My Favourite Guest

BY K. CHANDRASEKHARAN, M.A. B.L.

My favourite guest is almost the last of my father's contemporaries. He has all the virtues and defects of my ancestral house. He can get excited at the slightest provocation or melt into tears when narrating some incident connected with my father's noble life. He is simple, credulous, and emotional and is to me like our home made butter, cheap and dear alike. His harmless pride over his sense of economy which has made him what he is today, is of much educative value to those who lack artlessness. The story of his early life with his pittance of a salary in the starting days of his official career, and his one rich meal of cooked rice with butter-milk, has passed to me like current coin. Though he has grown old with time, still the youngest can find in him a spirited and curiosity-awakened companion, ever ready for adventure or for argument. The tenderer the age of children, the blither his spirits when he frolics with them.

Education has only burnished the fine stuff of his character. The comforts derived for months from a rich man's hospitality, can never disable him from pursuing the even tenour of his frugal life at home. The only luxury he has learnt to enjoy all these years is to avail himself of the access of valuable books on a wide range, of subjects. The Encyclopedia Brittannica" is the one book which can satisfy his voracious curiosity. The subject of world-geography with the details of its flora and fauna has always an overpowering attraction for him. His preference for the library with its volumes of Natural History to the monotonous lectures of the class-room in his college days, is perhaps the best comment on his self-acquisitive powers. Biography ranks next in order in the pursuit of his studies, and there is none dear or near to him that has not had it dinned into his or her ears by him, how an Abbot's "Life of Napoleon" contains the varied charms of history, romance, novel, and biography rolled into one. Novels in general, whether of the classical type or of the modern six-penny kind, never enthuse him. The secret of his over-fondness for character study is perhaps his own faculty to glimpse greatness in others, which has too often proved itself whenever he sublimates every quality of my father into a noteworthy trait of the higher man. His impatience to engage in a hearty conversation and his child-like delight in trying to gratify every curiosity of his, amuse us all who have watched him in the attempt. His great enthusiasm will prevent him sometimes from a clear articulation of his words in the middle of a narration. I feel always a freshness in his candour as that of the cloudless morning.

Even while young, he did not aspire to become a graduate, as he felt the University degree too costly in view of his ultimate goal of quill-driving. From among a number of applicants for the post of a clerk, he was chosen for his intrinsic worth. He impressed the Dorai, who selected him, by his ready and resourceful answers. "What does the second book of Euclid treat of?" asked the officer, and the ready response of my guest was, "Secunderabad is a British Cantonment". For, he caught only the first part of the sentence and did not wait to consider the rest. The result was, he elicited an appreciation from the Englishman that he was ‘fiery and sharp.’ It assured him easily of a post in those good old days. The change from irresponsible youth to the serfdom of office did not rob him of his lively spirits. No other Sub-Registrar of Assurances is so widely read, and in retirement so profitably occupied as he is.

Though a good reader of books, he has never felt the urge within him to express his own ideas in writing. Neither has he attempted at authorship nor known any disappointment on that account. But he will always bear us the information he has collected from books with unmitigating enthusiasm and may not be satisfied till we also feel with him for the author. The one subject which has never allured or actuated him is Sanskrit literature, but his culture being the cream of self-experience and untaught education, easily enables him to appreciate the beauties of poetry. The emotions in general never fail to touch his heart, though the subtler shades of excellence in language and rhythm may not always captivate him. Hence his leaning for music is essentially free from a passion for it.

The high-handed discipline exerted over him in his younger days, has not shed its full influence on him. Even now he cannot desist from the quaint joy of poking now and then a gentle provocative at irascible natures. For his sense of enjoyment of the situation is at its height when he is enveloped in the shower of an outburst in return. I like him when he is ready to forget the severest attack on him. Retaliation is a thing not quite familiar to him. Gratitude he has in plenty for those who have helped him in life. It is ever as fresh as his memory. With eyes glistening he can give me anecdotes how, in the early days of his adversity, a kind and affluent cousin of his treated him almost like a brother, and how another

dear soul brought him, while he was being tossed about from place to place as a Sub-Registrar of Assurances, every news about Madras for which he would be thirsting. His attachment for Madras was his attachment for my father. He loved him as only a Boswell could; and wherever he went he carried a lengthening chain.

Impulsive as he is, his heart is not a bubbling spring of generosity. He cannot put up with vanity even in its most refined form. His strictures are too severe on those who live above their means. He has no sympathy for snobs at any rate. He is like a rugged boulder on the sea-shore defying the wayward excitement and toss of fashion's billows. For he is much surer of his bottom than any captain of the keel of his ship. But often he derives real joy at the truly bold spirits who run the risk of a perilous sea.

My guest does not know to hide the defects of his character. His faults and fancies are as much patent to him as they are to me. What I know of him is what he himself has told me. His simple heart cannot understand the extreme complexity of the modern world. He believes that his judgment of men and things is infallible. He scarcely thinks men should be also judged from other circumstances and their behaviour towards persons other than himself.

He is welcomed with warmth at everyone of my relatives’. He is the same at every door. His is a never-fatiguing spirit that feels all the elation at being a friend to all. Rich and poor, young and old, cold as well as warm-hearted, do not consider him otherwise than pleasing. His round of visits to the numerous friends and relatives is conducive to my pleasure, for he will be prepared to unburden himself of the rich store of impressions and information, collected during such a meeting of his kith and kin.

My favourite guest is a lover of the history of families and their quaint relationships. His heart is eager to sip of the honey of some old story, revived with all the vigour and vividness at the touch of a long forgotten friendship. His mind is ever alert for fresh endeavors in the fields of science and archeology; for he can sit for hours together in finishing any book treating of those subjects.

He is essentially a domestic figure. Though he can appreciate a speech or criticise it with a wealth of suggestions of his own, he has not even the distant thought of making one himself in public. He always feels an inordinate pride and pleasure in the achievements of anyone of us and he will be dwelling on it for long. He is kind but not charitable, frolicsome but not frivolous, proud but not vain. Religion has not laid a firm grasp on him. He wishes to be free from the soul-killing trammels of orthodoxy. When asked once by one of his well-meaning friends why he does not perform his daily Sandhya vandanam, his candid reply was, "I am content with the heaven of a Sudra if at all I am vouchsafed one". He lives the honest life and loves the Truth which every one of the great religions of the world preaches.

Some are born to do great deeds; and some are born to die obscure. My favourite guest does not belong to either. He can create in me a human interest for the lovable traits in man. His foibles more than his strength endear him to me. He is as Heaven made him, pure and fresh as the plough-turned soil, only waiting for the gentle drop of rain to smile gratefully. Of course my home does not quite so much invigorate him as when my father was alive. But still the moorings of his purer joys in life are more cast in our midst. Whenever he is with me, pleasant memories and sweet thoughts are revived. His departure from my home is ever marked by a depression of my feelings. I long for him and his simplicity.