To an Old Friend

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Dear S,

I don’t know if you’d even remember me after all these decades, but I find myself writing to you as if it were only yesterday that we parted ways. You were one of the few friends I had at school. You may be amused to know that a drawing of yours that you gifted me stayed with me until I left Kerala after school. Half a century later, I still remember that beautiful pencil drawing, the picture of a vallam (Kerala’s canoe) resting on a shore beneath a coconut tree that slanted over a serene river on whose other bank was an undulating hilly landscape. A few birds flew happily in the sky. Though it was all done in pencil, absolutely black and white, my memories of it carry countless colours.

I wonder where you are now. A few years later, when I returned to Kerala on holiday, I did visit your village to enquire about you. But the village had changed much and your hut on the hill wasn’t seen anymore. Maybe, you moved on. Maybe, you took up your father’s trade and became a blacksmith. If you had become a successful artist, I would have known. But I know that Kerala never sustained anything that didn’t bring in instant profits particularly in the 1970s. Your art must have gone the way of all those potentially great souls that lay buried in Thomas Grey’s cemetery in his Elegy.

Do you remember how we sneaked into the government hospital in your village to see a foetus which was rumoured to have two horns? And the thrill we experienced when we finally espied it in a jar that was kept under a table as if it was a dreaded evil waiting for an exorcist? A human foetus with horns. Just imagine it had grown to maturity in its mother’s womb and was delivered to the earth. How would that affect history?

The truth is that I didn’t see any horns on the head of that foetus. You said you did. I was always slow to see details. Did your perceptive skills carry you far in life? I hope they did. Whether it was my lack of those skills or some other reason, I know not, I didn’t get far in life. Now, exactly half a century after we parted ways from St Sebastian’s School, I’m back in my village with a lot of experiences and memories, many of which I would have been happy to share with you. And I wish I could listen to your story as well.

I’m sure the stories, yours and mine, will be more shadows than sunshine. Our days were destined to be steeped in sadness, with only fleeting touches of joy, merely because we were born in the generation of the baby boomers.

That very name, ‘Baby Boomers’, brings a smirk to my lips. The boomers filled the Sebastian’s campus with children. Some 3000 or so, if I remember correctly. Fifty years later, when I visited the same campus, it was nearly deserted. Hardly a few students. Today Kerala has the lowest birth rate among Indian states. Moreover, no one who can afford to pay fees in an English medium school will ever send his children to schools like our alma mater which still has the huge campus but has refused to evolve with the times.

The most ludicrous irony is that the teachers in Sebastian’s and other such schools that are unwanted by the majority of Keralites draw far higher salaries than their counterparts in the private English medium schools which are overcrowded. Governments never learn sense: that seems to be a universal truth.

But the teachers today in Sebastian’s must be much kinder than those we had there, I am sure. Remember all those cane beatings we got from almost every teacher for no reason other than the maxim: Spare the rod and spoil the child? I remember you used to speak about some herbal ointment that could reduce the pain of those beatings and your quest was to find those herbs every morning. My mornings were filled with Hail Marys intended to move Holy Mary’s heart that would save me from the beatings.

When people speak about their childhood with nostalgia, I look back with a heaviness that comes from lingering regrets and fading scars. How do you feel when you look back at those days?

Never mind, right? This is how life is. We are here on this planet only for learning certain lessons and then go to our graves with those lessons. Absurd? Exactly. That’s what life is.

I would love to hear from you on this. I am sure you will have another story to tell. And that may be more enlightening. Who knows!

Waiting to hear from you.

Yours…….

PS. This post is a part of ‘Scribbled and Sealed Blog Hop’ hosted by Manali Desai and Sukaina Majeed under #EveryConversationMatters