Just Jo

My dearest Appu,

I’m not so good at story telling, though I do or rather did like writing them when I was a boy. One of your aunts was so good at telling fascinating stories and we the younger ones were enthralled by her story telling skills. But today, I’m going to tell you a story. Story of  a young man called Varghese. You won’t get to read the stories of people like him in the books or in history because to the public, they and their lives are so uninteresting. There are probably millions of Vargheses in the world who born and die everyday and not a single person would take notice because they are so ordinary. They are ‘destined’ to live their un-interesting lives.

Okay, so our story begins in a village, now a town, in the middle part of Kerala. Varghese was born 41 years back on an August 3rd to a crude father and a lovely mother. He was the fourth child of the couple. He was named after St. George and don’t ask me why people with the name Varghese have St. George as their patron saint. Perhaps it is because St. George has a Malayalam name of “Gee Varghese” (‘ghee-varugees‘ as the name spelled in Malayalam).

Varghese was different from other kids in his family. He was slightly dark, too much of an introvert and artistic. He loved painting, movies, music and reading. He was very possessive about the people whom he loved (here, perhaps you can draw some parallels between him and your Appan). Varghese did not study much and dropped out of school early. He did many jobs after that. He worked as a salesman in a fancy goods selling shop in the town. He worked there for many years and then moved on to masonry.

Varghese did not have many friends or rather was very choosy of his friends. He did not hang out with friends much. He spent his spare time painting. He loved art though he did not have access to learn much about art or artists. All he knew was to paint with the pastels and a single brush that he had bought with his own money. He could not afford to buy a canvas paper, so he would collect the old Sivakasi calendars to paint on it’s back, on the white space. His youngest brother would curiously look at him doing the painting – first the outer form with a pencil and then the pastel colors flowing on the paper with the stroke of a brush. He was so skilled. People who saw his artistic skills asked the family to enroll him in an art school or send him to somebody who can teach him art. But how can a family that struggled hard to make their ends meet afford to pay the fee for such a thing? But he did not give up. He continued painting with pastels on the back of the calendars or with a white chalk on their verandah. He even applied some of his skills in his masonry work with the permission of his supervisors.

Another passion of his was movies. He so loved movies. And he would take his youngest brother along to watch movies. Imagine a young man just in his twenties taking his brother who is ten years younger than him to movie halls while he could have hung out with his friends. If he couldn’t take his brother, he would narrate the story lines to him. And Varghese had some skill in narrating the story line of movies with hand and face gestures. So he would narrate Ten Commandments or Benhur to his brother who loved these story telling sessions. Like I said before, he rarely went out with his friends but he had a solid set of friends who stood by him. After each day’s work, he would come home, take a shower and would go to the nearest library where he was a member. Or he would go for a movie screening organized by Navachitra Film Society in which he was a member.

Then on a bright Sunday morning of January in 1997, while he was on his way to attend a friend’s wedding, he met with an accident that took his life away. He was just 27 years old when he died.

If you ask me why Varghese’s life was so interesting to me, it is not only because he was my second elder brother, your Valyappan, and we loved each other so much but also it is about a young man who was denied the opportunities he could have had as an artist. It is about young men like him denied of the chances and had to suppress themselves because of the lack of money or the people around them thought that art could get them no where. And one day they just fade out to memory. Nobody asked him if he was happy with the life he had. He never complained.

Do you know why his birthday this year makes me sad than ever in his memories? Because now I understand why my Amma still can’t control the tears when she speaks of my brother. Now I understand how it would feel when you lose a child forever. How precious a child is to a parent. How the first memory of holding their child would rush to their mind when they think of their child’s birthday. Today, I drop a tear for your Ammamma and pray God give her strength and comfort.

PS: You know I don’t usually cross-post anything I write in this private blog I created for you. But I made an exception this time and I am going to publish this post in my blog also, because I wanted to tell the world about him.

PPS: I love you so much!

Train journeys are not always interesting if you are a frequent traveler. When you travel twice a week in the same route and train it can get so boring. I always take either a book to read or charge my Zune fully so I can hear music or podcasts while sitting in the train for long 6-7 hours. But I realized last week that there still could be something interesting if you look around. Last week’s train journey back home was quite interesting that way.

The Thiruvananthapuram-Guruvayur intercity express train is always packed with daily commuters and devotees of Guruvayurappan. Daily commuters would get off mostly at Varkkala, Kollam, Kaayamkulam stations. The devotees to Guruvayur travel with family and there would be new born babies in many of these family groups. I assume that they take their little ones for the “chORooNu” ceremony at Guruvayur temple. It is a pleasure for me to see these babies, mostly because they would come close to the age group of my little one (they would mostly be 5 to 8 months old). Their bright colored dress, wide smiles and naughtiness would remind me of my kiddo and my heart would yearn to get to my son, take him in my arms and plant a kiss on his cheek.

An ordinary seat for three, with no dividers in between doesn’t give you much comfort. So imagine the other two people sitting beside you are XL. The man who sat next to me was a tall, big fellow and there was his wife, who is not so tall but still big, sat beside him. They did not really squeeze me in the beginning, but who has control over their bodies when they fall asleep? So as the train moved, the man’s body went loose and I had to bear much of his body weight.

On another seat was a girl with dark circles around her eyes. The Infosys logo on her backpack explained the dark circles and why she looked so sleepy. She must have worked long schedules to get her leave. You don’t usually spot a regular weekender in a Thursday train. She plugged in the earphones and looked away throughout the journey until she finally got off at Ernakulam. Just a couple of blocks away, a group of cheerful young girls were persuading each other to sing. Finally, they sang together but I guess they were a bit shy, even with their loud voices, so the song faded out after a couple of lines.

When the train passed through the Varkkala-Kollam stretch, I saw many homes that had the Gods’ photos in their sit-outs, all brightly lit with electric bulbs. I guess these are Eazhava houses from the photo of Sri Narayana Guru that took the center stage of the Gods’ photos. Seemed interesting to me because usually the Hindu households would have a lit Deepam on the front.

At Munroe Turutthu, a group of people were waiting to see-off a young man. One of them, an old lady, was weeping loud enough for people inside the train to take notice. A young woman whom the old lady was hugging tight while weeping was looking at others with embarassment and tried to comfort her. As the train slowly moved, rest of the people – all of them looking cheerful except the old lady – moved along with the train to wave to the young man. The old lady, now without a shoulder to cry on stood there alone, still weeping and wiping her tears off with the tip of her saree.

There is something different about the toilet art lately. In the toilet at one end of the compartment had the same sleeze you usually see in the train toilets, but on another end lied a surprise. Here, people were a bit spiritual and philosophical. Here are a few I read while taking a leak.

“Body is mortal, but the soul is immortal – Bhagavad Gita“, read one in Malayalam.

“Why does Lord Vishnu have five hands? To control our five elements“, again in Malayalam.

“We love all, we help all, we are the sons of Lord Krishna“, read another in English.

Another curious one read, “You don’t know yourself, think for once about who you are, then do as you please“.

Finally a fairly new one that read, “I want girls, call 9xxxxx xxxxx“. And next to it another one that read, “Go to your mother“.