Child Smoker
The car was a beast from the outside but a cocoon from the inside. The unending leg space and silent air conditioning inside made it ideal for friends to
travel and talk. The endless roads, devoid of traffic, encouraged the car to
race with the winds. Whenever Jose, my friend, forgot to rein in the beast,
Cini, his wife, lovingly reminded him of the brake pedal. Jose and I are
childhood friends.
“Do you know how we first met?” Jose asked my wife as we headed
for Khor Fakkan from Al Dahaid. I tried hard to recollect but failed.
“Something interesting about it?” she asked. Jose had already narrated many
incidents of our childhood since we arrived in Sharjah two days ago. We had
been laughing at ourselves and reconnecting. There were times when we laughed
till our stomachs hurt.
“Like all houses in the locality, our houses were farmhouses and
shared a common boundary, a high mud bund we call Kayyaala. It was one
of the few kayyaalas in the locality without dispute. One day, I was sitting in
my house and found smoke intermittently emanating from his side of the Kayyaala.
Curious, I went to investigate. I found him sitting under a tree, smoking a
cigarette. We must have been in our 7th or 8th grade. He had come home from the
hostel for summer vacation. We have known each other ever since. We
became close during our college days. Search for a dignified livelihood took us
on different roads away from each other. He joined the Military Academy after
graduation to become an Army officer. We wrote letters to each other.
Gradually, we got caught up in our own lives, and letter writing stopped.
Whenever we happened to meet, we met as if we had never left each other's
side,” Jose said.
Jose completed his Bachelor of Pharmacy course and opened a
pharmacy in our area. He met Cini, a beautiful girl with bright eyes, and
married her. Like many other Keralites, he landed in Sharjah, where he found a
job in a pharmacy and Cini in a logistics company. Jose then moved into the
shipping and logistics business. He worked hard for almost four decades and did
well.
What Next?
During their last trip to Kerala, Jose and Cini visited us and
stayed overnight. The visit cemented the friendship between the two families.
“Have you been to Dubai?” asked Jose. “No,” I replied. “You land there
and leave the rest to us. We have enough time,” Jose said. “It will be
nice to have you with us,” said Cini. We decided to fly to Sharjah. It was the
third day of our visit, and Jose was driving us to Khor Fakkan. The four of us,
with so much time together, bonded well. Like most couples inflicted with empty
nest syndrome, our discussions somehow meandered into the question, “What
next?”
I am retired and spend time mostly reading and writing. I
published my second book recently. I am also a director of a company. I am
happy, gainfully occupied, and content with life. I come across many others who
have settled down to retired life. Older or younger, many of them were in
distress due to loneliness and lack of purpose. Uncertainty about ‘what next’
persistently tormented many of them. Contented, happy, and gainfully occupied,
yet occasionally, the question, “What next?” gnaws me too.
Jose is continuing with his business but plans to scale it down.
Jose and Cini also grapple with the “what next” question. He has seen enough
and surmounted adversities that can decimate lesser mortals. He is not one to
be cowed down by challenges, but “What next” somehow cropped up in many of our
discussions. Pensive silence inevitably followed. Jose invariably brought
laughter back by saying, “Come what may, Kunjel Moopan[1]
is happy.”
Struggles
In the highly connected contemporary world, social media is king
and influencer. Many have found success and have become rich and famous through
this platform. Some of them paint larger-than-life pictures of themselves. One
easy way to do it is to share the real or make-believe struggles one overcame.
Think about it. We all do it too.
Parents tell children, “We struggled a lot to reach here. How easy
it is for you.” My parents told me of their “struggles.” I found most of them
unbelievable. I told my children about my “struggles.” I am sure they would
think I made it up. I can never bring myself to agree, however hard I may try,
that my children had to struggle for anything. ‘Struggle’ is an element that
can romanticise success, however small, and make it look spectacular. Struggle
makes success an achievement.
I vividly recall my grandmother's
words; “aanekku thadi bharam; urumbinu ari bharam” a Malayalam
phrase (ആനയ്ക്ക് തടി ഭാരം ഉറുമ്പിന് അരി ഭാരം). On the
face of it, it meant “for the elephant, timber (log) a burden and for the ant a
grain of rice (the burden).” Those content with its superficial meaning will
miss the pearl within. The real meaning of this phrase was revealed to me when
I grew up and started encountering challenges in life.
Elephant
or Ant - The Choice
Adversities
are opportunities to employ our potential. Challenges test our ability to apply
our potential. There can be no progress in life unless adversities challenge
our potential. When challenges become existential issues that call for
persistent efforts, they become struggles. Adversity, challenges, and struggles
exist everywhere. It is we who decide to make a challenge turn into an
adversity and then create a situation of struggle. If we learn to address
challenges individually, we prevent them from turning into adversities. When we
adequately and timely handle adversities we do not create struggles to contend
with.
Adversities
do still turn into situations of struggle. Situations that demand struggle also
call for reassessment. Some of the questions that we must ask ourselves about
such situations are given below: -
What
is the ‘struggle’ all about?
Is
it the result of not shedding “baggage’ that we were to jettison?
Is
it an amalgamation of several problems that we did not handle appropriately?
Is
it a result of ‘too little - too late’ or seeking ‘too much - too soon’ or that
got us here?
Can
we isolate the ‘struggle’ into individual problems and handle them?
Do
we have the required competencies and how can we deploy them?
What
are the external forces and what are internal obstacles? Can we separate them?
Are
we seeing ghosts where none exists?
Are
we making a log out of a grain (mountain out of a mole)?
Honest
dissection of the situation through a set of questions, like the ones tailor-made
for individuals, above can help us redefine the situation, reimagine solutions, and maybe tackle them as individual problems rather than seeing them as one gigantic
existential struggle. If we still feel that we are in the struggle zone, then
it is time to call for external help. There is a sense of
inadequacy and helplessness attached to struggles. There should be no
hesitation to seek help like the ants. The essence lies in identifying when we
need to be elephant-like or need to be ant-like.
Despite
all that we may do, results may or may not be to our liking. It is in handling results,
especially unpalatable and suboptimal ones, that we need to learn from Kunjel Mooppan.
Kunjel
Mooppan
Kunjel
was one of the farm labourers in our area. His old face revealed the rugged and
weather-beaten life he led. Whether the crop yielded well or failed,
India won or lost in a match, it did not affect him. He had seen so much of
life nothing could shake that man; Not even personal losses like the death of his
wife and son. It was not that he had no feelings or emotions. He cried
when he lost his wife. He cried when he lost his children. There were times he
went to sleep empty stomach. There is so much to learn from him about accepting
the inevitable. When the crop was good, he advised the farm owner to save
a little for the rainy day and when the crop failed, he said the next one would
certainly be a bumper crop. When the day was bad, he said tomorrow would
be good. Many of us could underplay his zen-like existence by attributing it to
the minimal access he had to creature comforts. He smiled because nothing
affected him permanently. Nobody makes poverty a wilful choice. Zen-like
approach is a difficult choice very few can make.
Transformation
We
walked around the beach and admired the beauty around us. “Houston, we have a problem,” I said sitting
in the vehicle as Jose started the car. “We are heading back to Sharjah. Coolant
level ok. Temperature ok. Here we come,” said Jose and turned the car onto the
highway. “Switch off the air conditioning,” I said in a bid to lessen the
engine load. Once we crossed the mountain range and the tunnels, we switched
on the air conditioning. It was a big relief. We kept a close watch on the
engine temperature lest we irreparably spoil it. Four hours later we were
home.
“Kunjel
is happy,” said Jose.
PS: The next day we took the car to the mechanic. We had to change the coolant pump.
It had broken!
