Sometimes in life, quite unexpectedly, we meet some people who remain in our lives as an everlasting memory. The interaction with the person may not have lasted long, but the impact of it has. Their faces, we might forget but not their words or deeds. Often you wish you could meet that person once more, just once more.
I can relate an episode with someone, an old lady named Janaki Amma, whom I met in the train while travelling from Palakkad to Calicut. She embarked from and disembarked at some stations in between. This was at least 15 years back and she must have been around 75 years then and I am not sure if she is still around.
From the moment she got into the train, she was entertaining and enlightening us with her light, yet wise words spanning varied topics. I cannot recall the entire conversation as such, but I do remember a few highlights, like when she referred to the refrigerator as a ‘kemudruma’- ie., responsible for lack of health, wealth, wisdom and righteousness. She spoke of how people these days, even her own family, are reluctant to share any of their home-made delicacies with friends or neighbours as the refrigerator allows them to preserve it for themselves. The refrigerator, she said, not just makes us selfish but unhealthy too as old food contributes a tamasic diet thus making people dull and depressing. She felt that love and bonding comes from sharing, but the neo-kemudruma makes a lesser man of a man. A new perspective for us, the not-so-wise souls.
One of the fellow passengers was a young advocate to whom Janaki Amma said that lawyers are the cause of most of the troubles and animosities among people. Most of the disputes which would otherwise have been more or less amicably resolved after a little bit of tongue-lashing are now becoming a mega series of court sessions, red-tapism and a lot of ill feeling, thanks to the intrusion of the lawyers who seem to be the only party benefitting from these tiffs.
She went on to narrate a particular land dispute between 2 brothers in her village that ended with the land being bought by an outsider at a very cheap rate (no one likes to buy disputed land) so that they could meet the expenses of the court case. The interesting fact, she added, was that the buyer was the lawyer himself. I have to mention that throughout this entire anti-lawyer lecture she was giving to the lawyer girl, there was no personal ill feeling transpired.
Yet another matter that I remember her saying is a Malayalam quote that translates to “when four ones come, all four will become one”. For those of us who didn’t understand, she elaborated that the year 1936, in which the Temple Entry Proclamation was made in Kerala, is denoted in the Malayalam Calendar as Kollavarsham 1111. Thus when four 1-s came, all four castes-brahmins, kshatriyas, vaisyas and sudras- became one with the temple entry proclamation allowing people of all castes into the temples. I don’t know, if she had quoted somebody else’s words or if it was her own observation. Anyway, I have never come across such an interesting coincidence any time before or after this incident.
I was just a school girl then, and was too young to actually absorb the essence and significance of her words. I wish I could meet her one more time to experience once more her insight and acumen, to take in once again those words of wisdom, honed by age and experience
Wow!...i never looked at the refrigerator from that point of view. But there was truth hidden in her words. The world is just getting increasingly selfish with each passing hour.
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