(A7) Chapter 7 Philosopher
While Kuntal and Sheetal were taking lunch in Hotel Takshak, Rajesh was taking his lunch with a group of management students in Kurla and Kurla School of Business Management, popularly known as KKSBM. The previous day when two teachers of the school came to invite Kuntal to interact with the students in a workshop, he saw in it the opportunity to send Rajesh to a place where he could not know of his plans to meet Sheetal. He told the teacher he had an important engagement and suggested that they invite Rajesh for the interaction.
Rajesh was to speak on self-management and his lecture was to begin immediately after lunch. He had been a speaker on many occasions in this institute which was run by the same group that owned Kurla and Kurla Group of Industries.
While Kuntal was waxing emotional with Sheetal in the restaurant and Sheetal was lingering very close to the edge of losing control over her emotions, Rajesh was sharing with the management students the ideas about emotional control that he had learned in his father’s home-turned-school.
“Emotion is a horse,” he repeated the words he had heard his father say innumerable times, “When you ride the horse, it takes you far. When the horse begins to ride you, it is the beginning of your end.”
Students listened with rapt attention. They looked at Rajesh’s calm and composed face where no energy seemed to be dissipated by an irrelevant emotion and no muscle moved unless it had a role.
By the time Sheetal had stopped her car on the side of the road and was sobbing with her head over the steering wheel, Rajesh had built up the calm of the students to a level where they were now sitting with their eyes closed responding to his messages of tranquillity.
“Feel the relaxation in your toes. Feel the relaxation in your biceps,” he was saying in a deep voice, while the students were passing into a state of trance in which his messages seemed to work on their nerves and take away the noise in their beings.
By the time the students woke up from their trance, they were under Rajesh’s moral grip. Then there was tea followed by another session of interaction.
Rajesh was happy with his own performance. Unaware of the conflict that was shearing her wife’s mind and unaware, too, of the surge of emotions in his daughter’s mind, he lectured on:
“Clarity of mind is the most important. Most of the time, our ideas of planning are vague. The word planning brings to our mind a vague sense of things undergoing gradual improvement. It is as if some sort of internal force is automatically going to change things for the better. I’ll tell you how you must plan self-improvement.”
He took a few sips of water from a tumbler kept on the table in front of him and then continued.
“Take a piece of paper and draw up your personality profile as it exists today. Let’s say your name is John. Write down sentences like ‘John is somewhat fat. He wishes to become slimmer. He is intelligent but not very focused.’ etc. Now write another profile of John as you wish he should be at the end of your self-development effort. Again the profile should be descriptive and detailed. Once the two profiles are ready, draw the differences between the two. These differences become the goals you must achieve. For instance, you may find that today’s John is not regular in taking exercise and the ideal John never misses a workout. The change from this to that is the goal that you must achieve. You may similarly what you are today to what you wish to be in other traits too. Once you draw your personality profile of today and your personality profile of the future, you know exactly what direction you have to move in. The differences between your two profiles give you your goals. Once you have identified the goals, you can decide a reasonable time for achieving each of these goals and draw up a time schedule and a detailed action plan.”
The students listened with interest and asked questions. Rajesh answered them and discussed with them his experiences from his days of youth.
The young girl who stood up at the end to give a vote of thanks spent many words elaborating how Mr. Rajesh was an ideal to be followed. She appreciated his calm nature while many among the audience nodded in agreement. At the end of her short speech, she called him a philosopher and everyone in the audience clapped. Rajesh felt proud of what his school-teacher-father had made of him.
After his lecture in the Business School workshop, he went to the office and began working on the files that had accumulated on his table. Time ticked on. The sun went down into its westerly abode and it became dark. The roads filled up with vehicles of office-goers returning home and of housewives going to the market and returning. Then gradually, as time neared nine, the traffic on the road thinned down again. Rajesh had still two more hours’ work. He stretched himself, hummed a tune for some time and then rang up Sheetal.
“I’ll get late. You and Naavika can take your food. I may not be able to come before eleven,” he said.
Sheetal said, “Sundar Ganesh Pillai is said to be serious. They say he is put on the ventilator and may pass away any moment. I thought if you come we could go and see him.”
“Why don’t you go alone Sheetal? I don’t think I will be able to sleep tonight if I leave so many files on my table. Kuntal is also not here. They say he was unwell and left the office around twelve. His files have also come to me. You know me well. I won’t be able to rest till I finish the day’s work. You go and enquire into Sundaram Pillai’s health. I’ll go tomorrow morning,” he said.
Sheetal felt irritated and said to herself, ‘Why can’t he understand? Sundaram Pillai is our next door neighbour. The entire neighbourhood will go and see him. We’ll be the only ones left out. How can Rajesh suggest that I should go alone?’
The she said aloud, “Rajesh, your files will still be alive tomorrow morning and will wait for you on your table. Sundaram Pillai will certainly not be alive.”
Rajesh persisted in his usual calm style, “Sheetal, I told you I am having to see Kuntal’s files also. Today he left suddenly at twelve. They say he was not well. Probably he went to hospital.”
‘I know where he went,’ said Sheetal to herself and then continued, “Why don’t you let him come tomorrow morning and finish his files? Why should you do his work?”
Rajesh said, “Sheetal, please. Let me work, please. You know I should not leave without finishing the work. You know I cannot leave without finishing. I am a disciplined soldier who does not leave his post till his duty is done.”
Sheetal hung up in jitters and said to herself, ‘Here is my Mr. Disciplined Soldier doing someone else’s work who must be happily seeing the television or chatting with someone on the Internet.’
But Kuntal was not seeing the television or chatting on the Internet. After eighteen years, he had again a bottle of whisky in front of him and a cigarette in his hands. The two vices he had given up on Sheetal’s insistence eighteen years ago were back with him this moment. With the lights of his house switched off, he saw rings of smoke rise up in the dim illumination that came filtered through the thin window-curtains. The wisps of smoke joined here and there into a grayish screen on which he saw the events of his life of yesteryears enacted like a live drama.
