My first experience of Sivan uncle was his
laughter. One day in the mid-80s, I had
just entered Vrindavanam and heard a booming, whole-hearted laugh, followed by
another. This was most unusual, for the
older generation there believed that laughter was something that possibly
earned you a bacterial form in your next life.
But entering this room, I saw this unusual man, with thick, white hair
combed neatly back and a heavy pair of spectacles through which the eyes
twinkled, seated cross legged on a bed, with a ready audience.
He was immediately likeable.
I did not expect to meet such a lively person; just
about a year earlier, he had lost much of his life’s work in Sri Lanka:
livelihood, reputation as a lawyer, home and God-knows-what-else, leaving the
country when the ethnic violence reached a point of no return. The years had been harrowing and stressful, yet you would never have guessed it; wait for a while and you would hear his laughter, a trademark that defined him along with those twinkling
eyes. So, when he stayed with us in Bangalore next, I wanted
to know him more. I showed him books by
my favourite cartoonist, RK Laxman, and, of course, the laughter touched a new
crescendo – he would read a cartoon and find every nuance possible, each
funnier than the earlier one.
Some
months later, he told me that he had actually met Laxman, when in Bombay and
had his autograph.
“But, how?” I wondered, for I had read that Laxman was
an irascible character, prone to rudeness.
He apparently liked to work in his room at the Times all alone and was
entirely intolerant of any interruption.
“I just went into the Times building, asked around and went up and met him.” Sivan uncle said, as if the answer was utterly
rudimentary. But, you see, for him it
was. For Sivan uncle was a charmer, a
man who could melt a curmudgeon, and I could see just how Laxman might have
found it impossible to be anything other than civil in his presence.
Yet, it was as I got to know him better that the other
facets of his personality came alive: his eclectic taste in books and
extraordinary humility (by the way, have you noticed that people who laugh a
lot and from their heart are generally humble; it’s funny, there is a clear
positive correlation).
Two books in my college years particularly influenced me:
Small is Beautiful by EF Schumacher and a biography of Mahatma Gandhi by Louis
Fischer. When Uncle and I discussed them
– and, by the way, he was the only one I could discuss them with – I began to
see more to him than a funny, lively human being. Deep within, there was philosophy, extraordinary
(for the times) liberal thought -hence the connection with the Mahatma - and a
sense of purpose.
Much of our conversations centred around development,
though there was little I could contribute to the conversation that was
original (a generation later in 2006, I would have similar conversations with Purnima).
These were rich learning, so rich that I even asked Uncle for help with
admission to a Masters program in MCC, Madras, so that I could catch up with
him more often; his soft word actually had the admission ready and I attended
the interview as well, but didn’t take up the course (that’s a story for
another day).
While in Madras, he had fought for the Tamil cause in
Sri Lanka, about which I knew little.
But it was after moving to Coimbatore that he joined an issue that I
could entirely relate to:
South India Viscose made staple fibre used in
clothing. It was owned by one of the
richest men in India, Shapoorji Pallonji Mistry (today, better identified as
the father of Cyrus) and operated an old plant with poor effluent treatment
facilities, resulting in the horrific pollution of the Bhavani river, the
waterline to Coimbatore. There were
activists fighting the factory and he joined them: his role was to help with matters
of law and, critically, to inspire others who were in the boat. We spoke about it often and I was thrilled to
see an activist amongst the pantheon of conformists in the parent generation.
One day in 1997, in his own lifetime and to his
delight, the factory was shut (it subsequently put effluent treatment systems
in place and reopened, but I do not know the current operating status; perhaps,
it is better that way!).
But of course, Sivan Uncle took on a number of others
too, including a lady collector in the Nilgiris who was known to be both
corrupt and ruthless (much like her political mentor); she got him arrested and
those months in jail were rough and hard. Now here is the crux: over the years – even in
January this year – I have felt nervousness and agitation, and fear, at sporadic
attempts at activism. Every such time, I
have asked myself, Just how did Sivan uncle manage his emotions? I got
a clue when I met him once he had got out of jail, as a result of the direct
intervention of Amnesty International. “She
is a dangerous woman,” he told me, the lips set in a grim line, but the
eyes? The eyes were twinkling. Because Sivan uncle loved the battle; it got
him going in a style that was uniquely his.
With that battle, he became an icon for me. Sivan uncle, it seemed to me with my early-twenties
idealism, could do anything.
When, in 1993, he came to Bangalore, Mum told him that
Aruna and I were engaged. The broad open
smile on hearing the news, the warm handshake, the ‘aaahhh’ of delight, the hug
that followed, these are unforgettable memories of affection and warmth. And what I love about memories is that they
are within and remain alive even when the person has gone away, amidst the
deepest sorrow of absence. He
immediately wanted to meet her, so he hopped onto the back seat of my bike (CAO
7474, now a family heirloom) and we rode up to the Tata IBM office on Airport
Road. On that busy arterial road, as the
three of us chatted, he had won her over in about a minute and a half with his
laughter and self-deprecating humour.
For, he was, as you now know for sure, a Real Charmer.
And he was the only one who could persuade me to meet
an Aunt in Palakkad, who wasn’t exactly known for her likeability and with whom
I had, shall we say, a most frosty relationship. The meeting did not go according to script (well,
it was his script, not hers!), and he was most apologetic later. But nobody else could have made me do that in
a hundred years, and make me feel good about it later. Charmer again!
And then there other memories too: of an afternoon in
Kotagiri where Aruna and I stood at the back of a room listening to Uncle speak
in Tamil. I did not understand a word,
of course, but the tone was passionate, committed, thoughtful, positive. The words, Aruna later said, matched in style
and flow and the command over the language was masterly. That was the thing about Sivan uncle: after
meeting him, you discussed him!
And I think of a Sunday in Manas and of a discussion -
over a drink - on philosophy and yoga between Nimmu and Uncle. I think Uncle was posed a challenge and on
impulse, he stood on his head, doing the shirsha-asana (and talking and
laughing away). That, I think, is the
finest way to remember him: headstand, post-beer, philosophy turned upside down
and laughing.
How could a person be just….so complete?
