A TRIBUTE

            My first encounter with this old man was when I was 6 years old. It was in the hair cutting saloon when he appeared at a distance, I sitting rather timidly beside my father waiting for my turn for a haircut. The old man's erect gait, his colorful personality and his suave manners, were all what attracted him to me. For some time I continued seeing him though only in the hair cutting saloon once in a few months.

     After a few years as I started going to school alone, I saw this old man near the shops by the way side. He commanded the same respect and awe from me that he did the first time I encountered him. Soon I came to know that he could speak only Kannada. I understood from friends that he was good at telling interesting stories. Of course I had not heard him speak and certainly not directly to me. I need to make a confession here. Except for a few days of schooling in a Kannada school at the very beginning, I have not had the opportunity of being schooled in Kannada medium of instruction. For a significant period of time in my school days, this lack of opportunity turned out to be a bugbear for me. The effects of this were the fact that I could not converse too fluently in Kannada, near complete inability to read in Kannada much less write in it, and a tinge of bloated ego that I could speak fairly good English. That occasionally I was an object of ridicule among many school students who lived in the same street where we lived, is not something that I can completely forget. Sometimes it was social distancing. If it was a nightmare in those days, it is something that I chuckle at myself today remembering those bygone days.

How this bugbear literally mauled me once is a story in itself. Suffice it to say that I nearly choked in the 7 standard examinations because of an absolutely inept performance in the Kannada examination.  It was this that motivated me to take to Sanskrit, a decision I have no regrets about, looking back. Ah! Pardon my self indulgent digression and now back to the old man.

It was in the holidays after the 7 standard examination that I got a chance to listen to a beautiful story that this old man narrated. Given my inadequacies in Kannada, I seemed to have done well to follow what the old man had to say. I remember it was the story of vAli and rAma. I don't think I followed anything in the rAma-vAli samvAda (conversation), but I seemed to have taken a liking to the fact that rAma killed vAli, since vAli had wronged his brother sugrIva. I distinctly remember the music in the Kannada words that the old man had used to tell me the story. The way he illustrated some of the scenes in the story were really colorful. Still my respect and awe for him was increasing. I did not know why it was so, but in him I saw something that I seem to have seen in my grandmothers - affection.

Later I remember meeting him in one of the local libraries. This time I heard him narrate the story of King Ashoka and his benevolence for travellers who passed by his cities. He also narrated some short stories. While they were short in size, they were assuredly large in their impact on me. Of course, my respect for the old man continued with a rising trend.

I do remember meeting him in the subsequent years here and there. Not always did I listen to the stories he had to tell, but his erect gait and colorful personality did not show any effects that age usually has on people.

In the melee of growing up to be somebody respectable in life, I completely forgot about this old man from 10 standard onwards. It could possibly be that this old man never haunted the kind of places that I did, or rather I did not seek him with any particular interest, even in the places that I used to sight him earlier.

About seven years later, it was by chance that I discovered that this old man also spoke excellent English in addition to his immaculate Kannada. I was told that he could speak all the languages listed on the face of our Rupee note. If he appeared extremely graceful and as if one among us when he spoke in Kannada, he was not any less sophisticated when he spoke in English.

Then and there I decided that I shall befriend him for the rest of my life. To many it appeared a very immature decision on my part, to have friendship with a very elderly person. More so because I was soon to be a professional after graduation from a premier institution of the country.  But it was his almost childlike nature that impressed me. After getting into my first job, and  after getting the first pay check, I even made arrangements to get this old man to visit our house every month. Every time I met him, I listened to everything he had to say - starting from a profound story from one of the world's scriptures to a simple 5 letter quiz. I even participated in the occasional competitions that he had to offer and for the record minded, even won a prize.

The time I spent with this old man every month must not have been more than an hour. Yet that one hour seemed like as if I spent days together at a time among books in a library. This habit of mine spread to my brother too. Our collection of his stories increased by tens to hundreds and thousands. There was not a trace of vanity in the way he told those stories and posed those umpteen quizzes. If our feeling refreshed after solving one of those quizzes was what he ensured, after narrating a story, almost always he ensured that there was something for us to reflect upon - a simple but a profound message, or a value, or a moral, or even a subtle point from a dharma shAstra. All in all, everything that he offered in that one hour or less, it was wholesome, highly educative and soul nourishing.

Being aware of the paucity of space, let me still recount just one wonderful story from the thousands that he narrated, which made a tremendous impact on me as a youngster.

You can imagine that it is the old man narrating this.

               "There was a king with all his retinue returning triumphantly to his kingdom, with his royal servants heralding the king's conquests of many other kingdoms in war. The king was seated on an elephant in a golden howdah with a distinct glow of great achievement in his eyes. The subjects of his kingdom were all lined up on both sides of the street as the royal procession was coming by.

“As if out of from nowhere, a young man came running from the opposite direction yelling, ‘I have conquered! I have conquered!’ It was a contrasting sight - on one side was the majestic procession of the king whose conquests were mighty and whose exploits were sung to glory; on the other side a puny looking man yelling to himself about his own conquest.

“The royal servants lost no time in running towards the young man to pack and bundle him off. After all he must be a mad man and justly irrelevant in the royal setting that was there. As they were about to pounce on him, the king summoned to the mahut to stop the royal servants from arresting the young man. As they stopped, the king gestured to his minister to find out from the young man what is it that he had conquered and why he was jubilant.

“As the young man was ushered into the minister's presence, the minister looked at the young man and with a regal stance asked him straight, ‘Young man! Do you know that our king has just vanquished a number of kings and conquered their kingdoms ? Do you realize that this is a feat that not many kings can achieve ? What is it that you have conquered, that you are so jubilant about ? Does it anywhere measure up to our king's accomplishments ? Answer, you must this moment!’

“Unfazed and steady, with humility and elan, the young man replied that he had conquered ‘attachment.’

“The minister snarled back, ‘What? Attachment !? Attachment to what !?’

“Seeing the brightness in the visage of the young man, the king had by then climbed down from the elephant and come close to the young man to listen to his words. With a bearing akin only to a king, he said, ‘Young man, recount to me your story about your conquest. Let me listen to it.’

“Royal Sir, let me tell you. I do not have any parents, nor do I have anybody as my relatives. I had a mud shoveling spade that was made over to me by somebody for me to make a living out of it. As I started using it to earn a living, I realized that I was wanting to earn more and more by working more and more. When I did not have the spade, I did not have a single care in this world. I had the most important thing that one could have - peace. Ever since I got the spade, I lost not only the peace that I had but I seemed to have inherited the care of taking care of the spade every time I go to sleep. I tried to bury it in a place under one of the trees. I did, but after a while my mind led me to that place and I dug out the spade. This continued for a long time. My misery only increased with time.

“The king appeared to be even more interested. The man continued.

“A while ago I got an idea. I ran along the bank of the river with my eyes closed and threw away the spade into the flowing river. I do not know the place where the spade fell into the river, and with that I do not have the chance of recovering it. I have thus conquered the greatest enemy - attachment. Hence I am so jubilant and mad with excitement. Sir, This is my story.

“With tears in his eyes, and his head hung down, the king slowly tread back.

I remember that the old man concluded his narration with the remark that the young man was none other than a Bodhisatva in one of his earlier incarnations.

Such were the stories that came out of the old man's mouth - simple but profound in impact. Impact it did indeed have on me. I learnt that like me, he had inspired thousands of people from their childhood, visiting their houses, reading rooms and libraries. His method was to tell a small story from a large work with sufficient detail that was enough to arouse further interest for one to read more about that. It was through this old man that I was introduced to works such as the Arabian Nights, mythologies of the Greeks and Egyptians, authors such as Hans Christian Anderson and a glimpse of the folk tales from the various parts of the world. Truly he made us feel as if we belonged to every part of the world.

His effort was one of building character in youngsters by recounting such stories to impressionable minds. Even my little ones got used to listening to this old man. He still looked erect, immaculate and colorful as he appeared to me when I was 6 despite the passing of decades.

A few years ago the old man stopped coming to our house. We waited thinking maybe he would come soon. Alas, he did not show up for a long time. When we enquired about him with many people and with even some agencies, we got the news that was not pleasant. That the old man was no more.

The old man that I have been talking about so fondly and affectionately was none other than the darling of millions of Indian kids and a harbinger of good tidings to thousands of homes - the CHANDAMAMA magazine.

I in particular and my family in general started coming to terms without this magazine. After a while I had learnt that apparently the publishers had decided to close down the magazine.

After some months I shared my sense of loss of this old man with some of my close friends. That is when I was informed and updated by them that the old man had come back in a new avatar.

CHANDAMAMA is back to serve the children and the young, the best of what they need to grow up in life like it did for me.

It confirmed to me that a few moonless days in a month while inevitable, a month and more without CHANDAMAMA is impossible.

(When it was in the air that this popular monthly would close down…..Ram Kadivella )