Skip to main content

Tang of dried figs


A cartonful of medicines and medical accessories were being placed into my hands by the dispenser at the hospital where a beloved person had just undergone an angiogram when my phone rang.

'Benoy is no more,' the voice said stifling a sob.

Benoy was a friend who was my batchmate from 1975 to 1978. The friendship endured till his ultimate departure because he had a unique ability to retain friendships. He took extraordinary pains to collect the whereabouts of each member of that particular batch and organise a gathering of theirs in Kochi about a decade back. He made a data bank of each one's significant dates such as birthday, wedding, and spouse's birthday. He wished each one on those occasions at the WhatsApp group he formed. Every friend was special for him.

'I won't leave you,' he told me when I left the WhatsApp group which I found a bit obscurantist in outlooks. But I was adamant on leaving the group with which I couldn't identify myself. Moreover, most members in the group were uncomfortable with my irreverence towards religion.

Benoy found a solution. He formed another group of the same batchmates but only those who could accept any and all kinds of views and opinions. This new group inspired my story 'Dirty Saints.'  In spite of heavily accentuated personal differences, the members of the new group held together because of the unique charm that Benoy exuded. The group had an informal get-together last year in Kochi. That was the last time I met Benoy.

The tang of dried figs rises turns sour on my palette. That was his last gift. 'Let Maggie have a taste of this biblical fruit,' he said placing a packet of dried figs in my hands. Fruits from God's garden.

He was a devoted Catholic and I a proclaimed atheist. There were all sorts of people in that heterogeneous group which only Benoy could have held together so effortlessly.

It is another leading member of the group who gave me the heartrending news about Benoy's surrender to Covid-19 after a protracted battle in a Dubai hospital. My heart grieves for the untimely end of one of the finest persons I have known. I hope his wife and son will endure their grief with fortitude.

Nobody could understand and accept the entire spectrum of human attitudes and outlooks as Benoy could. The world is a much poorer place because of his departure.


Comments

  1. Yes Benoy was HE whom I loved than any other person in our group. Yes he knew it. I recall my memories of meetings wehsd on the eve of my marriage and his marriage

    The words cannot express the loss l have on his departure

    But we have accept it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I know of the special bond that existed between you two.

      Delete
  2. May Benoy's soul RIP. When good souls depart, people like me also feel grieved.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Condolences on losing your friend. May Benoy’s soul RIP.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ayodhya: Kingdom of Sorrows

T he Sarayu carried more tears than water. Ayodhya was a sad kingdom. Dasaratha was a good king. He upheld dharma – justice and morality – as best as he could. The citizens were apparently happy. Then, one day, it all changed. One person is enough to change the destiny of a whole kingdom. Who was that one person? Some say it was Kaikeyi, one of the three official wives of Dasaratha. Some others say it was Manthara, Kaikeyi’s chief maid. Manthara was a hunchback. She was the caretaker of Kaikeyi right from the latter’s childhood; foster mother, so to say, because Kaikeyi had no mother. The absence of maternal influence can distort a girl child’s personality. With a foster mother like Manthara, the distortion can be really bad. Manthara was cunning, selfish, and morally ambiguous. A severe physical deformity can make one worse than all that. Manthara was as devious and manipulative as a woman could be in a men’s world. Add to that all the jealousy and ambition that insecure peo...

Bharata: The Ascetic King

Bharata is disillusioned yet again. His brother, Rama the ideal man, Maryada Purushottam , is making yet another grotesque demand. Sita Devi has to prove her purity now, years after the Agni Pariksha she arranged for herself long ago in Lanka itself. Now, when she has been living for years far away from Rama with her two sons Luva and Kusha in the paternal care of no less a saint than Valmiki himself! What has happened to Rama? Bharata sits on the bank of the Sarayu with tears welling up in his eyes. Give me an answer, Sarayu, he said. Sarayu accepted Bharata’s tears too. She was used to absorbing tears. How many times has Rama come and sat upon this very same bank and wept too? Life is sorrow, Sarayu muttered to Bharata. Even if you are royal descendants of divinity itself. Rama had brought the children Luva and Kusha to Ayodhya on the day of the Ashvamedha Yagna which he was conducting in order to reaffirm his sovereignty and legitimacy over his kingdom. He didn’t know they w...

Liberated

Fiction - parable Vijay was familiar enough with soil and the stones it turns up to realise that he had struck something rare.   It was a tiny stone, a pitch black speck not larger than the tip of his little finger. It turned up from the intestine of the earth while Vijay was digging a pit for the biogas plant. Anand, the scientist from the village, got the stone analysed in his lab and assured, “It is a rare object.   A compound of carbonic acid and magnesium.” Anand and his fellow scientists believed that it must be a fragment of a meteoroid that hit the earth millions of years ago.   “Very rare indeed,” concluded the scientist. Now, it’s plain commonsense that something that’s very rare indeed must be very valuable too. All the more so if it came from the heavens. So Vijay got the village goldsmith to set it on a gold ring.   Vijay wore the ring proudly on his ring finger. Nobody, in the village, however bothered to pay any homage to Vijay’s...

Empuraan – Review

Revenge is an ancient theme in human narratives. Give a moral rationale for the revenge and make the antagonist look monstrously evil, then you have the material for a good work of art. Add to that some spices from contemporary politics and the recipe is quite right for a hit movie. This is what you get in the Malayalam movie, Empuraan , which is running full houses now despite the trenchant opposition to it from the emergent Hindutva forces in the state. First of all, I fail to understand why so much brouhaha was hollered by the Hindutvans [let me coin that word for sheer convenience] who managed to get some 3 minutes censored from the 3-hour movie. The movie doesn’t make any explicit mention of any of the existing Hindutva political parties or other organisations. On the other hand, Allahu Akbar is shouted menacingly by Islamic terrorists, albeit towards the end. True, the movie begins with an implicit reference to what happened in Gujarat in 2002 after the Godhra train burnin...

Empuraan and Ramayana

Maggie and I will be watching the Malayalam movie Empuraan tomorrow. The tickets are booked. The movie has created a lot of controversy in Kerala and the director has decided to impose no less than 17 censors on it himself. I want to watch it before the jingoistic scissors find its way to the movie. It is surprising that the people of Kerala took such exception to this movie when the same people had no problem with the utterly malicious and mendacious movie The Kerala Story (2023). [My post on that movie, which I didn’t watch, is here .] Empuraan is based partly on the Gujarat riots of 2002. The riots were real and the BJP’s role in it (Mr Modi’s, in fact) is well-known. So, Empuraan isn’t giving the audience any falsehood as The Kerala Story did. Moreover, The Kerala Story maligned the people of Kerala while Empuraan is about something that happened in the faraway Gujarat quite long ago. Why are the people of Kerala then upset with Empuraan ? Because it tells the truth, M...