the sea with some fishermen. Couple of miles in they encountered an enormous school of sardines. The priest was excited by the sight and asked the fishermen to row over the school. They refused saying they were respectful of god's creation. Following the school, came an equally enormous whale. The fishermen started praying, not for their safety, but for the priest's; they didn't want anything to happen to him in their company. Mar Chrysostom writes that their respect for nature and selfless worry for his safety were valuable lessons he learnt.
While working as a priest in Thiruvananthapuram, he went wth a bunch of students once to swim at the Shangumukham beach. There they met Prince G.V.Raja who was a keen sportsman.
"Are you all students?" the Prince inquired.
"No, I am neither a student, nor a teacher, I am a priest acting as their guardian," replied Chrysostom.
The Prince was genuinely surprised to find a priest in swimming trunks splashing around in the waves. Instinctively he asked, "Do priests...bathe?"
"Yes, they do, Sir" replied the priest, "twice a day!"
Years later the Prince saw Chrysostom again at Mumbai airport. By then Chrysostom had become a bishop. In the changed attire, the Prince didn't recognize him. As they spoke, the Prince recalled a funny priest of the Mar Thoma church whom he had met at Shangumukham beach decades back!
Among the great folks he had the opportunity to meet, the Bishop recalls C.V. Raman, the Nobel laureate. "You are such a great physicist. I have not studied science. When I go back home, nobody is going to believe that I met a Nobel Laureate. So please tell me something about your research on light so that I can convince my friends that I really met you," asked the Bishop.
C.V.Raman replied:"Father, I continue to study the nature of light. My daughter, every evening, lights a sacred lamp at our house. I wish I could understand light the way she has understood it!"
Mar Chrysostom was a great friend of Malliyoor Shankaran Namboodiri, the noted Sanskrit scholar and Bhagavatham exponent. They have attended several seminars together. He writes that he has found the same humility and simplicity of C.V.Raman in Malliyoor as well. Often in his speeches, Mar Chrysostom mentions that Malliyoor doesn't wear even a tenth of all the clothing that forms the Bishop regalia because Malliyoor has nothing to hide compared to the Bishops and other ecumenical higher-ups! Malliyoor passed away on August 2, 2011.
Yesterday evening when I opened the front door, something jumped from the lemon tree into the leafy creepers around the water tap in the garden. Few seconds later a 4-5 inch long chameleon emerged open mouthed near the wound garden hose. Fascinating slow-motion locomotion, as if mocking me for my own cautious slow gait. In extreme slow motion, limb after limb, it would take its sweet time to move. Each feet moving in a circle pivoted around the leg joint. Full five minutes to go a couple of meters up the curry leaf plant.
We saw it resting early this morning just a few inches higher on a dead golden shower cassia twig that was stuck on the curry leaf plant. May be the tardiness was geriatric!
As soon as Amma came back from work, she went off to the neighbors to give them a gift. These neighbors will be going back to Singapore tomorrow after their 4 week vacation here. When they had visited two weeks ago, they brought us gifts.
Gift giving and gift taking is the major topic of discussion in David Graeber's new fascinating, insightful book: Debt.
I haven't read the book, but only the reviews and seen the youtube interviews with the author. According to him, the origins of money is not in the barter system. Barter system continues to survive in primitive societies even today without "naturally evolving" into money! Debt used to be a good thing, more along the line of indebtedness that we feel towards parents, relations etc. There was always a running line of "credit" between folks exchanging gifts. Money came into existence along with organized labor and military.
After Chrysostom's book, I have taken up the Malayalam translation of a Bimal Mitra novel. "Charithrathil Illathavar" is the Malayalam title. Roughly "The people excluded from history". It is wonderful cast of characters set in pre-Independent Calcutta.
Wonderful books do bring amazing characters, real and fictional, face to face!
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