A JOURNEY THROUGH MY BOOKS

 

A JOURNEY THROUGH MY BOOKS

Of late and even earlier as long back as six years, when I wrote my first book ‘I am just An Ordinary Man’ the need to understand ‘Who am I’ slowly intensified, and naturally, this took me back down the years to my childhood from where I tried to trace my journey to who I had become and ultimately what I will be in the years to come. This was an inward journey and it took me back over the years to that little boy who would sit on the banks of the river Thamirabarani, with the others and feel the flow of the cool waters caress and the little fishes which were in abundance, nibble his feet. This was a vacation which I looked forward to every year to spend some time at my ancestral home. The memories of these annual vacations still inhabit the recesses in my brain, to be called upon, to relish in solitude and remind me of my roots.

It was a passage from Alex Haley’s book ‘Roots’ that set the momentum for my second book ‘Darkness and Beyond – A Medley of Many Lives’ where the longest story is titled ‘Roots’ and in which I first travel back to my ancestral house with the intention of selling it and realizing that one cannot erase away the generations and cut yourself off from the reality of who you are. Haley in his book says –

“In all of us there is a hunger, marrow-deep, to know our heritage- to know who we are and where we have come from. Without this enriching knowledge, there is a hollow yearning. No matter what our attainments in life, there is still a vacuum, an emptiness, and the most disquieting loneliness.” – Alex Haley, Roots

 

‘Roots’ is not autobiographical but a fictional biography of my grandfather and his times. Most of what is written about Sankara, my grandfather, is true. It is fictional in the sense that I was only a baby six months old and never seen him. I reproduce some passages from the first story ‘Roots’ in my book ‘Darkness and Beyond’ –

‘This is where my grandfather lived till the end of his days, and this is where my father said he wanted to settle down after retirement. It was not that I had come in search of my roots or to relive those moments of my childhood which I had spent here, for that was a long time ago. Now I was quite comfortable and satisfied with where I lived. The trip was primarily commercial as the house was lying unoccupied for a long time: for more than three years now. I wanted to explore the possibility of selling it for whatever it was worth’

‘I had felt a strange presence when I first entered the house. It was as if someone was beckoning me to come inside. Now as I sat there, I felt the presence once again; only this time it was stronger. Beyond the silence in that room, I could hear the chanting of Sanskrit shlokas (prayers) emanating from the puja shelf. I remembered it was here that my grandfather used to sit and do his daily worship. I imagined him sitting there with the vibhuti (sacred ash) smeared across his dark forehead with his eyes closed as if he was in a divine trance. I remembered sitting near and watching him. I was too young when he passed away. Whatever I knew of him was through my father, mother, and grandmother. Now as I sat there, he seemed to come alive and the house once again resonated to the sounds and voices of those years gone by.’

‘Now when I look back, it is with a deep sense of sadness that I remember him. To me, he symbolized the last of a lost generation, a generation that took pride in belonging, a generation proud of its roots, its temples, and its Gods. It was strange, but Sambasivam uncle’s last words to me “I do not know when or whether we shall meet again” keeps ringing in my years even to this day. It was as if he had decided that he would keep his date with destiny in the village of his birth and the house of his ancestors and that his ashes would also be consumed in the sacred waters of the Thamirabharani.’

 

‘Autumn Leaves’ in a sense is a continuation of ‘Roots’ depicting the disintegration of the joint family system and the movement away from the villages necessitated by the need to seek a source of livelihood and the presence of opportunities outside our comfort zone, in the process moving further away from where our roots lie –

I needed answers to pull me out of this angst. I decided that it has to start with understanding myself and for that, I needed to go back to where it all started, my parents. And that was what took me to India, to search for the great Banyan tree under whose shade generations had come and gone, the sacred Peepal under which the Buddha attained realization, the burning ghats of Varanasi where one understood the meaning of life and death and the heights of the Himalayas which promised a peep into the unknown. -Autumn Leaves

The seed for my book ‘Autumn Leaves – Seasons of Life’ was sown when I sat listening to Nat King Cole singing ‘Autumn leaves’. The hauntingly captivating voice captured the poignancy of loneliness and a lost love. The falling leaves symbolized the drifting away of relationships, of life itself. Autumn or the Fall had always fascinated me with its colors, but at the same time, there was a despondency that it would soon come to an end. When I asked two of my friends their views as to what Autumn symbolized for them, one said it was the full attainment of all that life can offer you, with all its colors it was a ‘beautiful life’. The second view was that it represented sadness, as after all this achievement, the leaves would turn brown and fall to the ground, a symbol of our approaching end. Two divergent ways of looking at life itself. While the first reveled in the present moment, the second despaired at the approaching darkness.

A quote from Ernest Hemingway- ‘You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintery light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen.’

 

Ultimately it is through Mrityunjay that I arrive at an understanding of what it is to live. The Diary of Mrityunjay in a sense is a chronicle of a man’s search for a meaning in life –

‘I have learned my lessons. I have realized that the world is real and our existence a necessity.  Life and death are certainties and so is all the gamut of emotions that we experience on our journey. The earlier we accept this, the easier would it be to live. One does not learn by moving away. One learns by sticking it out and facing the truth of our fallibilities and that alone is the only way to overcome them. I have also realized that relationships are pure when there is understanding and acceptance. Relationships are based on trust and empathy, to support each other and being there for each other.’

The journey through my four books has taken six years, but it has opened my eyes to the need to understand where I came from, what I have been, and where I will be going.

I thank all those who have been there with me on this journey, encouraged, understood, and accepted me for what I am.

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