Professional Documents
Culture Documents
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ASHAY CHITRE: BHOPAL SERIES oil on canvas board; collection: Philip C. Engblom
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standstill.
Unfinished Requiem For A Lost Son
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THERE IS NO SHADOW
WHERE THE SHADOW DOES NOT FALL,
BUT EVEN WHERE THE SHADOW FALLS
THERE IS NOTHING.
---SHRI JNANDEV
ANUBHAVAMRUT (317)
_____________________________________________________________________________________
TUKARAM
5
_____________________________
I was never afraid of my own mind before September 2005. But just
after my 68th birthday I first felt the icy touch of a fear unknown to
me till then.
But that fear must have lurked for much longer and slowly crept
upon me since the sudden shock of my only son Ashay’s accidental
death at our home in Pune on November 29 when Viju and I were in
our apartment in the Villa Waldberta in Feldafing overlooking the
Starnberger See, or Lake Starnberg, in Bavaria, Germany.
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postponing the pain that accompanies a deep cut, sealing up a mortal
wound.
On that last leg of a long journey, Viju and I spoke to each other
laconically and avoided speaking about the deep hurt inflicted on us
by this thunderbolt of an event that burnt a hole in our hearts. For
each of us, the deep shock was extremely personal and its pain still
private and unsharable with each other.
Then I informed Gert Heidenreich and his wife Gisela with whom we
were to have dinner that evening. Gert and Gisela had recently lost
their younger son, Johannes, in a drowning accident. They, too, had
met Ashay at our home in Pune.
I phoned Lothar Lutze in Berlin and Sabine and Peter Erlenwein who
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lived in a nearby Bavarian village by another lake. Henning phoned
my publisher and friend Albert Volkmann and his wife Elke as well
as Heidrun Bruckner. Henning made a long distance call to our
friend Anne Feldhaus in Tempe, Arizona.
Losses are so personal they cannot be shared even with those closest
to you.
Though I could feel Viju’s loss of our only son, her being his mother
made it so unique that I was afraid of even imagining it in those
circumstances. We were both made extremely lonely by a personal
deprivation we could not talk to each other about. We needed to be
left alone.
For almost eighteen years before Ashay died, and since the trauma of
Bhopal that shattered his world, he became increasingly closer to
Viju, and he became increasingly distanced from me despite our
having lived together since his birth forty-two years earlier.
Unable to understand the depth of his despair and his psychic injury
that was difficult to heal, I just wanted him to take it in his stride, and
get on with his life. I urged him to be tough, prodded him to pick up
the pieces and start afresh. I thought he had survived the worst and
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should have considered himself lucky. It was horrible and heartless
advice. It meant to him that I was insensitive to his real suffering.
For the first time, as the news of his sudden death remained still
undigested, I was haunted by his whole life as I had perceived it from
up close, but still only peripherally, and I began to think of what it
must have meant to him who was at its wounded centre.
The U.S. corporate giant Union Carbide’s plant located near the city’s
railway station was responsible for the death of thousands of people
that night because its toxic chemical tanks leaked the poisonous gas
methyl isocyanate into the city’s atmosphere.
That night, Ashay and his wife Rohini were in Bhopal and not very
far from the source of the emissions that lethally poisoned the city.
Ashay lost overnight sixty per cent of his lung function due to
cellular damage (as found later by a leading lung specialist in
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Mumbai) -----and it was irreversible. Rohini was six months pregnant
then and her health and the health of the child inside her needed to
be constantly monitored after their exposure to the deadly air she had
breathed.
There was something terrible in the air and Ashay first thought of a
nuclear attack. But there was no wave of heat, no unnatural light, no
sign of blazing fire anywhere. They felt strangled. Their lungs were
racked by a spasm. They realized that the air had become
unbreathable. They were in a panic.
Ashay covered Rohini in a bed sheet and they ran out of the
bungalow where we lived, through streets strewn with corpses,
joining thousands of people running in panic as they did not know
what had hit them out of the blue.
Finally, they reached a friend’s house and they were later taken away
by another friend to another part of the city that seemed safer
because it was less obviously poisoned.
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I arrived from France hours before Ashay and Rohini reached
Mumbai. Viju was already in Mumbai. We waited for them anxiously
in Ajit’s flat. Ajit is my younger brother, he is a practising physician
specialized in haematology.
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The ironies of fate work at many levels.
On the very night Bhopal was cut off from the rest of the world, Viju
was in Mumbai waiting for me to return from France where I was
invited with my feature film Godam to participate in The Festival of
Three Continents at Nantes.
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magnitude of the disaster in Bhopal, drained me of all morale. I was
reluctant to attend the ceremony even though the festival grapevine
gave me the flattering hint that I and my film were among the
winners.
It was that doyen among Indian film celebrities, Raj Kapoor, who
persuaded me to attend the ceremony and receive honours as a
representative of our country. We were in the same hotel during the
week-long festival, and met for a round of drinks as my recent
Parisian friend, Vijay Singh recorded an interview with the popular
idol, his life, and the movies he made. Raj Kapoor and his charming
wife Krishna were delightful company. Eventually, I yielded to his
powers of persuasion and attending the festival awards ceremony,
received the Jury's Special Award for Direction.
It was a trauma that estranged him from the world, distanced him
from a wholesome view of life, destroyed his optimism, and created a
chasm between his family and him.
He did not stop fighting to regain his sense of life even in his
darkened world. We all misunderstood his black humour of a
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survivor and his effort to connect with the world, the crying needs of
his fine sensibility and versatile talent, and the fulfillment only self-
expression brings to human life.
But he tried hard till the strange and abrupt end of his life, alone in a
flat whose windows and doors were shut, unaware of a burning coir
mattress in the living room till the whole flat was full of smoke. In the
event, he was found lying at the door of his bedroom, there were
signs that he had tried to stamp out the fire from the already half-
burnt coir mattress with his slippers. Inhaling carbon monoxide
creates panic and confusion in seconds, followed by unconsciousness
and death in minutes.
The door to our flat had to be broken open when Ashay failed to
respond to mobile phone calls and SMS messages from a woman
friend living a floor below, and to the insistent doorbell rung by the
lady who did housework for us and her husband who ran errands for
Ashay. He was taken in an ambulance to a hospital where he was
found dead on arrival.
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When we arrived in Mumbai from Zurich on seats procured for us
with great difficulty by Henning, Sanjay Jadhav received us as we
came out of the aircraft.
It was Yohul, then only eighteen, Ashay’s son and our grandson that
Sanjay was talking about.
Yohul was in Mumbai visiting his cousins after their (and his)
grandmother’s death just a few days earlier.
“There was a fire in our house. Ashay has been taken to hospital.
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what should I do?”
There was the inevitable edge of shock, fear, and panic in his voice as
Viju and I heard it on the phone. Yohul was barely eighteen then and
I wondered if he could take the shock.
What they saw was a very different Yohul than the one they knew
before. He was a model of composure and efficiency. He did not
reveal his feelings to them. He was rational in his thinking, precise in
his actions, and laconic in his verbal responses.
The child in him was left far behind and the adolescent in him
seemed to be turning into an adult all of a sudden to wear a mask of
maturity and armour of responsibility.
As Ashay’s next of kin, he had to claim his father’s body and sign
papers for the autopsy.
He had to claim the body from the morgue after the autopsy and take
it for cremation.
He had to collect the keys to our flat from the police who had sealed
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the entry to it after the accidental death.
He had to clean the flat for our relatives from Mumbai who would
stay with him till we reached home from Germany.
Yohul had not slept a wink for 48 hours and had nothing to eat. His
friends told us that all he had was black coffee at regular intervals.
Ajit was with Yohul in Pune and when I phoned him about the
situation, my primary concern was Yohul. Should they postpone
Ashay’s cremation till we arrived on Monday or Tuesday, Ajit asked
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me. His opinion was to cremate the body as early as possible rather
than keep it the morgue or the cold room for a couple of days.
I asked Viju. She agreed that the body should not be kept waiting for
us.
me.
Viju kept herself busy offering them tea and biscuits, or lemon juice.
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My youngest sister Rashmi came from Vishakhapatanam to stay with
looked after the many guests who came and went. I felt distanced
The breaking of bonds, one after another, was a feature of his life ever
since he came from Mumbai to Pune after his traumatic escape from
Bhopal.
every now and then, finding that he no longer could fly with his
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his mother’s womb.
treatment.
Of the three, Ashay was the most affected by the Bhopal syndrome.
His lung damage was irreversible. Doctors suspected that there was a
chemical damage to his spine as for the first few weeks in Mumbai
eyesight too had become weaker after Bhopal and he had an incipient
cataract in both his eyes that, fortunately, did not develop fully.
Both Rohini and Ashay tried to resurrect their lives after Bhopal.
For a while, the growing Yohul occupied their attention. Ashay gave
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him haircuts and home and he and Rohini gave him oil massages,
They tried their hand at making soft toys and made lovely ones, each
They tried to sell them as they thought this would bring them some
income and they could build a business of their own. It could have
Rohini and Yohul were much less affected by the effects of Bhopal.
and think of reorganizing his life within the limitations his lung
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watching thanks to our Swedish-American friend, Philip Engblom,
without gasping for breath, and he could not carry much weight on
and pencils, water bottle and sandwiches early in the morning to the
river, the lake, and the marsh lands just outside the city where a
variety of seasonal and local birds came to feed and to breed. Both
exchanged notes and enjoyed each other’s company. Both were quiet
The other interest Ashay developed during this period was cooking.
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flourishes to dishes ranging from the mundane to the exotic. He
him to start his own restaurant with himself as its master chef. But
from other human beings cannot be measured by those who have not
To rub salt into a victim’s still bleeding wound, we show her or him
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dying. In doing so, we humiliate her or him by exhibiting our
advantages.
that I cannot rid myself of. We tried to hold him responsible for what
happened to him.
Hiroshima for not overcoming the effects of the Atom Bomb or the
isocyanate.
that comes from sharing a life with others) were often appalled by
immediate family consisting of his wife and his son. Some of them
even privately chided him for depending on his parents. This upset
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him. The support he needed from us was more moral and emotional
than just material. He was ill. He was under treatment for it.
His appearance and his body language were altered during that night
in Bhopal.
only briefly.
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Before the Bhopal catastrophe, he was not bitter and cynical. He was
gregarious; and when among friends, he was the life of the party.
Now, when he had a drink, he would gulp it down neat and quick---
Three days after our arrival from Germany, I went to the Yerwada
trembled as I held the pot. This was all that Ashay’s body was
I brought the pot home. Then in two cars---a hired 9-seater Sumo cab
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Tukaram’s native place, where we decided to consign the contents of
some close friends drove to Dehu. I sat, distraught, with the pot held
in my lap and pressed tight in my palms. I did not have the courage
River where Tukaram was forced to sink the manuscripts of all his
poetry. I thought of this spot as the beginning and the end of all
poetry, and its ultimate rise from its material moorings. This is where
surrounded by trees and shrubbery. I now felt the little clay pot
it over to a man wearing only a loincloth. The man raised the pot,
uttered a short invocation, and let it be carried over and into the
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river’s slow flow. It dipped, sank, and disappeared. It was Ashay’s
hands did tremble. He was a beautiful child with chubby cheeks and
large eyes and a nose sticking out. Five days after he was born, I
was a toddler, Viju and I started talking him on long walks over the
is several thousand feet above sea level, among the mountains really.
We bought for Ashay a snow white woollen suit for his outings and
make me gasp as I tried to keep pace with him. He was a happy baby,
not afraid of strangers, and seldom cried. He cried only when he was
things for him was a new found pleasure for Viju and me. We bought
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him toys and clothes and took him wherever we went---even to
parties.
After I returned from work, I showered and then played with Ashay
for about an hour or so. The two of us used to wrestle and the body
took him to movies to watch Tom and Jerry cartoons, Laurel and
Hardy favourites, and so on. These routines and rituals made us feel
wages or freelance earnings. But we saw to it that our child did not
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Memories of Ashay as a child came back to me with surprising clarity
after years just after I immersed his ashes in the river. Strangely,
down and, ironic as it may seem, Viju and I had to comfort them.
Varkari bhajan singers and informed our relatives and friends to bid
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Was my deep plunge into depression and my despairing attempts to
Though ten days after Ashay’s death the formal visits of mourners
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thinned, they were by no means over yet.
Just five days after his death on November 29 came the night of
Every year, Ashay waited with silent dread for that date on which his
life was shattered. He did not live to see the that day in 2003, but Viju
Ashay’s illness continued for eighteen years after the Bhopal disaster,
took him two years after starting treatment to go out and look for
work that suited his physical handicap, and his friends and well-
wishers helped.
research for some episodes of his mega television serial The Discovery
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through several books on Vijayanagar, made notes, excerpted
However, Pune is not the best base for such work. Frequent visits to
Mumbai were all right for Ashay for we all regarded that city as our
regular assignments.
his creative flair and his technical knowledge, and his excellent
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German Television (ZDF) to make a one hour film on the city of
depression.
breaker when among friends. But slowly this turned into drinking
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This drove him deeper into gloom. He became pessimistic and
the hell Ashay must have gone through and I would have tried to get
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ward of a public hospital can be unnerving to someone who already
fear to face.
was angry whenever the subject of therapy and its alternatives was
brought up.
and unreal.
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that we all easily assume when we sense the weakness and the
I was Ashay’s father and had handled him since he was an infant. He
adults. He was hurt when such conflicts occurred and I felt at such
times that he could have seen my point of view without giving up his
support most to put his life together again, I drew a hard frontier
in a way that must have made him feel insecure and unassured.
who betrayed his trust. He became closer to Viju, his other parent,
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further, often to the point of visible despair.
Those who suffer because they postpone or do not go through the full
I was aware of this since 1971 when my friend Bhola Shreshtha died
died, he was in his wife’s lap and I was sitting next to her. Sensing
what had happened but afraid of recognizing it, she panicked. I tried
to calm her. We were still about twenty minutes away from the
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shattered Leela home. Bhola and Leela had three children and their
youngest was a daughter who was then nine. Bhola’s aged mother
lived with them. Bhola was just forty-seven then and this was his first
and last heart attack. The Shreshtha family was very close to us, an
extension of our own small family of three. They were all devastated.
I had to take care of the funeral arrangements and neither Leela nor
bad patch. I somehow took care of all that with the help of friends
mourners who gathered at the Shreshtha home, and took the body of
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response to trauma. One morning, just before Bhola Shreshtha’s first
overcame it.
think took me to the brink is one way to confront it and face life
again. Or this emergence from silent, corrosive grieving for a loss that
speech, reaching out to other people to share the terror that seized
and shook me the instant I received the news that suddenly emptied
Just two months after Ashay’s death, I went to Delhi to deliver the
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had accepted their invitation to deliver the lecture before my visit to
Ashay would have been satisfied that his father, a writer, was finally
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him touched a question of human values that shape culture, society,
on literary works, and my 1983 film Godam was chosen by the festival
post-production work for his own film Ardhasatya then and was
On my low budget, in order to get the full value of our fixed daily
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I was not present at the screening of Godam but several students
capital is Bhopal. When I told him to forget about the country and
stay focussed on his personal life, he said, “But Dada, you gave me this
country!”
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As I ended my lecture, there was a stunned silence for I opened a
Ashay was born in Ethiopia, not India. He went to junior high and
high school in the United States. We were there during the national
soon after the emergency was lifted though it was possible for me to
continue to live in the United States at least till Ashay got a university
degree. He was not a citizen of India by choice. His parents born and
raised in India were Indian citizens and he had inherited India from
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express a desire to comment. Among them was the distinguished
Ramubhai turned to me and said that my son was not mere victim of
after---why?
Ashay that would let that wound bleed to its conclusion. But the
While the Katha Festival was coming to an end, news from Pune
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ransacked its internationally renowned library and collection of rare
The vigilantes’ vandalism was based on the premise that the B.O.R.I.
Shivaji the Great that maligned the icon all Maharashtra had
nearly four centuries and how his legend has grown despite veiled
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fellow-participant in the Katha Festival and my fellow passenger on
From the airport, I called Viju to let her know I would be home in
door.
home. When I went to my fifth floor flat, the armed cop was indeed
at my doorstep.
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thanked by Laine in his acknowledgments for various kinds of
gave.
sentiments and grave provocation for which they held the alleged
and ransacked.
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There were hysterical demands for the extradition of Laine, a United
disowning their relationship with Laine and his work for the fear that
loaded carbines.
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The two cops who were on duty as my bodyguard were nice young
people whom Viju and I treated like student visitors to our home.
polling booth.
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It was not just me but the other two members of our family, our
our two bedrooms flat, the master bedroom was meant for Ashay
and Rohini before they separated and were eventually divorced. The
other bedroom was given to Yohul and his growing adolescent need
for personal space. Viju and I used our covered balcony that is large
except when he cooked his own recipes and served them to our
guests.
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Yohul, Viju, and I have avoided talking about Ashay after his
removal from our midst. Yohul, in fact, is reluctant to stay home after
his father’s death. He prefers to meet his friends outside our home. If
his closest friends visit or stay overnight, his room is out of bounds
family.
father, and the role he had to assume as his only next of kin claiming
our flat whose door had to be broken to rescue Ashay---all this was
But the absence of Ashay is more palpably piercing than his usually
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he would emerge from his room and hesitantly linger near us. This
agony and was sometimes devastated by it. She felt aggrieved that I
had lost touch with him already and was saying that he must get on
After Ashay was gone, both Viju and I panicked at the thought of
entering his room, his personal space and its accumulations, his
part of which remained private and inviolable. Ashay had the habit
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Endorphins are neurochemicals our brain secretes spontaneously to
shows its vital place in our life. We place a block between ourselves
and the unendurable sources and causes of pain. This is true of all of
our experience that seem to have little connection with the material
them withdraw and retreat into their inner world defines human
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much as a curious and persistent layman can, I have rummaged for
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the opposite of pain in its excruciating vertex as of pleasure at its ecstatic
apex.
serenely blissful state is all we seek in life yet seldom find; Christ’s
The Buddha smiles, not at you, but to himself; the Buddha closes his
duly terrified by the mess we find, the chaos of hell, the agonizing
call, the scent of food, and the assurance of security---all the basic
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acknowledge it--- the primal face of pain---the source of all our fears.
Soon after this, a friend from Bhopal, Dr. Rajendra Dhodapkar visited
that both Ashay and I had a few connections with film and television
producers in Mumbai.
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My cousin Sunanda’s husband Sampooran Singh Oberoi alias ‘Obi’
and I were very close; and off and on I wrote film scripts for him, or
a huge success.
activist.
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one episode that I presented to Bittu, and it was filmed and televised
too, as I remember.
However, Rajendra took ill with malaria while he was our guest in
national newspaper.
During this period, till the end of the 1990s, Ashay had become a
But it was constant swings of fortune in his career and his personal
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did not know about bipolar disorder then, but now in my recently
he ended up with unipolar depression in the last two years of his life.
I would say that this is connected with his natural flair for acting, and
his hard work on whatever his given role was, and however big or
is often a terrible stress for the performer. You have to work with so
One of Ashay’s role models, the British actor Peter Sellers, was also a
victim of depression.
professional actors and other people who create illusions that their
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art makes real to their audiences? There is a gap between an actor’s
who make others laugh; live on the dark side of life. The mirth and
Ashay was one of them. He could use the exaggerated body language
of slapstick comedians of the silent era that could both tickle laughter
Ashay was handsome but built small and he had an air of fragility
He was the opposite of a macho hunk in looks. His charm lay in his
mobile face and his expressive eyes, his warm smile and his inclusive
opposite sex more easily than the aggressive males itching to perform
harassing heroics.
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He had a regular series of girl friends since before he was a teenager.
your way. Once you realize that you cannot be the centre of
everybody’s attention all the time, you are closer to your ten minutes
The American actor and film director, Jerry Lewis once said, “All
good actors are natural and they have both the need and the capacity
performance.
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The difficult part of acting is to know when not to act a role that is
facial expression, the volume and the register of our voice, change
significantly.
had to live with and the mental anguish it inflicted upon him.
Even when he was doing a bit role or a vignette that required comic
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and a sharper kind of black humour for which he already had a flair
earlier.
Hale, Jr. and Robert J. Wilke. The film, directed by British Director
professional actor.
But we did not want his attention to move far away from normal
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Ashay and Rohini were living together (with us) though they were
behind and in front of the camera, was Ashay’s happiest and most
director’s assistants then and not actors, but he had a rapport with
them as well.
However (I am told) the star actress, Smita Patil who died even
younger than Ashay, had a special relationship with him. She was
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After Ashay’s death, Dev Benegal sent me two black and white
One of them is a solo picture of Ashay with the beard he had grown
conveys the bonhomie they all shared while living together on the
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Ashay to locations in New Zealand, Austria, and the Kulu Valley in
Ashay was reluctant to accept that contract but Viju and I pressed
him to take it. We naively hoped this would help him to get out of his
depression. Hardly did we expect that it would have just the opposite
returned after it was over, he was at the end of his tether as though
haggard and beaten by his travails. It did not look like ordinary
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Pune. Our family friends and former next-door neighbours, Anil
Awar and his wife Smita, were among Ashay's fans. They loved his
Ashay warned us that the film would disappoint us. He thought that
right. The film fell flat at the box-office, too. But we found Ashay's
role, a character role, executed with his usual flair for pointed
While Ashay's film was being shot at exotic locations as the script
and to New Zealand with his producer chasing snow that refused to
fall in her presence or melted away to frustrate her actors and her
technical crew.
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Ashay and Yohul to their own devices when Ashay seemed to be
The film's one-sided contract that was for a fixed fee, and its ever-
changing schedules not only exasperated him but also deprived him
needs and came downstairs with us to see they were loaded in the
airport.
looked forlorn when he said, “ You take care, now, Dada. Don’t worry
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Both Viju and I had been to Munich and Feldafing before---I more
often and many more times than her and Yohul accompanied Viju on
selected foreign writers and artists to live and do their own thing at
philanthropic multimillionaire.
See in German the lake could be seen as the pendant among the
For poets living an uncertain life and artists who cannot afford a
that are their holiday homes. They include members of the former
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aristocracy, billionaire tycoons, celebrities from the world of sport
In and around the city of Munich, we have many close friends ( more
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Lingorska to do the same at the University of Tubingen.
come down from Berlin for a visit and the chemistry between Lutze
in brief meetings.
loved one--- and the guilt of being survivors looking down the
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The Lake Starnberg has a special poetic resonance for me.
On its yonder shore, as seen from the Villa Waldberta’s glass tower,
lies the fairy tale palace Neue Schwannstein of the mad King Ludwig II
and who shares a romantic home in fantasy such as our own Wajid
Both Ludwig II and Wajid Ali Shah are likely to have been gay or
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choreographers ---and the like.
Ludwig II and Wajid Ali Shah were both, I imagine, melancholic and
hypochondriac by disposition.
the Nabab died in exile, away from his beloved Avadh, the
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I would concede that both these royal misfits were decadent and led
a life of dissipation and indulgence. But I also see their nobler and
tragic aspect, their search for beauty in inevitable doom, and their
Both Ludwig II and Wajid Ali Shah had a death-wish that they tried
to sublimate. They were on a suicide course from the start. But they
had a taste for the finer nuances of life, the details in a dark work of
Viju and I made a flurry of phone calls to numbers far and close, and
kept busy while digesting the indigestible news that had struck us
like lightning though the thunder that should have followed has, in
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my case, come now.
I went to the window, opened the curtains, and opened the windows
to feel the chill blast of November cold and to take a last look at the
lake, still dark before sunrise. The black surface of the Starnberger
See had begun to reflect the glow of daybreak beyond the silhouetted
hills. I looked at the far spot in the lake where I imagined Ludwig
I remembered that Ludwig did not die alone, his shrink too was with
him, and he died as well.. One of them murdered the other and then
nobody will ever find out who killed whom before committing
suicide.
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Having lived in the Villa Waldberta before, and having turned the
Is this a dirge for Ashay or a requiem for a part me that died that
mourning? Why did I start writing this? Is this the therapy I need to
wound with which I must live till my own breath finally comes to a
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Ashay’s struggle for breath began in Addis Ababa on June 21, 1961
1984.
And it choked them, finally, in Pune some time in the early hours of
His fear of death, I imagine, was rooted in his first spasm of life as he
was surgically removed from his mother’s womb. She herself had
been fighting for life for a whole week before he was born. Her
She had very high fever, very high blood pressure, and was in a near
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Caesarian section surgery to bring the child out.
They had been postponing this decision for a week to try to save both
mother and child. When Viju was being hauled to the operation
Did that first crisis in his life conclude in his death forty-two years
extra oxygen, and Viju saw her baby for the first time on the third
day. For a long time she lay in an anaesthetic coma and I sat by her
grandmother Tai had a dream. She saw Viju coming out of the ocean
with glowing pearls in her cupped hands. He was the first Chitre
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child of his generation and he was the cynosure of all our extended
my marriage with Viju, forgave us all our sins for having produced
this lovely two-year old boy that she saw, her first grandchild.
Maskaram---September 1963.
His lungs got infected again and again. We had to take him to one of
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normalcy.
India plane for Aden, in Yemen, on our way to Addis Ababa via
a nasty cold and a slight fever. Within an hour of our flight’s take-off,
Ashay was seriously ill. We sought help from a distant relative living
already permitted.
taking our onward flight from Aden to Djibouti and take the further
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Aden is steaming hot throughout the year and Addis Ababa is
flight due to take off in a couple of hours. It was a direct flight though
intensive care.
Ababa.
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in jeopardy, and a huge debt on my head for the expenses incurred,
Ashay’s life was in peril, and it was far more important to us than
anything else.
After Ashay’s death, there were two more deaths that deeply injured
Ashutosh’s in 2005.
ended with his death. From the start, we were very different from
translation. The journal was named Shabda (or Word) and it was
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launched at the end of 1954.
differently.
Still bleeding from the wound of Ashay’s death with which we had
not yet come to terms, Viju and I decided to make a video film on
him----a film I had wanted to make long before he took ill. Had I been
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successful in making the film earlier, Ashay would have been
equation with Arun and had taken several still photographs of him---
We launched the film starting a race against time. I told Viju to take
Ashay's place by my side and it was she who assembled the research
I knew that Arun would never make any statement about his work,
from his work and he insisted that I selected the poems for him to
read on camera.
The other component of the film was brief interviews with people
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I wrote the narration and Randhir Khare and I alternately voiced it
The film Arun Kolatkar has been since purchased by the Sahitya
It was premiered in Arun and his wife Soonu's presence at the Prithvi
Theatre in Mumbai just before his illness took its final turn towards
the worst.
Subhash and his son are both physicians who would medically care
for him till the end came. In choosing the venue of his final
departure, Arun must have had many reasons, some practical and
some emotional.
Arun seldom revealed his inner feelings even to the people closest to
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viewed as a black comedy.
But Arun had been away from his immediate kin for over fifty years
father.
He also had a very special relationship with his late mother whose
be with his family again before he made his imminent exit from this
world.
The tiny apartment in which Arun and his wife Soonu lived in
Mumbai had just one room divided into living space, kitchenette, and
the man of the house was gravely ill and the lady of the house the
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A very private person who got more out of his solitude than out of
For weeks, the nature of his illness was kept under the wraps and
Mumbai. Arun’s regular table there was his meeting point with
When he and Soonu shifted to Pune, Arun expected to live only for a
few days. His life was rapidly ebbing away. He could speak only for
a few minutes at a time, with great effort, with a voice that faded
and the final instructions he wanted to give his friends about it.
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Arvind Mehrotra had arrived in Pune from Allahabad to stay with
Arun as long as needed and once Adil Jussawala came over from
Viju and I visited him every day, except after he went into coma
ten o’clock in the morning and stayed on till about seven in the
evening.
waited by his side, watching for some signal from him that he was
ready and able to speak. Soonu fed him morsels of food from time to
time, or coconut water to sip so as to give his parched tongue and dry
When alert and able enough to speak a few words, Arun used his
newly learnt skill of a dying man to measure and edit what he meant
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to say before he actually voiced it. He possessed that skill already as
his poetry shows, but this was its last critical test.
The life of his poems that would outlive him depended on it. His
struggle to finish his work to his satisfaction was tragic yet noble.
His gaunt face was pointedly determined. His frail frame stretched
October 2005.
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discerning anthologist of poetry summoning contributions from
them.
Mumbai; Dom Moraes was suffering from cancer but died of cardiac
It was already the only and the most expensive piece of real estate my
mind possessed.
It was the late morning of June 9, 2005. I was half awake as the effect
of a sleeping pill I had taken late the previous night had begun to
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I instantly knew it was bad news again, very bad news. It made me
shake off the fog in my head. I got up and asked Viju, “What is it?
Who called?” She said, “It was Ajit. Ashu is no more. He died of a cardiac
arrest in sleep early this morning at Goregaon. He was found dead by the
neighbours. Ajit said they are taking the body for cremation now. He said
from Vizag.”
death. They were born only five years apart, Ashu and Ashay, and
we were both very fond of Ashu whom we had carried in our arms as
a baby.
In his last years, Ashu’s life had fallen apart. He and his wife Shaila,
lived with my parents and with their own little son, Mihir.
From his early adulthood, Ashu was given to boozing with his
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An alcoholic blames his career graph not on what he compulsively
Ashu was a trained printing technologist and only the second in our
handsome fees and he also undertook printing jobs and got them
done under his supervision. On the face of it, he had no reason to fail.
But for some reasons obscure to us, he began to consume larger and
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larger quantities of alcohol---a common and freely consumed
India.
When his clients found him with alcohol on his breath during
thinned down to a trickle until they dried up. His friends also
Realizing that Ashu’s addiction was serious trouble for him and his
goes on ad infinitum.
They keep returning to drink even after their shrink declares them
cured. It is the shrink who gives up the patient in the end rather than
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the patient to give up his boozing.
sly and lied in order to borrow money from all sorts of amenable
Then he just withdrew from life slowly. He would sleep for hours
and would be awake only for a couple of hours or so. The doctors
Ashu’s wife Shaila went back to her parental home, found a job in
Aurangabad, and did not return. She said that their separation was
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final, giving Ashu another justification for drinking.
Shaila left their son Mihir with Ashu in our parent’s home. My sisters
looked after him and he later lived with my brother Rohit’s two sons,
his cousins while Ashu now lived alone in my parents’ small flat in
liquor.
Did it, in other words, come from the outside, or emerge from
within?
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Depression is a serious and often terminal illness of our master
organ, the brain, both the controller and the control panel of the rest
of our body.
But can we separate the brain from the rest of our body when we
Depression engulfed me slowly till the beginning of the next year and
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wishers, and acquaintances around me, as they had heard of Ashay’s
sudden death but they were not sure if what they heard was true.
atmosphere.
This was followed by the news that the Bhandarkar Institute in Pune
Shivaji.
not able to look beyond a political advantage are not new to me.
I have lived in this uncivil society long enough to know that this will
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My anger is roused by such violent protests that are extra-
appease them and declaring its firm resolve to use its power against
creative arts.
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speeches in the hope of a public debate on the constitutionality of
terrorize their fellow citizens whom they think they have the right to
chasten.
mood pendulum.
This had started with anxiety about Arun Kolatkar’s terminal illness
though his death came after the premiere and public release of the
film.
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long enough advance notice of his departure.
expression of a loss that was gradual; and thus I emptied myself and
freed myself.
In the case of Ashay’s death, our physical distance from him when he
We also mourned the relative brevity of his life, though after Bhopal,
Viju and I also felt guilty to have been away from Bhopal on that
night of disaster when Ashay found his life and his hopes damaged
beyond recognition and Rohini with a baby growing inside her saw
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nagging fear.
Both their lives were prematurely cut off, making their older kin and
inexplicable remorse for not having taken the place of those who
mourn the loss of people, places, and times that were part of my
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In poetry, painting, cinema, and music---evocation of presences,
transcendental awareness.
trained psychiatrist whom the world knows better as one of the finest
berserk.
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My subjective perception of this did not perturb me or shake my
I thought I was on the verge of a deep new insight into the nature of
thought my forte.
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and exclusively accessible to you.
shocks and numbs, your loved ones are possessions you would fight
to retrieve from whoever it was that took them away from you..
It is, as it were, an attempt was made on your own life; and your
But you also know that death is no person with whom you have a
You can only fight death in a fight unto death; but that death itself is
your own; for death is a cosmic law as the law of entropy underlines.
order itself.
“Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold," as W.B. Yeats described the
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As biological beings with their adherence to a sense of an embodied
we refuse to die.
In our tenacious refusal to die till we are struck by its final blow, we
kin, and the friends with whom one grew up playing and learning to
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The Great Trickster, who cleverly opted to be Arjuna's charioteer in
that would end in epic genocide, sings The Song of the Lord---The
They teach us that fear is the deepest driving force in our lives. The
Fear and pity, as Aristotle thought, were the essence of the tragic
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appease death and postpone it for a while. A martial race had to
perform it regularly and be prepared for the next battle where they
There was a change in my voice that Viju noticed from her vantage
fifty years.
We had been together through thick and thin, seen each other rise
some grace.
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The change in my voice disturbed Viju and she consulted Sameer,
He spoke with Yohul and told him what the situation was. Then he
called Dr. Shiva Aiyyar at the Jehangir Hospital, who agreed to see
me as soon as I was taken there, and advise Sameer and Viju what he
He told Viju to go to the Jehangir Hospital that was the nearest fully-
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his scooter and meet us outside the trauma centre.
went up to Yohul and said I was not going to the hospital, patting
him gently and telling him that nothing was the matter with me.
said I had to go to the hospital and there were no two ways about it.
Viju and he pleaded with me, cajoled and coaxed me, but nothing
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Ajit and Rohit, my two brothers, were already on the way to Pune,
and they arrived the same time Sameer must have reached the
hospital.
Rohit by my side. Viju would take another rickshaw and Bunty alias
agitated and seized by a fear he was trying hard to fight and control.
but this was a rare and unforeseen situation for all of them.
pair of trousers I could find, and an equally wrinkly shirt. The shirt
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had fewer buttons than necessary, and my pants were just half-
zipped and without any belt, they could have slipped down any
all that I did not care how I looked, and to hell with the world. I
own will and just because they were many against one. I conveyed
mask.
All I knew was that they were taking me away from an unfinished
door the legend, : "Ashay Chitre lives here" in my own hand, and
pinned a small artificial red rose made of paper to the soft- board I
My memories of the next forty-eight hours are now a rather hazy and
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hospital in Zuber’s rickshaw accompanied by my younger brother
Rohit.
back home, his usually cool nerve failing him after he saw what I was
I said I had thousands of rupees coming my way very soon and that I
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state of delirium was obvious. The hospital had no room for an extra
So, I was taken to the Deenanath Mangeshkar Hospital that was some
Sameer’s wife, Ashwini, was the Chief Radiologist there and she had
It was on the third day after this that I was discharged from the
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All through this, I was hopping mad at people rather than able to
realize that I should have been grateful to them for having saved me
Viju and I were both slowly going over the hill and were showing the
apprehensions
to have gone absolutely cold this time. But this was a different time ,
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I seemed disturbed, and my behaviour---though not discernibly
than (or more than) coherent in many subtle but critical ways. Now it
had come out into light in nakedness and an abandon that startled
helped.
This has a touch of affectionate irony, it is a tease that does not rankle
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if it comes from a younger friend and a faithful follower in certain
and forbade me to speak ---a three week rest that he further extended
by another three.
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---found it very disconcerting, however.
identity.
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As a writer, I have honed my writing skills to a degree.
But they failed me this time because I tried to take impatient short
cuts through instant aphorisms and witticisms that would not cut
I found my mind racing too far ahead of them nor could I summon
velocity.
One day, in a fit of fury, I told Viju, “I’m tired of casting pearls before
these swine!”
suggest a name for and to visualise the interior of a snack bar and
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He had briefed me about his first modest requirement, while his
No, they do not give me any stage fright. I do not cringe, but I shy
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away from a podium because it is obviously pompous to address
them from a height that establishes the speaker even before his first
heterogeneous audiences.
Delhi and back like an efficient courier delivering gift parcels. Then
award for poetry, come back to Cuttack to make a hurried return trip
Hyderabad and heaving a long sigh of relief in Pune before the next
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take off, this time to Delhi to attend another festival and to return to
This was an insane and suicidal spree taking its toll. The last straw
not speak with Viju for hours, and did not read beyond a page or two
a day.
Finally, Viju and I spoke about the illness that had become apparent
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were -mercifully brief now, but they were triggered by any visitor,
Janus---the Roman god of doors, gates, entrances, and exits with two
opposite faces.
my return to Pune.
broke my left wrist so badly that I had to go to the hospital and get
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Maharashtrian food was a trigger to my pent up self-expression,
innovative detail, not just the restaurant, but the three vacant floors
and prudent idea of the venture that he and even my artist colleagues
simply flabbergasted.
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they belonged a realm different and distant from mundane reality
began to fear for the worst unless she firmly took charge. But she
physician psychiatrist, which she did with a bad conscience for not
room into a memorial for him. This too was visualised in amazing
This is what had frightened Viju out of her wits. She was at the end of
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Even Yohul was getting upset by my obsessive activities at home.
Ever since we entered the front door of our flat that had to be broken
about the design of the interior of Ashay’s room I had in mind, and
We did not have more money in the bank than to see us through the
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project with such obsessive élan that Viju and Yohul found it scary to
moment.
had set a deadline for finishing Ashay’s room a week before his
suicidal spree. Ashay was gone forever and lost to this world. But I
was trying to create his presence in his room, the room where he
lived and worked and drank and cried to himself; and the room
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69.©
128
©©
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out to do exorbitant shopping, purchase things that they have no
describes certain mental states, and the acts caused by them, with
cruel precision.
praecox and it may make the schizoid cuckoo seem like a peacock
dancing in the heat of love. Or, use the term madness for the
context of the Van Goghs and the Hemingways who are killed by
their own depression. The list of globally eminent people who were
to commit suicide may fill a book. But such a book will only contain
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not contain the death-drive--and not its euphemistic synonym death-
wish-- any longer. There will remain, outside this black magic circle,
“There is only one truly serious problem and that is suicide,” said Albert
surviving the blackest and the most excruciating moment when life
painfully and with the greatest effort, pushed itself upward again.
Gupte---came all the way from Goa to visit me. He brought with him
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Madness.
with clarity and courage and sought expert medical attention earlier
CODA
to a slow standstill.
And yet I get the feeling that all this is deja vu--I have already been
there before.
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_____________________________________________________________
_______________
PROLOGUE
What is madness?
Nietzsche, who himself went mad, was perhaps the most brilliant
as the marker between the old and the new. Michel Foucault, whose
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acknowledges Nietzsche as one of his influential precursors. Foucault
such.
answered.
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malfunctioning of the brain; and there is a moot point here.
The brain is our master organ in many senses. It controls, through its
extensions and its secretions, nearly all our bodily functions. It sends,
integrated entity we call our body. What we call the mind is only a
sensation and perception, and emotions with the use of such clinical
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found naturally occurring substances that alter states of mind. On the
Sigmund Freud, in his last and most profound work Civilization and
beings: the desire to live---Eros or the libido and the wish to destroy
century ago.
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our perception of our own life in an increasingly intolerable world.
leisured classes who had not experienced at least one drug high.
overdoses of barbiturates.
It is not new for the human species to experiment with their own
bodies. Satisfying hunger and sex have a history beginning with our
culinary and the erotic have assumed the status of fine arts. When
As in the case of hunger and sex, fear is the other primal biological
humanity.
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There is yet another biological factor that drives us : the instinct to
greed in its monstrous and grotesque form and it can turn into a
Other than two world wars, the last century saw many regional
statistics are no secret. They are facts of our history as a species. Even
management.
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I lost my only son, bit by painful bit, since he suffered the trauma of
night of December 3-4, 1984. A toxic leak from the chemical tanks of
people that night, maimed and crippled thousands, and mentally and
for the next 19 years---a life that blighted his talent, his capabilities,
and his ability to connect with other human beings. His battle to
It is only after his death that was traumatic for me, did I see that he
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inherent in its goals; and crimes of a government are contained in its
policies.
families but with the skills at negotiation they wriggled out of the
worst scenario for them and were able to 'cut the losses' as they say in
God knows how and where the money went and who filed the claims
that were settled. Ashay did try to put in his claims through
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kin of a victim, I would do something about Bhopal. It was not until
his loss overwhelmed me that my mind lost its centre and started to
involvement in a tragedy that involved more than a lost son and his
drives human life, Shri Jnandev wrote his mystical long poem in
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