Kailasnath the Paradox

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It wasn’t easy to discern whether he was a friend or merely an amused onlooker. He was my colleague at the college, though from another department. When my life had entered a slippery slope because of certain unresolved psychological problems, he didn’t choose to shun me as most others did. However, when he did condescend to join me in the college canteen sipping tea and smoking a cigarette, I wasn’t ever sure whether he was befriending me or mocking me.

Kailasnath was a bundle of paradoxes. He appeared to be an alpha male, so self-assured and lord of all that he surveyed. Yet if you cared to observe deeply, you would find too many chinks in his armour. Beneath all those domineering words and gestures lay ample signs of frailty.

The tall, elegantly slim and precisely erect stature would draw anyone’s attention quickly. Kailasnath was always attractively dressed though never unduly stylish. Everything about him exuded an air of chic confidence. But the way his head shook impulsively while he conversed would make you hesitate about his apparent elan.

He could be ruthless in articulating his views and opinions. But he doesn’t mean to hurt you. On the contrary, there is a gentle heart beating below the displays of sarcasm that borders on cynicism.

Kailasnath stayed in a house not too far from mine in my last days in Shillong. Once I needed an urgent help. Maggie fell ill suddenly. It was an allergic reaction to a medicine she had taken. The situation alarmed me. Getting a taxi or any such conveyance immediately wasn’t easy in those days. Moreover, we stayed right on top of a hill, a beautiful place but far away from the benefits of human civilisation like the public transport systems.

Mercifully the phone was working. And Kailasnath responded. He could instantly understand my worry and assured me that he would be at my place in a couple of minutes with a taxi. “Be ready,” he assured me, “I’ll be there in a moment.” He not only brought the taxi to our residence but also came along with us to the hospital. His concern was palpable all through.

I visited him occasionally at his residence merely because I needed to talk to someone. He would speak about his latest experiments with Reiki and he did try to help me out of my personal turmoil using that healing system. It didn’t help much probably because he was still learning it. But his efforts to help touched a chord in my heart.

It was when I thought I had found a reliable friend whose heart was far more sensitive than his sarcastic utterances would ever imply, he told me that he was leaving Shillong. Personal problems, he said without elaborating. I didn’t probe either. I was struggling with my own problems and was in no position to help another person with his struggles.

Kailasnath and I left Shillong more or less at the same time. We continued to be in touch though we found our roots in two places far away from each other. A year after we left Shillong, I went to the college which Kailasnath and I had left. The purpose was to complete certain formalities. I would be getting some money too in the process: the provident fund, etc. “You’re losing interest” was the cryptic remark added by the principal in his curt letter to me which demanded rather imperiously that the formalities should be completed without delay.

I wrote to Kailasnath about my proposed visit to Shillong. “I’m not going,” he said with his usual self-assurance. “You’re losing more than interest,” I said playing on the principal’s words. “I’m not interested in interest or the capital.”

That was Kailasnath. Money and such worldly matters didn’t sway him. There was a kind of mystic that lay deep within him. Which was the real Kailasnath: the hidden mystic or the apparent cynic? That would be like asking along with philosopher Nietzsche: “Is man merely a mistake of God? Or God merely a mistake of man?”

Kailasnath visited us one late evening in Delhi in 2015. Maggie and I were packing our things as we had decided to leave Sawan school which had been brought to dust by a religious cult. There was no electric power on the campus. Power was cut off every now and then merely to harass the people who stayed on the campus. The religious cult, Radha Soami Satsang Beas or RSSB, wanted everyone to leave immediately. They had bulldozed all the buildings except a few staff quarters where some of us still stayed. Kailasnath and I walked over the rubble of the demolished staff quarters to enter my flat. As soon as he entered the power came on. We spent about half an hour together. The moment he stepped out to leave us, the power failed again. “I am the light,” Kailasnath said with his usual elan and sarcasm. And he laughed.

He laughed a lot. His laughter often reminded me of Mahabharata’s Ashwatthama. Did the last laughter on the Kurukshetra battlefield belong to Ashwatthama?

I am still in touch with Kailasnath. I know that he reads my posts. He drops an occasional comment here too.

When Narendra Modi became the Prime Minister in 2014 and some of my posts criticised his policies severely, Kailasnath expressed his displeasure. Wasn’t I being unfair to the new Prime Minister? Shouldn’t I give him time to prove himself? Kailasnath was sure that Modi was going to redeem India. This difference in our political views kept us away from each other for quite some time. Even now Kailasnath is a fan of Modi and I continue to be the Viswaguru’s loyal critic. Time has proved me right. But Kailasnath is free to continue to hope. After all, hope is the only thing that is left now in Indian politics.

Kailasnath claimed in one of his recent WhatsApp messages that he is a Hindu at heart and practises some of its rituals. In all my exchanges with him, I could never think of him as a religious bigot. I always considered him a philosopher who hid a mystic deep within his heart and laughed like Ashwatthama. 

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