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Letter
to Daughter
By
Harish Nambiar
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Alyosha dear most,
I had a very peculiar experience. I was in Singh’s and
at the receiving end of at least five letters addressed to
five different persons in a particularly familiar handwriting.
Now all these letters in exquisite handmade recycled paper
had a strange ONLY written on all of them. And, by a splendid
turn of fate, every of those letter receivers showed me their
respective letters. But, in another happy somersault of fate,
none of them got to read a certain letter addressed to a certain
Papa Only. That was just to remind you that as per the wishes
your royal kindness I have safely tucked away my only letter
from you in my empty wallet. By the way, how did you guess
it would be empty? Back to business, I was very happy seeing
you write to so many people. I noticed, in all those letters
your resolution to be happy. I also did not miss your tormenting
loneliness. My heart went out to you, while my chest puffed
out in pride. Who but my Alyosha would ever take so much of
pain in the belief that it is the only bridge across forever.
I also read a letter you had written to Hema. Ahem, a very
Senior 3 M Executive’s letter. Also a very mature elder
sister’s letter to a younger one. I was very fascinated
by the letter. It was so very no-nonsense advice letter. Somehow,
it sounded too much like some high profile corporate head
honcho sharing secrets of individual success. It made me very
proud of my baby. I am also very happy that the recipient
of that letter is Hema, a girl I alternate between admiration
and sympathy. Admiration because I see so much in her at her
ages that similar girls of similar age never seem to have.
A head on their shoulders, that is both intelligent and sensitive.
I have often wondered why is it that I alone among all of
mankind I know of kill myself with an anxiety of stunted fulfillment.
I think it is a recent phenomenon. I have been incoherent
to those who listen to me. That includes hell lot of people.
I wonder if you have read or started reading Picasso. Babyjaan,
I am at a very significant point in my life. This much I know.
What that means is amazing if I tell you the sheer amount
of different experiences that I have been through in recent
times. I do not know, but presume I have told you that I had
the first real fight with my mother last time I was in Jabalpur,
I had disappointed Hema then, I had fought with Aunty, I had
withdrawn into a kind of impregnable shell. I alternate between
extremes. I am full of love and forgiveness for the world,
and simultaneously, I am full of an inexplicable battle royale
with the world. Somehow, I seem to want to fight out for the
perceived rights of this individual called P.
I want to fight out with L publicly and privately in a savage
battle, and with only one rule; may the best win. Not only
that ----- the desire for the battle to be essentially savage
is something extremely powerful. I want to fight with no rules,
right or wrong, I feel I need a blood sport. Drawing blood
and killing alone will satiate me. And here I do not mean
L, I mean I am all prepared to die a savage death, even tortuous
death at the hands of a friend I always thought of as the
closest I had.
I feel so frustrated that it is unimaginable for you, my dear
Alyosha. I am in a weird way full of remorse and bile and
feel an urgency to drop all the values I had ever cherished.
I feel I am in a dream world, where I am at the edge of a
vast crematorium, where the bodies that have been burnt for
centuries have suddenly come to semi-life. That is to say,
they are not alive but from ashes they have turned into a
kind of coaservates, bones and skeletons that do not have
human forms do not speak but move all the same. Not like humans,
but they kind of slide noiselessly on the ground almost as
if to scare me. I am not scared, but I am filled with a vague
fighter instinct that is like the primal scream.
It is a chilling voiceless deafening scream of a man who is
maniacally fighting his last battle. He is thrilled at the
sheer insurmountability of the task. Fighting single-handedly
millions of scheming bones and skeletons. I also feel that
each and every of those things in the vast cremation ground
know and sense that I am no more the human being I was. They
all know that I have lost the center of gravity of my being,
not physical being but the very fulcrum of my spiritual existence.
They are all mocking me. They are all laughing and launching
the celebrations of their victory over me. Even though the
battle has not started. But they all know, what I know; that
my center does not hold, that I have lost that brahmastra,
that I am now the trapped Abhimanyu. They are all moving in
for the kill, not because they think I am easy meat, they
all know individually they still cannot match me, but the
army of skeletons are a mindless army. They are celebrating
because they know that now I merely have my physical prowess,
which is vulnerable to numbers. They know that Abhimanyu will
still kill a few tens of soldiers in single combat, but they
are unconcerned. They advance willing to sacrifice hundreds
to my sword, in the certainty that I will have to sooner than
later fall to their combined might. It is the laughter of
an army of skeletons that has me entirely cornered, with no
place for rules, dignity, or law.
This is what I hear and see whenever I close my eyes nowadays.
I am not dramatising, God knows that I am saying the truth.
I do not know, but in all my life I have never felt Karna’s
pain so immediately. Or so immensely.Cheated out of his kavach
kundala, out of his rightful family name, out of the side
of dharma despite being the best qualified to lead the armies
on the side of dharma, cursed by his own guru, cursed by the
brahmin who did not understand the wrath of a kshatriya, and
finally betrayed even by mother earth.
Babyjaan, Alyosha, Munni, after having lead life in so careless
of consequences of my deeds and sure in the ultimate judgement
of Gods, I see myself abandoned by the values I cherished
in a vast measureless crematorium ground, surrounded my menacing
skeletons, I have been overtaken by paranoia. I do not know
if you even understand what I am writing, but I am not writing
in the hope of communication, or even intelligibilty, understanding
is far far off. I am writing this only as a final act that
would place my babyjaan as the one important thing in my life.
If it was in any way a significant life, I want you to get
the credit for being such a part of it. But I know babyjaan
my life is wasted. Wasted beyond everything else chasing and
cherishing illusions, idealistic and romantic illusions of
justice, of value, honour. You know babyjaan, I think I shall
personify life’s options into five friends I have. L.
Y. Q. S. And R.
L: That blithe sparrow. The romantic opportunist, who is blessed
with the glorious conviction every moment. While willing to
die for his V, while willing to live for his art, he had that
great other option, that life is a ball game of opportunities.
That he believes in nothing being predictable, and always
being the man who believed that it was practice that made
a man perfect. Theman who always believed that if he practiced
a craft hard enough, he would sooner than later be called
an artist. Every new form of literature he came in contact
with, he has a short story in that genre.
You: Blessed with elemental energy to channelise. You had
merely to learn to channelise. But then again, there was another
balancing gift for your elemental energy that is by nature
amoral. It can be as intense in its positivism as in its negativity,
and that was the ability to convert experience into lessons,
and a memory that never had to make two mistakes to learn
one lesson. You too seem equipped to handle life, like J,
because you two have the ability to be a sympathetic listener
to any cause, but know how to abstain from voting, because
you know your vote is valuable, and would not waste it. You
have the moral courage to tell the man that look, I see what
you mean, I also am sympathetic to your cause, but believe
in something else more intensely. I shall therefore not vote
for you. Where you two are admirable is in your moral courage
to displease somebody you love.
Q: Again, a woman of great conviction. Deeply conservative.
Traditional, if seemingly anachronistic set of values. But
has life in a neat grid. The advantage is that of a neat software
package. It does the checking and cross checking on its own.
Therefore would not allow for mistakes to enter your autobiography,
because of the ready availability of fixed values. Within
this framework, however, there is enough possibilities for
radicalism. Will marry a Muslim if in love, or imagines herself
to be in love. Again, there is also the other great advantage
of a person settled in life, that is a support system that
disallows certain branches of questioning. And can easily
live life in luxury and peace, with little need for non-existent
memory.
S: A woman in many ways close to me in nature. Mental. A soul
that has constantly updated its value system. Capable of an
admirable democracy in judgment of others. Has to constantly
grapple with her id. Too developed a superego usually means
on one hand a dreamful sleep in the night, and a day full
of analyzing those dreams. She will never stake her reputation
on any one of the interpretations being better or more credible
than the other. Again, in her case if born to a decently well-equipped
family, one can afford a career in speculation. Importantly,
in her case, she does see the futility of her existence, but
is too seduced by its obvious rewards to let it go.
R: The inheritor of the earth. He is the healer of the world.
Not because he is a great doctor, but because he has the inexhaustible
ability to suffer boring torture till all passion exhausted,
the man collapses into a restful slumber. When he wakes up,
he will find R attending to him, and needlessly give him the
credit for saving his life. His other great gift is what he
shares with Y, a rubric of inviolable values, unquestionable
and unquestioned. He is also somewhat like S and you because
he will question several things in life, and like you in that
he too will live a life with a success, though a trifle less
than J and you.
That finishes a very long list of types. I wonder if you noticed
that my type does not make it to the list. I share and contradict
all these types. And what it means is that whichever clan
rules the earth, I shall always be the outsider.
I do not know what all I have written to you so far. But there
are several things I need to tell you. Actually, if you talk
to me for several hours at one go, you will realise that I
am not as controlled as I was. Nor am I comprehensive. Nor
comprehensible. Nor detailed. Nor pithy. Not sure of what
I am saying. I am no more what your papa used to be. I am
coming apart. I talk randomly. I think fleetingly, and constantly
I vacillate between self-sympathy and self-deprecation. I
have also lost all control over my action and myself. I have
done something you would never believe I could do. I do not
believe I have done it. I want to be punished as severely
as I deserve to be for that single shameful conduct of mine.
But truthfully, Babyjaan, I am contemplating ending life.
It is something you did not think I would ever think of. But
like I said, I have sensed a great upheaval in me. I have
cut myself out of many happenings, sought and got my solitude,
and managed to bounce back. But this time it is something
that is not merely recharging batteries. It is something much
more. If I survive this phase, and I have the last four months,
I sense a most important happening. I know like I have never
before that I am on the threshold of my destiny. I may be
stoned to death like Angulimala, I may renounce the world
like Siddhartha, I might go on a killing spree like a psychopath,
or I might became a drug addict seeking his momentary moksha,
or I may be the late Mr …..
Do not now how to end. And, that Babyjaan is interrogation.
Remember your figures of speech in poetry.
Love Papa
This
short story is for my friend V C, whose idealistic nature
and careless vices caused him more hurt from his friends than
from his very young daughter, after the unfortunate death
of his wife.
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