Triple Stream

TAMASOMA JYOTIRGAMAYA

For the first time I am writing in the first person impelled by the desire that I should share with the readers one of my personal experiences in my life. At the age of 75 let me recapitulate what happened thirty two years ago, when I was returning to Hyderabad by road from Mysore via Bangalore. My mind went over the success of social contacts and the happy moments I had enjoyed in the company of friends and relatives. On the way, I stopped at Tirupati. Before the journey was resumed, I wanted to have a cup of coffee in a restaurant. So far every thing was all-right and I was in fine fettle.

It was hot season of mid summer. Having enjoyed a cup of coffee, I stood outside, wiping my goggles with the hand kerchief. Some body ordered a soda in a panshop which was near by. I looked in that direction as I heard the sound of the soda bottle bursting. It all happened in a jiffy. A flying piece of broken grass hit me in the right like a missile tearing the eyelid and perforating the iris (as I learnt from the ophthalmic surgeon after wards). I did not realise the seriousness of the injury at the moment. There is moment in life which makes enormons difference to one’s charted course and leads to a drastic dip in the graph of living. It is just a bleak period when one feels that he has come to the dead end of life. I took a snap decision to continue the journey over night with a bleeding eye as I thought that I should avoid causing inconvenience to my people who would otherwise have to go over to a strange place at considerable distance and attend on me in the hospital.

It was a long journey. I suffered excruciating pain in the affected eye. I tried to summon all my philosophy and faith in God to my aid. How happiness turns into misery in a moment and from the height of joy one could be plunged into suffering! I remembered what Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa said about himself. I tried in vain to detach my mind from my bodily pain. It was not so easy for a mere mortal like me. It was not like removing a piece of paper pasted on a wall! However, I persisted in praying to God. Prayer is the meeting point for the ascending anguish of the human soul and the descending divine mercy. After a little while it had anesthetic effect. Pain ceased. Meditation seems to have the effect of medication; I slept till destination was reached.

I was admitted in the Sarojini Devi Eye Hospital in Hyderabad and got treated for a fortnight after which the doctors declared that there was no sight in the right eye but the left eye could take the extra load to take me along my life’s journey. I gained a new insight in life with the partial loss of my sight. I was thankful to Providence for sparing me one eye. With my diminished sight I was resolved to wade through the rest of my career making the most of what little light I could muster from manageable darkness. My favourite game of Tennis was the first casualty and it was a permanent loss. Reading and writing, the be-all and end-all of my life, suffered temporarily. Soon I got adjusted, I could renew the two activities and practice them with the avidity of a miser who hugs his hoard. My speaking engagements in society and seminars and lectures in colleges and universities revived my spirits, restored my confidence and boosted up my interest in life. God tempers the weather for the shorn lamb.

This went on and on for more than three decades until my left eye which was put on extra duty, began to murmur and complain. Doctors diagnosed a developing cataract. Measures were taken during the months that followed to delay its progress if it could not be warded off. This being so, the surviving eye became the preoccupation of my thoughts. Its batteries had to be re-charged now and then with a variety of eye-drops and powered glasses. The pupil had to be dilated to stave off haziness. Little knowing what was happening to the eye, I began to think that there was poor visibility because of smoke or fog in the air. God knows how I struggled to read the proofs and other materials. A time came when I could not write at all. I could not take my morning constitusional for fear of being run over by passing vehicles. A time came when I could not sign my cheques as my signature would not tally with the specimen signatures kept in the bank. All this happened because with the eclipse of my only eye I was face to face with the much dreaded blindness. I had no stepney!

Every body began to advise. Conflicting counsels confused the mind. At long last a date was fixed for a surgical operation in the L.V. Prasad Eye Institute. Earlier, my own ophthalmic surgeon ­physician, who performed several cataract operations, himself advised me to consult a super specialist in the field on account of the risk to my only eye. This situation set in motion all kinds of thoughts: What does it matter if I became blind? Let me prepare for the worst while hoping for the best. I remembered Nelson’s eye and Sukracharya’s eye perforated by Vamana. But they had atleast one eye! Did Surdas, the great devotee stop singing because he was blind? What about Milton, the British bard who wrote Paradise Lost as a blind man, dictating to his devoted daughter? Who will take dictation from a blind man and matter-of-fact writer like me. I have no amanuensis. Blindness cannot be a bar to lecturing but some one should lead me to the place! Does not communication suffer without being supplemented by non-verbal cues like the eye behaviour? “Eyes are the windows of the soul”.

This thought has put me in mind of what Milton was said to have commented: “My eyes are not lost. They have turned inwards”. Thus inward-looking has spiritual possibilities. Good! In meditation when we close our eyes, the interior world comes into light. Realisation is not achieved. It occurs in a flash as it did to Gautam Buddha. All this is high-tech philosophy. For a brief moment I was inclined to agree with Shakespeare’s Romeo who said “What is the use of philosophy when it cannot give my Juliet to me”? No philosopher ever bore his tooth-ache without complaint! Vedanta is only where others are concerned. Unless we are sufficiently enlightened, we are like the person who lives in a dark cave and tries to measure the light outside. We use a tailor’s tape and carpenter’s rule to measure the infinite ocean. When as everything outside comes to a halt, thoughts begin to race. Did not the great Sankara contain the turbulent flood of the Narmada river in his Kamandal? Did not the sea open and offer a passage to Moses to cross over? However, such extra ordinary souls do not occur in nature frequently.

The moment of moments - my tryst with destiny - came. From the ambulater I was transferred to the operation table. Preliminaries over, the essentials began. It was over. A green shield was put on the operated eye and I was sent . For twenty hours I was in total darkness-blindness. Like a child I had to be guided to every place and fed. The result was uncertain until the day of evaluation when the surgeon removed the green shield and asked me to open my eye. When I opened the eye, the faces and figures of Dr. Satish Gupta (the surgeon) and Dr. I. A. Rao (my brother) flashed upon my sight and shone brilliantly. Perhaps that was the effect of the Intra-ocular lens (I.D.L) that was inserted in the eye. God seems to work His miracles through science and modern technology now-­a-days! There was more light in this world. The grass looked greener and the sky bluer. I felt like Miranda (in Shakaspeare’s “The Tempest”) who had her first glimpse of human beings and exclaimed:

“Oh, Brave new world,
how beauteous is mankind!”

I realised the truth of what Helen Keller said “It would be a blessing if each person were struck blind and deaf for some time. Darkness would make him appreciate the value of light and silence would teach him the joys of sounds! Use your eyes as if you would be stricken blind tomorrow.” If the eye gives sight; the heart gives insight or vision.

There is a touch of wonder in every thing in God’s creation. Few things are drab and commonplace in themselves. It is our reaction to them that grows dull as we move nonchalantly through the years. Rabindranath Tagore said; “No, I will never shut the doors of my senses. The delights of sight and hearing and touch will bear Thy delight” (Gitanjali). Taittireya Upanishad endorses it.

However, the inner light is more important ‘Tamasoma Jyotirgamaya’ (Brihadaranyaka Upanishad.)

–I. V. Chalapati Rao