Posted by Dr. Gopal Unnikrishna Kurup
The other day (14may 2016) my alma mater Banaras (Varanasi) Hindu University celebrated her centenary. The occasion was graced by the presence of Honorable President of India Shri Pranab Mukherjee who inaugurated the celebrations.
The glad news set me down the golden lane of memory, paved with nostalgia, marked with proud milestones, and shaded with a whole lot of cool greenery of comradery, of a kind which we seem never to acquire later in life. Perhaps that sort of comradery can only develop among greenhorns. Many faces and events and dramatis personae scroll past as if on a screen, and suddenly there comes that moment when the scrolling stays put for a while. The screen vanishes and you are left alone with what it suggests: to take a hard look into life that looks suddenly more than life-size!
What it suggested was indeed poignantly more than life-size, if mine or most of ours, is any benchmark. It was about a face spotlighted in the dark screen, which I knew- to give a name now- as of Gowri (not real name). With her ever wondering rather large rotund eyes, matching face, and glowing complexion Gowri was undoubtedly the college beauty and arguably the Miss University. She had all the naive ethnicity and charm of the then old-world Thripuniththara in Kerala she hailed from , but with a veneer of some exposure to modernity, perhaps of Convent education. One year junior to me, she found perhaps an elder brother in me as well as among the few fellow Malayali compatriots. A beautiful girl will have more than a plain girl's share of woes and worries and unsavory situations to face, and help for her was readily forthcoming as long as some of us chivalrous gladiators were around. (Feminists may be grinding their teeth, murmuring 'patriarchy'!) I left the University in her second year, having finished my course.
Years later, on an evening, I was standing with a friend before the Metro Cinema in Calcutta's (Kolkata's ) Chowrangee road, debating whether to make it a movie-day or just a walk-day when I saw the old Banaras hand Shenai ambling along, still very much in his characteristic gait. Although years later and with put on weight, his face had not changed and his gait too. Nothing much might have happened to my mug and person, as he readily recognized and hailed me excitedly. After the embrace - his home-made hair oil smell had gone, replaced by that of cologne Brute - we turned to nostalgia and reminiscences which included a lot of updating old guy's and girl's whereabouts. My own batch-mate, slightly older among us -so, called secretly 'chechi' - was now professor in a college affiliated to the university. And what about, I started,... and lo! ... comes along a little in front a couple, the lady with an ever wondering rotund face, very matronly but chaperoned by her stern looking hubby. Shenoy and me both cried besides ourselves and in synchronized chorus : hey beat me! isn't it good old Gowri.!! . We then stepped up in front to be seen by Gowri who just stopped in her track utterly astonished. There was still that glow in her eyes which used to be our reward in the past, but now only to be subdued suddenly as it were by some afterthought. There came a reserved poise befitting her hubby's grimness. Both of us noted it and granted it to her, ( again the damned 'patrirchy') as natural in a girl's progress ( or is it 'regress', feminist dears?) to housewifedom.. They are no more girls but reticent wives hailing old classmates in presence of their Sultans, all the time putting their eye-corners to good use to watch every facial muscle on hubby's mug. Well the meet ended in preliminaries and formalities and she hurriedly bid good by, the hubby not condescending even to a formal halloo. Shenoy threw a slow contemplative remark at their back to the effect that the fellow is some CEO in a corporate, adding an apt adjective describing the man as with some 'headweight'. Well with Shenoy also free, we decided to make it a movie-day, going in to Metro Cinema, updating and reminiscing in between before he finally parted to catch his Bombay( Mumbai) flight.
Gowri never appeared anywhere around me for a long time till I heard about her. But this time her life had turned to be a story fit enough for a novel. During one of my professional perambulations I had walked into another Govt. office to meet its head, and there on the other side of the table sat another of my classmate, this time of both graduate, and the post graduate classes at Banaras. Wonder of wonders! I seem to have an uncanny knack of running in to class buddies in the most unexpected times and places.. This time our reminiscences continued well after the office time, till the watchman coughed discreetly, whereupon the venue shifted to a nearby restaurant as the buddy was staying alone with family staying back in his native place. There I heard Gowri's life story which had come a full circle from the corporate heights of Calcutta to the alluvial green land of rural Kerala, but not in any charming old-world scenario, but to a dingy one-room garret in a shaky market shop.
When we met her in the heady Chowrangee place of Calcutta, she had hidden her frustration in the cloak of a reserved poise befitting a jet set. For a long time she never let anyone know that behind that unreal facade there was a heart crying for love and care. Her husband had no time for her or children and was more to be found in Calcutta's glitzy clubs. Children were packed off to boarding houses and hostels where they grew up in their own way. The corporate quarters went on changing and none had any sense of belonging or anchorage. All of them became another kind of urban flotsam. She craved for some love and attention either from the husband or the children which she never got. and when children became men and women they totally abandoned her, immersed in their own world. Totally alienated, she craved for some caring of any sort and her own moorings of rural simplicity of an unhurried lifestyle where people had always time for others..
Her wishes personified in the arrival of a photographer who came to her house, first summoned for covering some function and later becoming a frequent visitor, function or no function. It is not known what type of person this guy was whether an astute opportunist who could sense the crying soul in her only to be taken advantage of, or an understanding sensitive soul with humane kindness to be of use in work of redemption of the lost and depressed. Whatever be the case, it was only a matter of months before her tormented mind decided to take the plunge. She threw her tattered life in Calcutta in to the polluted winds from the Hooghly river, forsaking everything she desperately wanted to matter to her but was never allowed to, abandoned a home which was never a home to her and eloped with the photographer one uncertain fine or fiendish morning. A woman desperately yearning for love could do anything, even fiendish things like killing own progeny or senselessly convert to another religion, without batting an eyelid. Every woman in her heart of heart is a timeless teenager.
Together they returned to the unassuming simplicity of a small town setting where the man had his original small studio below and a one-room tenement, more of a garret, above. When My friend named the place with a sigh, I knew the place which i often used to pass by in my younger days, - a sleepy market place of a few ramshackle shops. Occasional buses, one or two stop briefly without shutting their engines, only to hurriedly move on before wasting time. What kind of meetings or functions there could be except an occasional marriage or something, for the studio to be in demand, or may be some passport photos, for sustenance.
Did she find the Shalimar of love and care she yearned for!. Or after the initial sense and relief of liberation, did discontent of a chilly winter and a sense of irreversible doom set in!! None of us dared to find out. if she did find her Shalimar then we would be welcome; in the dreaded alternative eventuality, a visit from one of us or of both could shatter her.
Both of us decided ultimately to rather stay with our memory of a large, ever wondering pair of rotund eyes with an endearing gleam in them and to let her leave us ever wondering. It had haunted me ever since and I had to write it down to get rid of it.
A Girl with Large Rotund Eyes with a Gleam in them
The other day (14may 2016) my alma mater Banaras (Varanasi) Hindu University celebrated her centenary. The occasion was graced by the presence of Honorable President of India Shri Pranab Mukherjee who inaugurated the celebrations.
The glad news set me down the golden lane of memory, paved with nostalgia, marked with proud milestones, and shaded with a whole lot of cool greenery of comradery, of a kind which we seem never to acquire later in life. Perhaps that sort of comradery can only develop among greenhorns. Many faces and events and dramatis personae scroll past as if on a screen, and suddenly there comes that moment when the scrolling stays put for a while. The screen vanishes and you are left alone with what it suggests: to take a hard look into life that looks suddenly more than life-size!
What it suggested was indeed poignantly more than life-size, if mine or most of ours, is any benchmark. It was about a face spotlighted in the dark screen, which I knew- to give a name now- as of Gowri (not real name). With her ever wondering rather large rotund eyes, matching face, and glowing complexion Gowri was undoubtedly the college beauty and arguably the Miss University. She had all the naive ethnicity and charm of the then old-world Thripuniththara in Kerala she hailed from , but with a veneer of some exposure to modernity, perhaps of Convent education. One year junior to me, she found perhaps an elder brother in me as well as among the few fellow Malayali compatriots. A beautiful girl will have more than a plain girl's share of woes and worries and unsavory situations to face, and help for her was readily forthcoming as long as some of us chivalrous gladiators were around. (Feminists may be grinding their teeth, murmuring 'patriarchy'!) I left the University in her second year, having finished my course.
Years later, on an evening, I was standing with a friend before the Metro Cinema in Calcutta's (Kolkata's ) Chowrangee road, debating whether to make it a movie-day or just a walk-day when I saw the old Banaras hand Shenai ambling along, still very much in his characteristic gait. Although years later and with put on weight, his face had not changed and his gait too. Nothing much might have happened to my mug and person, as he readily recognized and hailed me excitedly. After the embrace - his home-made hair oil smell had gone, replaced by that of cologne Brute - we turned to nostalgia and reminiscences which included a lot of updating old guy's and girl's whereabouts. My own batch-mate, slightly older among us -so, called secretly 'chechi' - was now professor in a college affiliated to the university. And what about, I started,... and lo! ... comes along a little in front a couple, the lady with an ever wondering rotund face, very matronly but chaperoned by her stern looking hubby. Shenoy and me both cried besides ourselves and in synchronized chorus : hey beat me! isn't it good old Gowri.!! . We then stepped up in front to be seen by Gowri who just stopped in her track utterly astonished. There was still that glow in her eyes which used to be our reward in the past, but now only to be subdued suddenly as it were by some afterthought. There came a reserved poise befitting her hubby's grimness. Both of us noted it and granted it to her, ( again the damned 'patrirchy') as natural in a girl's progress ( or is it 'regress', feminist dears?) to housewifedom.. They are no more girls but reticent wives hailing old classmates in presence of their Sultans, all the time putting their eye-corners to good use to watch every facial muscle on hubby's mug. Well the meet ended in preliminaries and formalities and she hurriedly bid good by, the hubby not condescending even to a formal halloo. Shenoy threw a slow contemplative remark at their back to the effect that the fellow is some CEO in a corporate, adding an apt adjective describing the man as with some 'headweight'. Well with Shenoy also free, we decided to make it a movie-day, going in to Metro Cinema, updating and reminiscing in between before he finally parted to catch his Bombay( Mumbai) flight.
Gowri never appeared anywhere around me for a long time till I heard about her. But this time her life had turned to be a story fit enough for a novel. During one of my professional perambulations I had walked into another Govt. office to meet its head, and there on the other side of the table sat another of my classmate, this time of both graduate, and the post graduate classes at Banaras. Wonder of wonders! I seem to have an uncanny knack of running in to class buddies in the most unexpected times and places.. This time our reminiscences continued well after the office time, till the watchman coughed discreetly, whereupon the venue shifted to a nearby restaurant as the buddy was staying alone with family staying back in his native place. There I heard Gowri's life story which had come a full circle from the corporate heights of Calcutta to the alluvial green land of rural Kerala, but not in any charming old-world scenario, but to a dingy one-room garret in a shaky market shop.
When we met her in the heady Chowrangee place of Calcutta, she had hidden her frustration in the cloak of a reserved poise befitting a jet set. For a long time she never let anyone know that behind that unreal facade there was a heart crying for love and care. Her husband had no time for her or children and was more to be found in Calcutta's glitzy clubs. Children were packed off to boarding houses and hostels where they grew up in their own way. The corporate quarters went on changing and none had any sense of belonging or anchorage. All of them became another kind of urban flotsam. She craved for some love and attention either from the husband or the children which she never got. and when children became men and women they totally abandoned her, immersed in their own world. Totally alienated, she craved for some caring of any sort and her own moorings of rural simplicity of an unhurried lifestyle where people had always time for others..
Her wishes personified in the arrival of a photographer who came to her house, first summoned for covering some function and later becoming a frequent visitor, function or no function. It is not known what type of person this guy was whether an astute opportunist who could sense the crying soul in her only to be taken advantage of, or an understanding sensitive soul with humane kindness to be of use in work of redemption of the lost and depressed. Whatever be the case, it was only a matter of months before her tormented mind decided to take the plunge. She threw her tattered life in Calcutta in to the polluted winds from the Hooghly river, forsaking everything she desperately wanted to matter to her but was never allowed to, abandoned a home which was never a home to her and eloped with the photographer one uncertain fine or fiendish morning. A woman desperately yearning for love could do anything, even fiendish things like killing own progeny or senselessly convert to another religion, without batting an eyelid. Every woman in her heart of heart is a timeless teenager.
Together they returned to the unassuming simplicity of a small town setting where the man had his original small studio below and a one-room tenement, more of a garret, above. When My friend named the place with a sigh, I knew the place which i often used to pass by in my younger days, - a sleepy market place of a few ramshackle shops. Occasional buses, one or two stop briefly without shutting their engines, only to hurriedly move on before wasting time. What kind of meetings or functions there could be except an occasional marriage or something, for the studio to be in demand, or may be some passport photos, for sustenance.
Did she find the Shalimar of love and care she yearned for!. Or after the initial sense and relief of liberation, did discontent of a chilly winter and a sense of irreversible doom set in!! None of us dared to find out. if she did find her Shalimar then we would be welcome; in the dreaded alternative eventuality, a visit from one of us or of both could shatter her.
Both of us decided ultimately to rather stay with our memory of a large, ever wondering pair of rotund eyes with an endearing gleam in them and to let her leave us ever wondering. It had haunted me ever since and I had to write it down to get rid of it.
