line? How will you go to school otherwise? The signal is my eldest daughter, the shunting hand my granddaughter. Children, children, who go to school, keep away from the railway line: I am passing.’ And the engine floods the line with milky light.
Man is protected. You could not be without a mother. You are always a child. The wife is she who makes you the child. That is why our children resemble us men.
And no sooner is the mind made up, than the hand does. For one morning—or was it evening?—it must have been evening, for I could see him with his body bare down to the waist, fresh with a cool bath, a cigarette in his hand (he would not smoke before his morning meal), Govindan Nair came to see me. Fat in his big presence, he stood at the door not wanting to disturb me with his smoke. I adjusted my glasses and looked up. (I must have been at my
Malayalarajyam.
I was away in the Hitler wars and Churchill communiques.)
He said: ‘Sir, it’s done.’
I said: ‘What?’
‘I say, sir, it is done. The thing is done. You have it when you want.’ I think I understood. But I was not sure. I was afraid to know lest the knowing be false. So I said: ‘Which?’
He said: ‘That.’
I was dumbfounded. ‘And that is?’
‘That is this,’ he said as if he had said everything. He loved, because of his big heart, to say obvious things in parables, and make you think it was all such a small affair. He was like Bhima. 7 You want the flower of paradise? Why, here I go and come. And Hanuman himself will help, Hanuman his half-brother, unknown unto Bhima. Everybody is half-brother to you, man and thing. So why worry? That seemed the principle on which Govindan Nair worked: I am, so you are my brother.
‘It’s done.’ And he placed the book in front of me. It was covered with yellowed newspaper. It looked like a school exercise book. He had copied
Astavakra Samhita,
8 and he often carried it with him. He liked to recite
‘Aho Aham Namo Mahyam Yasyame Nastikinchana
.’ 9 He opened the book and started reading it out to me in beautiful Sanskrit. Though a Brahmin I knew less Sanskrit than he. And I understood even less. He recited verse after verse. (Shridhar brought us our coffee.) He read several chapters right through as if they said what he wanted to say. Then abruptly he closed the book with his left hand and started looking at the newspaper. He liked politics. He admired courage. He always loved people who went in search of the paradise flower. It meant you became half-brother to mankind. Govindan Nair loved slipping in two rupees and five rupees through windows where a child cried. He thought his intentions would help. Fortunately his wife had lands, and the rice came in plentifully. Otherwise, how to live on forty-five rupees a month, a second clerk in Ration Office No. 66? Or buy houses, you understand.
Life is a riddle that can be solved with a riddle. You can remove a thorn with another thorn, you solve one problem through another problem. Thus the world is connected. The ration shop is meant to fight famine, and famine is there because there is war, and war because of the British, and the British because of whom? Danes, Normans, etc., say the textbooks. But actually who cares? If you fight the British in the ration shop, you solve the British problem. If you have the British bubo, you take the horse-dung medicine of Narayan Pandita Vaidyan. You get a disease from Benghazi and Narayan Pandita Vaidyan cures this unknown. The unknown alone resolves the unknown. So, brother, work and be merry, distribute cards in Ration Office No. 66. ‘Shridhar, go and tell your mother my friend is languishing because he has no strength in his limbs. His flower of paradise is coffee bean. When it is burned black and its powder is made into a collation, its effect on limbs and mind is excellent, for intellect and heart. Sir, let us go on to our
Astavakra.’
Govindan Nair sat on the veranda of my house. He forgot his food. My
Man is protected. You could not be without a mother. You are always a child. The wife is she who makes you the child. That is why our children resemble us men.
And no sooner is the mind made up, than the hand does. For one morning—or was it evening?—it must have been evening, for I could see him with his body bare down to the waist, fresh with a cool bath, a cigarette in his hand (he would not smoke before his morning meal), Govindan Nair came to see me. Fat in his big presence, he stood at the door not wanting to disturb me with his smoke. I adjusted my glasses and looked up. (I must have been at my
Malayalarajyam.
I was away in the Hitler wars and Churchill communiques.)
He said: ‘Sir, it’s done.’
I said: ‘What?’
‘I say, sir, it is done. The thing is done. You have it when you want.’ I think I understood. But I was not sure. I was afraid to know lest the knowing be false. So I said: ‘Which?’
He said: ‘That.’
I was dumbfounded. ‘And that is?’
‘That is this,’ he said as if he had said everything. He loved, because of his big heart, to say obvious things in parables, and make you think it was all such a small affair. He was like Bhima. 7 You want the flower of paradise? Why, here I go and come. And Hanuman himself will help, Hanuman his half-brother, unknown unto Bhima. Everybody is half-brother to you, man and thing. So why worry? That seemed the principle on which Govindan Nair worked: I am, so you are my brother.
‘It’s done.’ And he placed the book in front of me. It was covered with yellowed newspaper. It looked like a school exercise book. He had copied
Astavakra Samhita,
8 and he often carried it with him. He liked to recite
‘Aho Aham Namo Mahyam Yasyame Nastikinchana
.’ 9 He opened the book and started reading it out to me in beautiful Sanskrit. Though a Brahmin I knew less Sanskrit than he. And I understood even less. He recited verse after verse. (Shridhar brought us our coffee.) He read several chapters right through as if they said what he wanted to say. Then abruptly he closed the book with his left hand and started looking at the newspaper. He liked politics. He admired courage. He always loved people who went in search of the paradise flower. It meant you became half-brother to mankind. Govindan Nair loved slipping in two rupees and five rupees through windows where a child cried. He thought his intentions would help. Fortunately his wife had lands, and the rice came in plentifully. Otherwise, how to live on forty-five rupees a month, a second clerk in Ration Office No. 66? Or buy houses, you understand.
Life is a riddle that can be solved with a riddle. You can remove a thorn with another thorn, you solve one problem through another problem. Thus the world is connected. The ration shop is meant to fight famine, and famine is there because there is war, and war because of the British, and the British because of whom? Danes, Normans, etc., say the textbooks. But actually who cares? If you fight the British in the ration shop, you solve the British problem. If you have the British bubo, you take the horse-dung medicine of Narayan Pandita Vaidyan. You get a disease from Benghazi and Narayan Pandita Vaidyan cures this unknown. The unknown alone resolves the unknown. So, brother, work and be merry, distribute cards in Ration Office No. 66. ‘Shridhar, go and tell your mother my friend is languishing because he has no strength in his limbs. His flower of paradise is coffee bean. When it is burned black and its powder is made into a collation, its effect on limbs and mind is excellent, for intellect and heart. Sir, let us go on to our
Astavakra.’
Govindan Nair sat on the veranda of my house. He forgot his food. My
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