‘Carry on Jatta!’

“Love is a Many-splendoured Thing”. So goes a popular song in the movie with the same name perhaps borrowed from Han Suyin’s bestselling novel’s title. Though I relished reading this beautiful book decades ago, but the true import and transcendent power of ‘love’, its many splendours, its mystic beauty and purifying fragrance that it bestows on us had not descended into my wayward soul in those flippant years of youth. Regrettably, the wisdom leading to my nirvana dawned a bit too late in life: my ‘wisdom tooth’ having only caused pain (and fattened the dentist’s bill) than shone any light of understanding.

Well, I am no Rumi, Bulleh Shah, Shakespeare or Keats. Neither Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, nor Kant. Nor am I Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone (much though I adore them for their trail-blazing, self-practiced ideas and ideals). No Bertrand Russell either– a towering intellectual I would love to emulate, though.  No ‘love-guru’ Osho am I too: in a sense the most unsaintly of 'saints'- who busts many myths and fake veils of present-day babas who are turning our religion from its purity and meditative bliss into a grotesque, tawdry hoax. (Which, sad to say, has become the reigning zeitgeist of our present-day India, with religion and politics conjoined in a “do-jism-magar-ek-jaan-hain-hum” kind of tight embrace.)

Therefore, suffice to say, that my weak credentials deter me from any pontification on the subject.

Coming to the point, what in fact I set out to write this rain-blessed Feb morn was about the warmth of love that has been showered on me by my dear readers whose numbers aren’t very many but each of whom I respect and value.

Soon after I had posted my last blog to say ‘Goodbye’, my cell phone went into a tizzy. Messages and calls began pouring in.

“What is this Papa? I am shocked. No, you can’t…,” my kin warned me on phone while I looked at my wife’s sullen face gone into a sulk over my ‘Bye-Bye’ post.

A WhatsApp message from a suave Punjabi writer who gave us that beautiful book ‘Muhabbatnama’, wrote: “blog se aapki alvida bahut akhregi. Aagreh hai ki aap apne nirnay par punarvichar karen.”

Another reassuring voice from someone I hold in high esteem for his righteousness, integrity, as well as his erudition, wrote: “Why would you take such a hasty decision…? Perhaps you would have a rethink…”

A dear friend-cum-classmate from university days WhatsApped: “…Why are you saying goodbye? … You write so beautifully… Please reconsider your decision. No ‘Sayonara’…”

A kind voice coming from a Palampurwalla in Hyderabad said: ‘Abhi na jao chhod kar…”

My ex-student from Jammu said: “…Bye-bye doesn’t sound good….”

A UK friend wrote: “…keep blogging… if you can… we love your posts…”; and an old, erudite professor-colleague commented, “…I do hope you’d reconsider…”

Likewise, while a kind Keralite writer-friend expressed surprise, a colleague’s son insisted “Keep writing Uncle”, and so did HP’s well-known writer-friend with more than 100 books already published.

But the knock -out, surprise punch to flatten my ‘bye-bye’ resolve came from Delhi- despite the all-pervasive chill, fog and political skullduggery wrapping the capital: a voicemail from a ‘bookbaker’-friend who ferries aspiring writers to balmy shores of success through choppy waters of publishing, saying: “There is never and there will never be a ‘bye-bye’. You are going to write many more articles and regale us with your writings … and not only writings but also your forthcoming books. So, here’s to many many more!”

Overwhelmed by these perfumed whiffs of ‘Many-splendoured Love’, I shed tears of thanks to all, and with my chin up, fist to the sky, shouted with joy: “Carry on Jatta!”

(I write, therefore I am. I ‘love’, therefore I write.)

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