Acchan

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August 2017. On receiving a panicked phone call from Amma, I took the first flight from Bangalore to Mumbai and rushed to be with Acchan in the ICU of Fortis Hospital, Mulund. We ended up staying there, him and me for over a month. A battery of tests yielding nothing, until eventually a haematologist walked by, a short little curt Bengali fellow, pronouncing his imminent death warrant. He was eventually to become Acchan’s saviour. The one in whom Acchan found; both the Gods he never believed in and the demons he fought. Sitting at the cold reception of Guantanamo (as he called the hospital in one of his poems), holding the results of his bone marrow biopsy, I felt the earth cave under me.  Stomach churning, heart racing, a host of hitherto unknown words entered our world. Myleodysplastic syndrome. Azacitidine. Chemotherapy. Blood transfusions. Blood. Our worlds were to soon be consumed by the red.

 

Acchan took it in his stride. I am ready to go he said. I have lived a full life. Cancer surgeons in

Mumbai, Bangalore, Kerala and New York gave him 6 months to live. One of them painstakingly drew out a chart, all its end points in the inevitable death as he said. At this age, there is no chance at recovery, they said. Doctors - these clinical statisticians.  Acchan eventually went on to prove every single one of them wrong. When Dylan Thomas wrote “Do not go gentle into that good night, Rage rage against the dying of the light”, I am pretty sure he was referring to Acchan. Acchan ended up in a tiny 25% cohort that responded amazingly well to the treatment and went on to live for nearly 4 years since that prognosis. Like in life, he became the most spectacular case study of the resistance. Of everything the doctors leave out in their pronouncements. The exceptions. The rare. That lone bright spark in the deep well of darkness. When he eventually left, he did it entirely on his own terms, out of his own will.

 

Acchan, the everyone’s man who belonged to all. His deep empathy for the human condition,

evident in his big wide smile permanently plastered on a deeply tanned face. That smile reflecting the warmth of the bright light in him; empathetic, observant, kind. Acchan, who’s large heart and expansive soul had space for everyone. From his family to his help, everyone was under the shade of his compassion and love. He grew up surrounded by women, his mother, 4 sisters, wife, 4 daughters. He was the leader of the unit. He loved his extended family and took care of them as much as he did of his own. “No man can survive in an island”, Acchan would keep rebuking me. “Man is a social animal; he needs to live in the warmth of people”. I heard this ever so often as my introverted self, seeking silences all the time, tried to hide away from yet another social gathering. As I found many of my answers in complete isolation, I saw the bi-polarity of how rich Acchan’s life was -large, surrounded by the resounding presences of a million people who loved him deeply.  Loved by the families he was born into and the families he knit together with his compassion and commonality of creative and political interests.

 

Acchan, the liberal. With whom, I started rational discourses, like a postmodern critic from age 3. Arguing about the existence of God to the true meaning of love. He would have made for a brilliant advocate, fiercely arguing all his points in his booming loud voice. Where logic always found merit, no matter how deviant from his own beliefs. Even if in the moment he wouldn’t relent, he went back and reflected. I found my way with him many times, no matter how unpalatable the stance. When I got good marks in 10th but wanted to pursue commerce, Acchan put all the reason and wisdom and his own dreams out of me away and let me find my path in the world. When I wanted to quit an investment banking job in London’s financial district to create a business serving the bottom of the pyramid in the back of beyond of India, Acchan the die-hard communist, who should have been happy - at the very least with the loftiness of the idealism - fought very hard against the idea. For all his principles, he didn’t want my life to mirror the hardships of his.  Swimming against the tide requires strength, no one knew that better than a man who had dedicated his life to social, cultural, and political causes. But the gene pool came home to roost, I spent the next 10 years amid the poorest of the poor, trying to find answers through business and skilling. Eventually, the establishment wins most of the time, something Acchan and I learnt in our own specific way, him through literature, politics and culture, me through business and advocacy, searching mostly the same thing – an egalitarian world and arriving mostly at the same punishing answers – utopia is perhaps just that.

 

Acchan, the Aesthetician. Acchan spoke passionately about Soundaryashashtram, the study of

aesthetics. My uninformed self, with no education and arguing primarily from first principles

debated if beauty was subjective in the cultural context of the subject perceiving it or if one could really arrive at an abstract notion of beauty, like a universal truth, with rules, ratios and math. Acchan argued, rather what I made of his arguments was – anything closer to life is more beautiful. I learnt when he died, how true this was. The imminence of death is truly among the ugliest, most

unbearable of experiences. Presence of life, no matter how strained is still joyous. When I look at pictures of his youth, I see how immensely beautiful he was. Vivacious. Truly tall, dark and andsome. I found some partial answers to beauty in replicating parts of our brain’s neural network in the artificial intelligence we created at my company and Acchan ideas resounded in them.

 

Acchan and imagery. Imagery is everything in poetry Acchan said, as I took baby steps towards writing my first poems. Acchan introduced me to Octavio Paz, Sunstone.

“I go on a journey in galleries of sound,

I flow among the resonant presences, going,

a blind man passing transparencies,

one mirror cancels me, I rise from another,

forest whose trees are the pillars of magic,

under the arches of light

I go among the corridors

of a dissolving autumn…”

 

It remains the most powerful imagery in a poem I have read. Thinking visually is a gift I have from Acchan, one I hope to use in all the 100 of his poems he translated into English, saying I must rewrite them for him. Acchan, you told me poetry is what is lost in the translation, what a futile task you have set me up on. But I will attempt to do so in the hope that, I will refine and distil all your values, your creative teachings and become half worth the giant legacy you have left behind for us to preserve.

 

Acchan, the eternal student. When we were small, Acchan bought home some books containing paintings from the renaissance era. These 16th century paintings of Leanardo da vinci,Michealangelo, Rapheal, Titian, Boticelli and other Italian artists were sewn into our minds with these books. My sisters and I grew up painting our own impoverished versions of the Mona lisa, the girl with the pearl earring, Madonna and child, the kiss of venus. With those books, Acchan sparked in me a life long obsession with colors and artistry of paintings. My eyes however had a real opening only when I travelled through the museums in Europe and the US. It was an awakening, a personal renaissance and I learnt through the sight, smell and textures visiting these great works of art that ultimately – originality of style, that breakout expression came from the courage to be utterly honest and completely vulnerable combined with diligent, disciplined study of the medium. Standing in front of the No 31, Jackson Pollock at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, I had the most empowering of life experiences. It is a painting with rhythm, a painting with live wire energy that reverberates across the room. Only lines, no form. Complete abstraction. The museums filled my head with the Salons of Paris, the impressionists, post impressionists, the Dutch expressionists. I fell in love with Van Gogh after a visit to his museum in Amsterdam, a love story that lasts even today. After dismissing Picasso, I started to worship his genius when I saw the paintings from his blue period and the incomparable compositions from his cubist phase in Barcelona. I started studying Art Theory, its origins and movements with a fervour to understand the history of expression, our reason for being, the purpose of art and why we express the way we do today. Acchan, never having travelled to any of these places but fully informed of the cultural movements through time, followed me in hot pursuit. While I was physically there, Acchan was more mentally there than me. In his visits to Bangalore, he would read all the books I purchased from these museums, write detailed notes, have debates and discussions about how paintings and poems would be rendered in the different movements. We understood hyper realism in paintings to mean capturing the tiniest light, using the thinnest brush and in poetry to mean vivid descriptions, devoid of opinion. One of

Acchan’s favourite forms of expression was of course, magic realism. Acchan, the lover of magic.

The fantasy underscores and heightens the reality, try to move to magic, he said. Emerald islands

housing frozen angel statues. The place where the real moves to surreal lifts the creative. As a post modernist poet and philosopher, Acchan was deeply involved in its evolution and practise. But magic was the essential ingredient. I discovered Neruda accidentally and passed on a book to Acchan. At age 81, with the MDS diagnosis when he could barely see, Acchan with a magnifying glass went on to study not only Neruda, but all other Latin poets, the 20th century evolution of Spanish poetry and became the de facto expert 10:1. I hunted books for him in libraries from no man’s land, Acchan was reading such esoteric stuff till the end, I never found the books he wanted in any regular bookstores. I sent various friends on impossible mission to find these books, which ultimately had to be fished out of dusty bookshelfs in unheard corners of the world. He was the eternal student.

 

Acchan, the philosopher. The historian. Acchan’s reading and collection of books spanned everything from political ideologies to poetry, music, film, drama, history, fiction, literary criticism. Achhan, with whom anyone could have a discussion about almost anything.

 

Achhan, the friend, the mentor. From a very small age, I remember Acchan being surrounded by

large groups of young men and women – smoke filled rooms in our house in Garodia and heated debates. As time passed, Acchan grew older but his friends stayed just as young as newer generations entered our house and Acchan listened patiently, engaged with debates, regaled old experiences and always served tea and snacks cooked by Amma. Acchan was at once a friend and a mentor.

 

Acchan, the ever-devoted husband. Achhan and Amma were the epitome of shared companionship. Amma’s life purpose towards the later years was cooking for Acchan, her style of cooking tuned to his precise palatte. Acchan and Amma rarely spent more than 15 mins out of each other’s sight. He woke up and made tea for her every day, cut vegetables while she cooked, went through all of life’s business together, him walking fast ahead, her trotting behind and then they would chat through the day discussing the events of news until they finally fell asleep. In the hospital, in his final days, Amma was watching the news religiously to be able to relay all of it to Acchan. She spoke to him the morning of his death, he left in full consciousness having spoken last to his soulmate, his wife, connected till the very end.

 

Acchan, the father. Who bought up daughters in a utopian equal world. Who cut our hair short and

cultivated hard working ethos in all of us. Who came with us to every exam, waited outside the college after the paper was over, who bought fruits and cut them with so much love. Who shared our every pain and every win. The voice of reason. The instiller of values.

 

In the end I became Acchan’s healthcare supporter. Through several foggy moments, I tried hard to maintain the line of his human rights, especially when he was behaving like a child refusing to meet the Saviour, his Demon, his haematologist. In many ensuing fights, I sometimes became his gentle prodder – creating incentives to keep visiting the hospital and continuing the treatment. But covid and its resulting quarantining became a difficult fight for to win. Chemotherapy is a bitch. It involves injecting drugs 7/28 days in a month. Acchan after a year in isolation, after 300 doses, was done with the injections. In March 2021, after yet another fight over meeting the Saviour, his Demon, he told me – Surga, I am done. I have lived enough. If you come here and threaten me, I will go visit him. But only because you have come. I do not want to go. I am done. I have lived a full life. Please let me make this choice.

It was the impossible choice. But one part of him was ready to go. I listened to that part and did not force him. In the end, those are the only regrets. The fights left unfought. The child in him that

wanted saving. The lack of good options and not being there in the end with him. Leaving all of it

ultimately to the mercy of Covid wards. In the larger narrative of the second wave of covid, Acchan

was a statistic. But to all the people he touched with his love, he lived a thousand lives. Family man, writer, poet, philosopher, communist, student, mentor, post modernist, magic realist, lover of all things life. His life collectively was so much larger than any of those individual words.

 

For each day of the wretched isolation of last year, I felt Acchan, the community man, die a little every day and for each of those little deaths, a little part of me also left with him. Acchan was a lover of nature.  In our tiny 600sq ft house in Bombay, atleast a 100 sq ft was devoted for plants.  When Acchan was admitted to the hospital, all the plants in my garden started wilting. I knew the end was near, in fact knew the exact day and time and how he would pass.  My plants felt my grief every day. One of my favorite plants, a Thuja that we used as a Christmas tree, started changing color from a lush bright green to brown.  The browns deepened almost in rhythm and tandem to his worsening crp counts.  On this canvas of despair, Acchan conspired with the universe for one last display of magic.  Just a few weeks before he passed, one day a couple of bulbuls flew into my garden and started using all the drying twigs to built a nest in the Thuja tree.  The mommy bulbul then laid 3 eggs and began hatching them through Acchans hospitalisation period.  On the exact day Achhan died, the nestlings hatched.  When I returned home from Bombay, they had flown off.  Magic, as Acchan always told us, was everywhere. Always underlining the grand beauty of life.  Life - this stunning proposition we struggle to understand, eventually meets us the most at the time of the deepest loss. In the ever-fluid shifts from one form to another, the transience of life is somehow tamed through this infinite continuum created by our sense of shared oneness, our connectedness to every other being that is alive. 

 

Acchan and I.

Forever together.

He is present every day.

In every morning sun.

In the silver outlines of clouds.

In the warm breeze at vast oceans.

In the smell of every morning coffee.

In the intriguing mystiques of the night skies.

In every stillness.

In all the beauties.

He is there.

 

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Surga