Despite our Christian missionary schooling, my sister and I never really waited for Santa. The idea of a bearded old man riding a reindeer sleigh in the snow and dropping in through chimneys was too foreign for the 30 sultry degrees of our sunshine Christmases in flat-roofed concrete homes. But for the better part of my childhood, I did wait eagerly for the visit of a bearded man bearing gifts. Back then, he visited regularly... And when he opened his suitcases, the fresh fragrance of the then coveted International Lux soap would waft in to fill the room and wait eagerly with me and my sister for the myriad other goodies that awaited us. Star and Delta candies, toy cowboys and wild animals then made in Hong Kong, shiny stickers, the watch in his hand always strapped unto my wrist, and even sinfully red rambutans jumped out of his bags like goblins from a rabbit-hole. While all these were prized possessions over which sibling turf-wars raged for the next several weeks, Uncle K brought much more than goody-bags to the monotony of our lives. His annual visits ushered in a time full of grand tales, unfeigned laughter, gibberish songs, movie outtings, great books, unquestioned off-days from school and rare impunity from the regular "sure-to-earn-a-rap" misdeeds. Most importantly, he always brought hope.
 
Uncle K was the only adult I remember looking up to and really believing things might be better when I grew up. He was the only adult I knew whose eyes always twinkled with a certain contentment and laughter. The only one who had a world beyond his work and family - a world full of yoga, karate, playwrighting, poems, homeopathy, rose-gardens, mathematics, economics, OBE or whatever new thing his ever youthful mind had taken a fancy to.  When I was out with Uncle K, the scary world of a little boy - so full of disliked adults, dark corners, fierce street-dogs and delayed growth milestones - became something that could be methodically broken down and dealt with. Nothing was ever a mistake... Nothing an unchangeable strife to suffer through... Everything would get better with a year of hard work...

To my hero-deprived childhood, Uncle K was superman in real life. I followed him everywhere and held to his every word.Tales of his clever escapades in school, 3-hour maths tests he'd aced in fifteen minutes, record-breaking giant cabbages he'd hand-grown, his limericks about professors in the college notice-board and his many other run-ins with the authorities were all family legends. The best part was the way he used to narrate those tales with a certain confidence laced humility - with the same details and intonations even when I asked him to repeat a tale for the fourth time in the same evening. Only much later did I learn how much had been left unsaid... Like the fact that this powerfully built little man who could now demonstrate two-finger push-ups was once diagnosed with polio and the likelihood of never walking again! Like the numerous doctors and engineers his free classes shaped out of children of poor tea-estate labourers...

It was he who introduced me to Vivekananda and classical Tamil poetry. It was thanks to him that I first believed in myself. For the first twenty years of my life, whenever I thought about what I wanted to be in life I always ended up resolving I'll be like him. He was my hero, pure and simple. Until it all changed one unfortunate day.

Oh, how we worship are heroes and how we then destroy them! How quick we are to judge a man whose infallibility is our own concoction! It was after my aunt, Uncle-K's eldest sister, passed away that for one brief moment I saw a side of Uncle-K that was so shocking in its appaling familiarity - the desperate and irrational anger of a defeated man that so many family members always wore! Only for a fleeting day, he struck out at the world around him in despair... Only after a forty year old dream of reuniting the family had been broken beyond repair... But I was young enough to be idealistic and judgmental... Proud enough to refute the havoc time could wreak on a man's resolve! Later, Uncle-K apologised profusely to all concerned but the damage was already done.

It took me a good half-a-decade to forgive Uncle-K. It will probably take forever to forgive myself for the way I reacted. Last year, I spoke to Uncle K for the first time in years - a voice that crackled and faded over the international long-distance line like some old ropeway bridge across the miles and years. But like only he can, Uncle-K made it sound like it was just yesterday that he'd given me my first lessons on religion in the street-corner temple.

Truth be told, Time has run its relentless course. Since those visits that filled the house with warmth and the smell of soap, my heroes have risen and fallen. People, things, thoughts - have all aged, perished, changed or been born. Uncle-K still lives in SriLanka - never-married, mellowed down by the frustrations of life in a war-torn country and the loss of a fourth sibling last year! Yesterday, I opened the yellowed and dog-eared pages of the only book that has journeyed with me to every stop in my nomadic existenc - a copy of Thirukural that Uncle-K gave me in 1986... His slanted Tamil scrawl urges me to follow the path laid down by the profoundly wise little book... Was so long ago - twenty-two years since a bearded man whose black eyes twinkled with prescience bought the book for me during a visit to the Rock Fort and tousled my hair with a smile? I couldn't believe this man who has so shaped my life and thought has spent ,in all, less than a hundred days with me in person!

The last time we spoke, it somehow still seemed things will be better next year.Uncle-K recruited me as an ally on his long-drawn battle to get the entire family - or whatever's left of it - to one side of the Palk Strait. But, I know my days with Uncle-K are going to be few and far between - precious days to be snatched out of time's countdown. I also know that he's still my hero! And that after another twenty years, if I am half the man he is today, it would be a life very well lived!

As I hastily packed my bags this evening, rushing to join the infuriating long-weekend crawl to Montreal's Trudeau Airport, the 7pm sun was streaking unabashedly through the bedroom windows. On days like this, when Excel, play-offs or binges weren't cramping my style, I'd play some Davis, Coltrane or Monk and settle down in my rocking chair with some tea and a book to enjoy another balconyful of sunset! I guess I'll miss these evenings with myself. And the few luxuries that the reckless abandonment of bachelordom offers - like the St.Hubert delivery boxes piled in the kitchen competing for space with beer bottles... But everything else in the house was handpicked carefully for another purpose... Like the equal distribution of jazz and hard-rock in my CD rack... Like the blue striped cushions in the couch, the little statuettes in the bedside table, the slouched teddy peering between the cable receiver and the DVD player... For another person... Another journey hand in hand... The house was only being watched over until the mistress arrives in all her regalia this fall - though her kindness permitted the keeper certain wanton indulgences...

In life, if you are lucky, you fall in love... Once, a dozen times, it doesn't really matter! As long as you loved with an intense heat that scorched your very being! If you are luckier, someone would love you in return. A bit like finding God I guess, at the tunneling end of blind relentless faith! But if you are really lucky, if you are that charmed proverbial chosen one, you'd be able to see someone fight for you... Tooth and nail, staking all they ever held dear in their life... Tossing it all up into an ancient air where self-righteousness and the treachery of human dogmatism awaits greedily to tear it to chunk in hyena bite pieces... All for that mysterious something they love in you that suddenly gives your existence a very humbling self-worth!

Over the last three and a half years, I bore entranced witness to a simple little girl's dogged battle for "us"! I stood by the sidelines and cheered, consoled, encouraged and at times, just lost patience... But she'd persevere through it all... Through three years where words were wielded like whiplashes... Where suggestive silences could strike where words failed...Where witches preached what was heeded as wisdom and the weak were burnt on undying stakes... And she triumphed... Against odds which would have seen me buckle a long time back!

And it's time now to celebrate and formalized what began three long years ago in this very space... B and I tie the knot, with the blessing of family and friends, this Thursday. Those we missed in our personal mails and calls, especially Plasma and others whom we know in only their cyber-avtaars, do drop a line @ atticus.finch@rediffmail.com and I'll send you the details. This is probably the lousiest way to invite people but then, when the bride and groom met through a blog, got to know each other by email, fell in love over YM and nurtured a relationship for months before finally meeting in person, the expectations aren't to be set very high!

So, do turn up, if you get a chance.  If not, I guess this is as good a place to raise a glass...

Love and Peace,
Atticus

I seldom post news reports here. But this is worth a read - Oliver Poole's take on the realities of life behind a screen of war in Iraq....

Reminds me of something I wrote years back on my own experiences with a distant and never-ending war

And in keeping with the mood, here's a poem from Yusef Kominyakaa's Vietnam War series...

Tu Do Street

Music divides the evening.
I close my eyes & can see
men drawing lines in the dust.
America pushes through the membrane
of mist & smoke, & I'm a small boy
again in Bogalusa. White Only
signs & Hank Snow. But tonight
I walk into a place where bar girls
fade like tropical birds. When
I order a beer, the mama-san
behind the counter acts as if she
can't understand, while her eyes
skirt each white face, as Hank Williams
calls from the psychedelic jukebox.
We have played Judas where
only machine-gun fire brings us
together. Down the street
black GIs hold to their turf also.
An off-limits sign pulls me
deeper into alleys, as I look
for a softness behind these voices
wounded by their beauty & war.
Back in the bush at Dak To
& Khe Sanh, we fought
the brothers of these women
we now run to hold in our arms.
There's more than a nation
inside us, as black & white
soldiers touch the same lovers
minutes apart, tasting
each other's breath,
without knowing these rooms
run into each other like tunnels
leading to the underworld.