WHAT was there in place of the Chamundeswari Temple before the Chamundi Hills acquired the name after the Goddess? There was no temple. But, when was there ever no temple? To a Mysorean, the hill without the temple is unthinkable. One cannot force-conjure even an abstract picture of a temple-less hill, no matter how compulsive a contemplator one is. (A Mysore artist of contemporary vintage once created such a painting – the hill sans the temple – but then you don’t call it the Chamundi Hills, just the hill, some hill, like any of those unnamed, bald-headed hills in Closepet ). A Mysore without Narasimhaiah is as bald. The city has lost its crowning glory, the presiding deity of Dhvanyaloka, where the devotees of literature, the many disciples of CDN congregated often.
When I shifted to Mysore in 1991, my movements were restricted to city centre, and the imposing Chamundi seemed to chase me like a shadow. Nobody can lose their way in the city, as the most striking landmark accompanies them. For some years now I have lived close to Dhvanyaloka and I never felt lost in the company of this legendary human landmark called Narasimhaiah. (Did I say human? It is blasphemous. The Nara had long got the better of the Simha and the man had long attained the redoubtable eminence of an Ayya in the vast empire of world literature).
The serenity of Dhvanyaloka was disturbed when a petrol pump sprang up by its very side recently. Nobody made an issue of it. Not even the media. (What better can be expected of us, the media morons, many of whom got the name of this important institution wrong and more often than not referred to the institution as Dhanyaloka. Mercifully, Narasimhaiah was not mistaken for his namesake that is more easily recognized for the pulp literature the latter wrote!) For once, I could tolerate the presence of the pump next to this temple of learning. As I cycled past it and entered the temple a day after CDN’s demise, it served up a metaphor for me: Dhvanyaloka has been my refuelling station.
Seldom did I drive past Dhvanyaloka without my eyes desperately scouring for CDN in his chair in the verandah. I turned automatically in the direction of where he sat, leisurely browsing through the mails that he regularly received from the world over and that included books and literary journals. (On occasion he would read out to me the letters he had just received). My attempts to steal a glance of him were like those of a devotee in a hurry that does not get into the temple but pays a flying tribute from outside. They were like the oblique glance that the platoon commander flings in the direction of the chief guest that is receiving his salute. Whenever I went inside to meet him, it was invariably without prior notice. It was not my journalistic impudence that gave me such freedom, but the freeness he had bestowed on me with his effusive warmth.
It was a fortnight ago that I decided to take a friend from Bangalore that was keen to meet CDN. It was well past 2 in the afternoon and I just took a peek from near the gate and CDN was just sliding into his chair. As usual he expressed his delight, though he had somewhat turned pale, as if due to sickness. He held my hand as I obliged his request to draw closer. I introduced my friend Sreenath to him and he thanked him for ‘bringing Vijay here’. I was, with my usual intent, listening to his poetic talk when Sreenath raised an alarm and rushed to pick up a burning wastepaper basket away from CDN’s side. CDN had been extensively using the match to light his cigar and had forgetfully put a few burning sticks in the plastic basket by him and its contents had caught fire and a giant flame leapt up to cause the panic. His family members rushed out and chided him. CDN admitted his fault, though his face remained as poised as ever, saying he should have used the ash-tray that was right on his crowded coffee table. He then went on to give an account of how much tobacco went inside him. He smoked his favourite ITC King at coffee in the morning, a bit of one cheroot that he smoked in three installments over the day, and one round of pipe after dinner. He was criticized by some for these very English mannerisms, but these very things had endeared him to me. I had even shown an unacceptable degree of audacity as a youngster by accepting his offer of cigarette on two occasions. But, with increased interaction with him in coming years I could never do that again, because I had accepted him within as my guru. (My subsequent tobacco renunciation also contributed to the cause). I do no know why CDN had taken a liking for me, though in one of our first meetings itself I had earned his visible displeasure by not living up to his standard of conversance over English poetry. It was at the request of a former colleague that I had fixed up an exclusive poetry-reading session with CDN. In all the subsequent meetings that I had with him he spoke, only spoke, and that was poetry.
To say that CDN spoke poetry is an inane and hackneyed expression that I avoid. (CDN hated such stale expressions and was quick to spot and appreciate any fresh and invigorating expression. He lived quietly in a world full of sounds and his sensitivity to sound was so sharp that to me he was the most eloquent symbol himself for what Dhvanyaloka represents). To use any transitive verb to describe what this man did accurately would be to posthumously disturb the silence that he has left behind in our midst. “It rains”, or “The flower blooms”. These are the natural phenomena that come to mind when I heard CDN speak. He was the words that flowed gently from him. Words had a unique elegance when they fought to be selected by him as the medium. He was a word processor in the literal sense of the term. They dazzled when they got the highest samskara of being expressed by CDN. They took a holy dip in CDN the same way the Indians throng the Ganga to wash away their gunas and vasanas. No word ever found its fulfillment unless it was whetted by CDN’s celestial magic. (Even the mono-syllabic non-verbal expression of disgust that once came out of him in visceral disapproval of an unworthy candidate occupying a very high office of power had all the potency of ambush of a spirited infantry).
Only infirmities of age allowed CDN to be compared to other men: he had turned somewhat senile. At times he repeated himself. Even his repetitions were anything but music to my ears. His memory had begun to fade, not his passion. (He never mentioned it, but his wife’s death three years ago had affected him immensely). Smoking or speaking, reading or writing, he did with the same intensity as ever. He lived passionately as passion can. Gentleness was an inseparable from him; it accompanied him in death.
When I last met him, he invited me to speak at a seminar at Dhvanyaloka. He gave me a leaflet on it to read it more leisurely and return it; I regret not having obliged him. Else, I would have got one more chance to see; one last chance.
One late evening three years back, I got a call from CDN. He wanted to know why I had remained away from him for many weeks. I felt overwhelmed by the man’s warmth and promptly presented myself before him next day. After some initial meetings, I had realized the importance of maintaining silence with him; I had to speak the barest minimum, if I had to maximize the unalloyed delight of his speech. CDN was prompt in referring to this aspect of our interactions when he wrote a letter of reference recommending my case for an American fellowship. CDN spoke some comforting words to me when I went back to tell him that I did not get the fellowship.
I always wanted to know the curious nature of our relationship; why did he take such a liking for me, a guy that scarcely deserved it? The curiosity only grew when I read in the papers that he had woken up once from his final day’s sleep in his daughter’s house in Bangalore as the time exactly coincided with my own waking up at the same wee hour, the same morning. I had wound up past midnight, but I was up without having had my quota of sleep. What did it symbolize, I do not know. However, it was only at 8.30 that night that I came to know about CDN’s passing away, as I had been busy giving a lecture the whole day. It was my wife who broke the news to me on my return home: ‘CDN,’ she said to me with a sad face, and gazed at me as I sulked.
(Excerpted from Vijendra Rao's recently released collection of essays Run of the mind.)
