in search of missing links

8/3/2019 In Search of Missing Links

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Everything has got a purpose in and

after our life. Everybody has got a

purpose here on earth either during

or after his life. Time decides

everything. What it may seem as so

casual, pointless and purposeless atthe moment may become so

important and purposeful after an

eclipse of time.

Let me come to the point. My cousin Ramani was visiting me after a

long time. He was back on his way to Delhi after the SabariMala

darsan. We were sharing our good old days. We had so many

common areas to share as well. Our boyhood days those were

really creative years. Both were interested in science. Both had

good reading habit. Both of us had home libraries. Both of us very

much interested to conduct experiments at home. When were

together on a vacation, it was fun and frolic. He would crack jokes.

He would weave tales out of his imagination. He had ample interest

in reading detective novels. Those were real sessions. And if we

were in Guruvayur, in his place, we would go for an evening walk

upto Balakrishna Theatre, watch the proceedings before the first

show and then return. If we were in Ottapalam, in my place, we

would walk up to the railway station, watch in excitement the trains


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come and go. He would be cracking jokes. I am never good at that.

I can better enjoy a joke than crack a joke. I cant produce

something out of air. Then, we would be discussing on various

subjects. Science was our strong and common area. And then, bothof us had an exciting period with Science Today and the childrens

science monthly Eureka during our boyhood days.

It was more than three decades since we had met each other. After

finishing his school, he went to join our uncle in Delhi and during

those formative years, we had enough correspondence. He was a

prolific writer. He had a good grip in Malayalam during those days.

His style was crisp and cracking. His narrative style wouldinfatuate any reader. Had he continued his pursuit with his pen, he

would have become another VKN, no doubt. There certainly was a

writer in the making but he lost it in the woods of life. Life is like

that.

I had preserved all those memorable letters. Sometimes I would go

through these letters to feel the winds of yore. There are letters

describing his examinations, the final hours of our grand mother

and a detailed account of various places in New Delhi with photos.

These are not mere letters but the experiences of a teenager being

described in the form of a travelogue or long narratives with ample

sense of humor.

While sharing the sweetness of those good old days, I showed him

the letters and read out a letter related to the description of events

while writing an exam the activities that happened in the

examination hall.

He thoroughly enjoyed my reading session. He was often seen

laughing at the narrations. He could not believe for himself that it


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was he who had written such a letter. He had long forgotten all

about it. He could not believe that he had such a fantastic flow of

language during those days. While listening to the narrations, he

was listening as a third person. He was totally refreshed. He wasyoung by three decades. He recollected everything. This led him to

share more intimate memories of that period. And at one point he

remarked about me

If APJ Abdul Kalam had seen you during those days, he would

have snatched you to his fold!.

That was a real assessment about my level of creativity I had during

my boyhood days. In one of his recent letters he had mentioned

about me in the following way:-

I loved every moment I spent with Ravi Palghat who was

always my inspiration in my childhood, and expected that he would

become India's Thomas Alva Edison and shall bring laurels with his

inventions to India. Now the same blood is oozing through my little

daughter Meghana..

Even though I maintain creativity even now, my areas have

changed. My areas are literature, poetry, philosophy and

spiritualism at the moment. As our conversation went on, he asked

me

When are you going to start your discourses in spiritualism?

I was reflecting. The letters had done their purpose. Time had

preserved them through me for these elated moments. He could

enjoy. He could heartily laugh. It served both of us as a mental

booster.


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So, nothing is a waste in our life. All kinds of preservations have

their own meaning in our life. It may not be visible at the moment

but it will certainly reveal at a later stage. A pebble, a photo, a

broken toy, an old song, an old cinema notice, an old letter, a pieceof our broken slate.everything serves a purpose. They generate a

wave of emotion deep within us and we are taken to the missing

links of our own past. Man is always in search of his missing links.

Man always tries to link his present times with his past times for

continuity of life, for an emotional satisfaction. He cannot think of

the present in isolation of the past. His roots are always calling him.

A museum, all forms of recordings (from rock carvings tomanuscripts to books to tape recorders to CD players), monuments,

statues, paintings, all kinds of fossil excavations reveal only one fact

man leaves links of the present times for future times. Man

preserves his past for the present. Through these links he keeps in

continuum with time and thus feels above isolation in the vastness of

the passage of time since the birth of the universe. These points to

another interesting aspect man cannot think of time in an abstractsense in that no activity took place at some point of time to make the

sense of time a pointless one. Time without any conceivable

threshold levels touch, sight, smell, taste and hear is beyond the

scope of human mind. Past is in a way abstract for human mind in

as far as that it is reflected through our memories and dreams only.

A level of intangibility is there, so to speak. This intangibility is

overcome by preserving the past in various modes within the

tangible scope of our senses. A direct linkage is sought after.

For example, Newton is intangible for most of us because he is no

more amongst us in his physical form. But if you see his shoes still


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preserved in Oxford University or sit under the tenth generation of

that legendry apple tree or see a piece of his nail preserved in a

museum, you get tangibly and emotionally connected to him and his

times. The eclipse of centuries is no more there at least during thesetangible moments. Man is at once with the physical dimension of his

past, standing within a level of tangibility of past. The transient

nature of time is forgotten for a moment. In other words, man

cannot conceive of time as something out of his present moment.

Time creates more of a sense of feeling than anything else. Time is

only physical with respect to our watches, with respect to our

routine, with respect to our schedules, with respect to our senses.

Otherwise, in the real footing, it is all mental, a level of feel. Who

tells a migrating bird the call of changing winds and seasons? It is a

feel, an inner call, a deep rhythm.

In the end, everything in this world serves an index of our feel, an

index of time. And man embraces his past through such indices to

feel being more youthful and vibrant. All these have only one

purpose to be one with his own past in a tangible way, physicallyto be in continuum with the stream of life; to know his position and

identity with respect to the changing phases of life. Otherwise, there

is the sense of isolation. Man cant live in isolation. He will

mentally starve to death.

He is in search of links; those missing threads.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

From My Writers diary No 114. Serial No 3169 dated 26/12/2005


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in search of missing links

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