I See; See You!

=======================================================

Humanity's Secret Longing

Some love Vanity
Others prefer Sanity
But at heart
...At last
We all value Dignity.

http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/search?q=Humanity%27s

***************************************************************************

My good father never tired of repeating this trite dialogue:

***************************************************************************

Pensioner watching Fisherman launch his country boat into the rough Vizagh sea with all storm signals aloft:

P: Aren't you scared pushing your leaky boat into roaring seas?
F: Nope

P: How did your gran'pa die?
F: In rough seas
P: How did your father die?
F: In rough seas
P: You chaps never learn

F: How did your gran'pa die?
P: Oh, In cozy bed
F: How did your father die?
P: In cozy bed
F: You chaps never learn

****************************************************************************

At a ripe 80, my father died in his cozy bed, giving a Warrant of a fortnight during which his wife, 7 kids, 8 grandkids and umpteen in-and-out-laws, and relatives could look him up, hold his hands and bid a prayerful goodbye.

At 4 AM he shouted at the infernal noise made by the rocket-bombs of a neighborhood Temple Festival. At 5 AM when I woke up to visit the bathroom, he was no more, with a peaceful look that I rarely saw earlier (Head Masters those days were always worried about their Assembly Speech for the morrow).

Since then I am scared of going to sleep in a cozy bed.

Nowadays my wife (60) and I (67) have a consensual separation:

She can't sleep without AC on and lights off.

I can't sleep with AC on (it is chill!) and lights off (I have to read; also scared of ghosts).

So she sleeps haplessly alone in the left half of our Double Bed in the Slave Bedroom (my son and daughter-in-law and Ishani in the Master Bedroom).

This Master-Slave business reminds me of two things:

1. My HM father had a Master Key to his Office (with an extra notch), but his overworked Clerk had only the Slave Key. My father could open his Office whenever he wanted; but not so his Clerk. HMs never realized there was nothing in their Office that could interest a poverty-stricken Clerk other than Marks of their students, which didn't fetch much liquid cash in those incorruptible days. So it was a washout since HMs always used to lose their Master Keys in Dhobi Ghats, creating destructive work to carpenters and creative work for locksmiths.......

2. I think there was this Master-Slave rig-up in one of those geeky Digital Electronics kits: yes, Google tells me, and I remember: JK flip-flops (JK for Jammu-Kashmir).

So, the right half of our cozy bed is always forlorn (except for occasional cats) since I spread my imitation plastic mat on the floor of our warm and vast Hall, with a couple of pillows, and all lights on day and night.

I now see this has an added advantage: I shared all the visual pleasures of my granddaughter Ishani, whose locomotion till recently was confined to crawling on all fours on the Hall floor.

All of a sudden she will scream a shout of Joy, which no one but I can decipher and participate. Her parents and Grannie think that she has gone crazy like me, but no!

There are these famous two Views: Frog-Eye View & Fish-Eye View:

Frog-in-the-Deep-Well sees her narrow cone of the overhead sky perennially; ...depending on the depth of the Hyderabad Well, her Field of View ranges from 2 degrees to 10 degrees.

Fish-in-the-Pond (Pukur) is more fortunate; her Field of View is much better, but due to the infamous refraction law, heavily compressed and distorted.

Ishani and her floor-mate (me) see what none else in the household see (including the maid who, instead of sitting and swiping the floor with the wet cloth of yore like her mother who could pick up stray coins, nowadays demands and gets the tall mop so she doesn't have to stoop to conquer).

Others are all chair-sitting and miss the panoramic view of Life beneath the Dining Table, which is quite unlike that above; teeming with lifeforms which Ishani loves.

When she was in the making, she was nameless and formless like the Vedantic Atman, but I wanted to compose a hundred cute Hyderabadi Nursery Rhymes (unlike the alien spooky Jacks and Jills fond of tumbling downhill over one another); which I did and brought out as a booklet: Raadhaa Rhymes; Raadhaa because it has two delightfully long syllables.

The Rhymes have practically all our household pets: arthropoda, amphibia, chordata, annelida, reptilia, and mammalia which any child would be delighted to meet and befriend.

Here is one that I and Ishani alone can watch under the Dining Table:

Lizard

Raadhaa watches a lizard,
Crawling on her cupboard,
Pouncing on its prey,
Be it a flea or fly;
With the wile and guile of a wizard!

http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2009_06_01_archive.html

*****************************************************************************

Yes, my father could fulfill his lifetime ambition that like his father and grandfather, he should die in a cozy bed.

But not me, I guess.

I want to go peacefully choking on an Ukridge Story on the floor of our Hall.

But my son's Software Firm gives him 2 lakh Rupees worth of Cashless Insurance on me.

So I am doomed, it looks, like everyone else in this benighted metropolis teeming with Corporate Hospitals beckoning every dying goon like so many sirens, that I will have to go unattended (the youthful nurse bashfully busy chatting up that bright-eyed Intern), unseen, unheard and unsung in an:

I SEE SEE YOU

Bye!


========================================================