One Enduring Lesson

by Jamal Merchant

‘After the grief, came the loneliness. Now I have conquered both,’

‘Where were you when Kennedy was shot?’ ‘I didn’t do it. I have an alibi,’ replied PP Auntie, roaring with laughter.

‘A criminal always revisits the scene of the crime,’ said PP Auntie, raising her eyebrows a fraction. ‘You must go back to Bandra and look for that villain.’

‘In Mumbai, we kill rats, but the Musahars of Bihar in northern India eat them to survive.’

‘A forced marriage—a custom which is prevalent in the interiors of some parts of northern and eastern India.’

‘I miss his five Ts.’ ‘Five Ts?’ ‘His touch, his trust, his talk, his time and his tenderness.’

I felt as if a thick sisal cord were being tied around my hands and legs, pulling me in all directions, left, right, up, down, the grip clasping more and more and shouting: Decide! Decide! Decide! But, like Hamlet, I couldn’t decide.

There is one and only one reason why a boy and girl should get married, if they want to, and that is love.

Life in the ultimate analysis has taught me one enduring lesson. The subject should always disappear in the object. In our ordinary affections one for another, in our daily work

with hand or brain, we most of us discover soon enough that any lasting satisfaction, any contentment that we can achieve, is the result of forgetting self, of merging subject with object, in a harmony that is of body, mind and spirit…

The subject should always disappear in the object.