CHELLA: A CHILD OF NATURE.

Chella was nature’s product; meaning to say that Chella was a child of nature. He knew not his parents and his parents knew him not. Chella lived his life as per nature. Like a child he also seemed impulsive and given to doing things suddenly without any reason. The world and its inhabitants could not understand Chella’s behavior for they were bound by rationality and found no rationality in Chella’s activities.

Chella would be found talking to the wind, the trees the birds, the flowers, the leaves, the bees. He was a totally original person. The world and its inhabitants could not comprehend his activities. He had his own way of living life. His main talent was being arty and creative, like writing, painting or playing music. Chella was a very gifted and talented child. Any art that he took up, he soon mastered. The world and its inhabitants who were already unable to categorize Chella were all the more confused by his exceptional talents. They jealously wondered where such talent sprang from. However, Chella showed no inclination or interest in amassing wealth out of his many talents. All he needed was some bread or rice for nourishment and he could express his talents for hours on end.

Amidst his many talents Chella was also a talented pianist. No one taught him nor did he train himself to become one. He was just a born virtuoso. Just give him a Piano and Chella would take you on such a fantastic musical journey. It was at this juncture that Chella was invited to perform at a major concert in the town. The three hour concert was to only feature Chella with accompanying musicians and no other band would play besides Chella’s band. Chella was glad to play for a charity that was raising funds for terrorist victims since he did not believe in playing music to earn money.

Though Chella did not make much ado about the event and continued to wander around with his usual dazed look, the charity for which it was being held was a national charity and the event was therefore picked up by the national media and flashed across the country. Critics did not have anything negative to say since they were all aware of Chella’s prowess and therefore only hoped for a great performance.

Chella began practice for the concert only three days before the show, though he had been composing various tunes in his mind and then documenting them on paper. There were about twenty people in all gathered on the day of the rehearsal including musicians and technicians and Chella went about hammer and tongs ensuring that they were all ready and fighting fit for the show. The next three days were a nightmare for the technicians and musicians and on the morning of the event they were all prepared for battle as it were.

They set up their equipment on stage and then went home to relax refresh and then come back on stage exactly an hour before the commencement of the show. By afternoon, ticket sales at the venue was brisk and the organizers knew that they were on to a jack pot. It was rumored in the media that eminent music producers were to be amongst the audience that night and that it was the launch of Chella’s career as a musician.

 

That evening the concert proved a disaster in terms of technological quality. All the equipment seemed to be failing every now and then and the musicians realized that their instruments had all been meddled with. The musicians were so busy readjusting their equipment that the show could not start on time. Realizing that the audience was getting restless, Chella started stroking the piano into a solo improvisation to provide time for the other members to set right their equipment and join him.

To his disgust and dismay Chella found that his piano too had been tampered with and was not playing true. Being the virtuoso that he was Chella adjusted his playing to produce a funky off beat melody inspite of his out of tune piano. He found that the mikes that were expected to pick up the sound from his piano were not working. He had to adjust to this lack of amplification and play with a louder thump on the piano. At the end of the number, there was a smattering of applause but Chella and the critics knew that it was not a good start at all. Something smelled fishy and the critics were agog with stories of jealousy and rivalry being behind the mischief caused by tampering with the instruments and the equipment.

Meanwhile, the other members of the band had set right their equipment and Chella too had done some minor tuning on the piano and turned on the mikes around him to get back to business at hand. The next number was a livelier rendition of one of Chella’s own compositions and the audience began to hem and haw in anticipation as the number livened them up. However, disaster struck once again and the entire public address system went silent midway through the number as amplifiers burst and equipment sizzled. It was quite evident that Chella’s concert had been deliberately tampered with by someone who did not want him to grow.

Chella knew that he was finished. Changing all these equipment let alone repairing them would take a minimum of a half hour and he could not keep the crowd waiting, after having made a false start as it were. He therefore waved his accompanying musicians away and began to play solo on his grand piano with no amplification but pure natural sound. Fortunately the acoustics at the hall was good. The audience which had begun to boo had quickly quietened down as Chella treated them to a performance par excellence and held them spell bound for the next three hours.

That evening Chella outdid all his past performances. Without the support of any back – up musicians and with just a grand piano, Chella played music from a different world. He played his own composition titled “A freak out in C Minor” which really freaked out the audience. The hall which was meant to accommodate about three thousand people was jam packed with more than five thousand people standing and sitting, shoulder to shoulder in pin drop silence listening to the divine melodies that poured out from Chella’s fingers while the audience remained spell – bound.

Chella played on; non stop for three hours without a break. Each song leading to a song better than the previous one. At the end of it all, Chella stood up bowed from the waist down and quietly left the hall through the green room exit as the hall erupted in joyous ovation. Even before the others could react Chella had vanished from the hall; swallowed up as it were by the concrete jungle of the city.

Chella did not appear to be his dazed self and for once seemed to be filled with purpose. The only voice that rang inside his head kept on repeatedly screaming “can my music create jealousy?” The same thought rang on and on inside his head as he wondered what was the purpose of playing music so pure if the people only viewed it with jealousy. It was a pity for if they were to shed their jealousy they would have been able to see the divinity within, he thought to himself.

Chella did not know what to do. He felt betrayed that his art had caused so much jealousy leading to deceit and cunning on the part of those who did not wish to have their skills and talent sidelined by a youngster. He did not wish to live in the city amongst his former circle of friends and well-wishers. Ideally, I should seek out a jungle somewhere, he mused to himself. Chella had heard a lot about a wild place called the “Silent Forest” and he now decided to go live there alone and forget contact with his fellow humans who could not understand him.

“Silent Forest” was a disaster too for Chella who went around in search of peace and loneliness; found that the silent valley was also infested with people. He could hardly close his eyes for five minutes as he soaked in the bliss of solitude before his joy would be interrupted by some fellow human or the other. Since the silent forest was supposed to be a protected forest it was full of forest officials, rangers and wardens and the like who thanked their lucky stars for being posted there as they looted the riches of the forest. The forest was also home to poachers, dacoits, wanted men who needed a place to hide and highway men who would hold up wayfarers.

Chella found it immensely funny that even the few forests that were found in the world were forests no more as they were also inhabited by quite a fair population of humans. True forests were really extinct and no more found on the face of the earth. Is there any place on earth that Man has left free; allowing it to flourish in its pristine form? Chella mused to himself.

In earlier times, it was said that those who sought answers to life’s most vital questions would seek out the forests and stay there observing silence, contemplating on themselves, inwardly chanting the names of the divine whom they invoked to seek answers they sought. However in todays over populated world we find that it is the city which is the best place for one to dissolve or merge into. All that one had to do was to seek out the filthiest areas of the city and go hide themselves there for even the most inquisitive of associates and friends would find the location rather revolting and therefore avoid them. Indeed the city with its skyscrapers and huge malls, fecal matter bearing rivers, ghettos and slums, sewage and gutters, traffic snarls and all - was still the best place where a man who wanted to spend time with himself could do so.

There was no news of Chella for quite some time. It seemed to appear as if he had vanished into the ether. After a couple of years some fans of Chella espied him seated on a dirty pavement outside a dirty slum. He was as dirty as his surroundings; if not dirtier and his hair and beard had grown wild, dirty and matted. They had approached him but he had just remained passively seated without any recognition of them or his surroundings. He merely kept talking to himself. Muttering at things around him. The fans had tried offering him a glass of milk and a bun but Chella had refused to accept by merely remaining passively silent. Other instances of Chella being spotted around the dirty sewage bearing river that ran through the city were reported from time to time.

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I’m sure most of you must be wondering why I have penned this story. I’m sure most of us have had incidents like Chella’s in our day to day lives. When people out of sheer jealousy try to sabotage our work. While most of us tend to brush it off, get up and get on with it; it is a few like Chella who quit.

What makes those like Chella quit? As I had mentioned in the beginning of the first installment of this piece, Chella was not a usual human being. He was a pure and natural soul. It was only because he was a pure and natural soul that Chella decided to quit while we who remain impure happen to keep on trying until we rid ourselves of all our impurities. To be brutally frank and forthright, I am bound to say that we who carry on with our lives are the ones who are impure; the ones who are bound by their selfishness to the ways of the world. The ego and its selfishness is the only difference between people like Chella and us. Actually what we consider to be a good quality is in reality due to our impurities and our lack of comprehension of truth.

Therefore my friends, the next time when you find yourself walking; busily on the road and come across a person on the pavement who looks like Chella, don’t call him mad for it is we who are mad. He is neither a bum nor a mad man but a modern day contemporary saint. However that does not mean we rush to them and disturb them. Let them be, for they have sought peace and communion with nature in the midst of the concrete jungle. Let us not be judgmental about them for they are more than worthy to be judgmental about us.

GROWTH VIS A VIS DEVELOPMENT

Some time ago, I was involved in a general discussion about what is growth and what is Development?

Growth is a more physical and material term and therefore has it's own limits. However, Development is not only physical & material, but something more abstract than just these and is infinite with no limits.

To illustrate this point, I told my friends about a friend whom I had known during my childhood. His name was 'Kulandaipichai' which when literally translated means "child given as alms".

He was a classmate of mine during my primary school days in an unknown / unheard off school in Chennai which was then 'Madras'. All that I used to remember of K.P. as we fondly called him was his loving mother who used to bring him to school , bring lunch during the afternoon break and then take him back home at the end of school. 

I remember feeling rather jealous of K.P. and used to look at him with envy, when his mother brought him to school or fed him lunch & eagerly stood at the school gate waiting for her son to come back at the stroke of the final bell for the day. His mother had lost her husband when he was very young and therefore showered all her love on K.P.

As the son of working parents, I never used to have the luxury of parents bringing me to and from school or bringing me lunch and have been forced to take care of myself from my early days. The kind of luxuries which K.P.enjoyed really rankled and I would literally look at him with green eyes.

Time flew and we parted ways. I moved on to a job in a non-governmental organization while K.P. went on to be a top notch financial whiz kid and was riding high on a crest in the corporate world. 

Over the years, I totally lost track of K.P. until I chanced upon him at a drive-in restaurant about two years ago. He was all agog at meeting me and was bubbling with life and enthusiasm. He gushed that he was happy to have met me and that it was providence that had brought us together since he was about to get married in a week. He handed me the wedding invitation and I wished him all the best while promising to attend the wedding without fail.

As promised, I participated in his marriage ceremony where I also happened to meet some of my old school chums - Guys who had kept track of K.P. and were still in touch with him. More than any thing, it seemed to me that these guys had kept in touch with K.P. only because he was a top notch corporate honcho. K.P. was really a lucky guy. His wife looked really lovely and serene. She looked like the kind of woman who could help her man build his career. What with a doting mother, K.P. now had a doting wife too!

Time flew by as it always does and I again lost track of K.P. since I was absorbed in my own work and obsessed with my own personal life. A couple of months ago I was driving my two-wheeler past a busy stretch on Mount Road, when I chanced to see his wife waiting at a bus stop. I was surprised, since K.P. was so rich and could easily afford three or four cars. I eased my bike to the side and parked it. I then proceeded to the bus stop and greeted K.P.'s wife with a "Hello Sis! How are you? How is K.P.?" The woman's face tightened on hearing K.P.'s name and she looked at me with sad eyes.

"Oh! My Husband? He is so happy with his mother that he doesn't need me at all. His mother takes care of all his needs and hence he doesn't need me at all. We have therefore separated and currently my father has taken steps to apply for our divorce", she replied rather sarcastically. 

I was surprised and rather taken aback to hear this. I then asked her what had gone wrong within one year of her marrying my friend. "What didn't go wrong?" she replied, "Right from the first day, from his morning coffee to his bath to his bed to his meals, everything had to be done by Mummy, that is his mother, who has made her son completely dependent on her. I am ashamed to say it but your friend needed his mother to even comb his hair or have his shave or tie his shoe laces".

"Initially, I tried to do things for him but he found fault with whatever I did. Mummy does it this way, Mummy does it better, He was always complaining and would only be happy if his mother did it for him. After a while I realized the futility of loving him and went back to my father's house where I have been living ever since. Since then I have found myself a small job and survive on the time I spend there as my work is a great diversion and I get paid to forget my personal life for a major part of the day", she said.

I was too stunned to even speak. Here was a hot-shot corporate whiz kid who needed his mother to even tie his shoe laces for him. What could I say? I mumbled my solemn responses and wished her farewell. Months later, I came to know from one of my school chums who had been there at K.P.'s wedding that divorce was granted on the same day that K.P. was made President of his company at the age of thirty four.

Now my friends, I hope you will be in a better position to enlighten me on the difference between growth and development?