Address and Identity

He was flying in the sky using freshly acquired wings.  The body was left behind, dead.  He was indeed conscious and aware of the flight taking him somewhere, far away.  He could see many boards displayed on the way, in the sky.  He could not read any of them as he was not familiar with the script or language used in those boards.  Finally, he saw a board written in his mother tongue.  He was thrilled to read it: "Way to Hell".  Though the board said it was way to hell, he was happy because it was the only board he could read among the scores of them.  He proceeded on the way to hell.  A strong voice thundered at him - "You are not allowed here. Go on the path of Heaven".  He shifted the path and now proceeded on the path to heaven. The delightfully decorated main door of the heaven before him was closed.  He stood and waited for it to open.  The guard's voice called out to him. 

"Who is that?"     
"I am Puttappa"
"Which Puttappa?"
"K V Puttappa"
"Who is that?"

He was astounded.  What is the arrogance of this nectar fed angel guard, he thought. Everyone knows me by that name.  How does he not know, he wondered. He tried another line now.

"I am Ku. Vem. Pu."

He should definitely know this.  The door should open now, he waited. Derisive laughter was the answer.  He went on giving further other answers to prove his identity.

"Assistant Professor"
"Professor"
"Principal"
"Vice Chancellor"
"Padma Bushana"
"Rashtra Kavi" 

"All that has no value here.  Tell me what does your heart and soul says.....", asked the guard.  He did not know what to say.  He had exhausted all his identities. He stood there blushing and thinking.  He made up his mind and tried the last identity.  

"I am Hemi's husband"  (He remembered the wife's name..... Hemavathy!)

Oh, the door opened and he entered heaven.  

He woke up from a great dream............

This is a near translation of a delightful prose-poem of KUVEMPU, one of modren Kannada's (Navodaya) foremost and well-known poets.  He was one of the earliest recipients of the "Jnanapeeth Award" and Vice-chancellor of Mysore University.

That poem was written some sixty years ago.....

***** 

There was an unusual noise on the street.  Subbajji was curious to know the reason for it. She asked her grand daughter to go and find out.  Padma returned and told her grand mother that it was a procession of someone named Appayya Deekshitar.  Subbajji was not satisfied.  She asked Padma to find out full details. Padma ran out again and returned with some more information.  

"Appaiah Deekshitar is a well known Advaita Vedanta scholar, they say.  He has traveled allover the country and defeated many stalwarts of other faiths in debate. He has written more than 100 valuable works.  Appreciating his scholarship and efforts, Vellore King Chinna Bomma Nayakkar had arranged a "Swarnabhishekam" (ritual of a person being showered with gold coins) for him. He has returned to our place after the festival in Vellore. He is being taken in the streets in a big procession.  Hence the noise"

Subbajji did not understand the details and did not understand who this Appaiah Deekshitar was.  She herself slowly walked to the door and saw the procession.  As the procession neared her house, she could identify the person being taken in procession.

"Padma, you are telling so many useless details.  I know him very well.  He is our Acchamma's husband!"  

That was more than four hundred years ago.....

*****

Narasinga Rao was a popular Kannada playwright, stage and film actor, producer and director.  His 75 stage plays have been presented on the Kannada stage many times over. He is better known through his pen name, Parvatavani.  He was invited to the wedding reception of a daughter of his long time friend who was also a writer, actor and director. Parvatavani came to the function and presented a book to the newly wed couple. He did not worry to remember the name of the boy, but knew the girl since her childhood. He wrote on the first page of the book, "With best wishes to Geetha and Geethapriya".  The book is still a prized possession with the couple.

That was forty seven years ago.....

*****

Identity being established through above methods is not a rare practice.  In discourses like "Harikathe", which is an art form of story telling in which poetry, music and even dance at times are used, the Lord in whose praise the performance takes place is often remembered from time to time. 

If it is Lord Shiva, the chant goes, "Hara Namah Parvati Pataye....  Hara Hara Mahadev" 

If it is Lord Vishnu, the chant is "Indira Ramana Govinda...... Govinda"

With these chants, identity of the Lord is established.  But with Lord Vishnu, the artiste or discourse giver does not want to take any risk.  He establishes his address as well.  The Lord may have many wives as per the incarnations he takes from time to time.  But there is only one eternal servant for the Lord: Anjaneya alias Bhajarangabali. Hence the chant is:

"Aanjaneya varada Govinda......... Govinda!"  

With these two chants together, both identity as well as address of the Lord is well established and there is no risk of wrong delivery!

Post Cards and "England Letters"

A post card was the most popular medium of communication between two places in the country some five or six decades ago.  An area of about 20 square inches on one side and half of it on the other side was for messages.  The remaining one fourth was reserved for writing the address for delivery by the post man at the destination.  If more space was required for writing the message, one could use the "England Letter".  Its actual name was and is "Inland letter", but it was referred to popularly as the "England Letter", especially in the rural areas.  One reason probably was because the England bosses ruled the country for a long time and the other was due to the two words sounding similar.  The third brother of the family, envelope, was considered expensive and reserved for official communications and rare occasions when sheets of paper were used for writing or to enclose some document etc.  There was a fourth brother of the family available for sale at larger post offices; special envelopes for carrying letters abroad, popularly known as "Foreign letters".  All of them are still in use, but have been replaced to a large extent by electronic communication medium like e-mails.

As a young boy I was fascinated to find that such cards and letters reached the addressee in a distant place.  Whenever the post man came to our street, we children would go behind him till the end of the street to find out which houses received letters that day.  One other thing that pleased us most was when the post man brought money orders.  My mother received two money orders (MO) every year; her two younger brothers always sent a M. O. to her a week before the Gowri-Ganesha festival.  The message part of the MO given to her with the money by the post man contained the usual request for utilizing the money for purchasing pooja items for the festivals.  The earliest MO amount as I remember were five rupees and increased to ten rupees in due course.  This sending and receiving of MO, however small the amounts were, was given high importance by both the senders and receivers and was a symbol of the bond between brothers and sisters.  One of our neighbors was working in a far away city and his wife would wait for the arrival of the post man in the first week of the month, bringing the MO sent by her husband for household expenses.  The post man would come promptly and deliver the money.  She used to keep a four Anna coin (quarter of a rupee) ready and gave it to him after receiving the money.  For quite some time I believed that it was part of the postal procedure.  It was much later that I learnt that this coin was actually a tip and it meant "To Impart Prompt Service"!

Those were the days of very low literacy and many villagers used to come to see my father and seek his help in writing letters for them.  My father would purchase postal stationery during his visits to the nearest big town and keep a stock of post cards, inland letters and envelopes to meet the requirement of the villagers.  Sunday mornings were busy times with many illiterate people from nearby villages coming for getting their letters written by him.  Some of them brought inward letters (letters received by them) and ask him to read them over.  Then the reply was to be decided and written by him.  As the letter for one villager was being written, others would sit below the tree in the front yard and patiently wait for their turn.  The process of writing a letter would start with inquiry about the addressee and contents of the message to be written.  There was no particular order in their answers and it was left to him to bring it into an acceptable form of communication.  He would write the letters, read them over to them and then mail them.

Whenever my father sat down near his small desk for writing cards or letters, I would take my place next to him and keenly observe how he went about it.  When I was in primary school, I was not allowed to touch any of those things; the desk, cards and envelopes or the pens.  As I moved to middle school, I was permitted to help him with placing the desk in its place, filling the pen with ink, pasting the inland letters with gum and finally going up to the post box to mail those cards and letters.  When I was sent to post the letters for the first time I was told to put the letters in the box and salute the post box so that the letters were delivered promptly.  I did this faithfully for sometime until I realized that the instructions were in jest.  During my first year at High School I was assigned to write the letters for the villagers under his watchful eye.  He would then scrutinize them and approve their mailing.  Once he was satisfied that I could do a good job of it, he delegated all the writing to me.  Literacy level improved by that time and the number of villagers coming for such errands also declined.

My father always wrote the address on the cards and inland letters first and thereafter went about inking the messages on them.  After observing this system, once I asked him why he did so.  In response to my question, he told me a fine story.

Those were the days of early marriages.  One village boy was married immediately after he finished his metric examination.  He was about sixteen years of age and his wife was studying in middle school.  He was sent to a city for pursuing his college education.  His father had instructed him to write a letter every week to inform the progress in his studies.  He had to comply with the instructions of his father.  The boy himself wanted to write to his young wife.  (He was probably reading "Mysooru Mallige" of the famous poet K S Narasimha Swamy!).  He bought two inland letters from the post office and wrote to his father as well as his wife.  The contents of letter to father conveyed that he was fully concentrating on his studies and his mind was occupied by only this and nothing else.  The letter to his wife had the opposite message: he was always thinking of her and had no interest in the studies.  He even expressed annoyance with the father for not allowing him to stay with the newly wed wife and forcing to go away to a distant place for studies.  Both the letters were fine in their own place.

He had no habit of writing the addresses on the inland letters before writing the contents.  The letters were sealed with gum before the address part was completed.  While writing the addresses on the two inland letters, he wrote the address of his father on the letter written for his wife.  The letter meant for his father was mailed with his wife's address on it!