The Agony and the Ecstasy

I was never blessed with an elephant's memory.... but my father was.... It always made me look stupid in front of him...

So, at an early age I decided enough was enough! There were books piled in every shelf of our house.. (if riches were to be measured in books .. we would be millionaires ). I took one that befitted my age and pored over it till it was over .. Now, with the story fresh in mind i went to him with my bloated ego....

The Agony and the Ecstasy.. Yes, there I was, Michelangelo, onwards to carve a David out of Carrara marble.

Papa's query: 'Do you remember Michelangelo's granma's name ?'.......... What ??!!

I just read 400 pages about the greatest sculptor in human history and the first thing dad asks me is this seemingly insignificant question.

Now, Ma always kept saying 'He's insane' .... this was one time i agreed with her.

But thats my father. Each time I have finished a book and gone to him.. I have been bamboozled by something he would say (That 'something' which he had read 30 years back) about the same book which I did not remember coming across. I kept having these utterly humiliating, and absolutely demoralizing conversations with dad, chronically, till I accepted them as part of my ill-fated life.

My bloated ego was now doing a google search on 'Michelangelo's grandmother' and trying to commit her name to memory to escape future humiliation. Only later did i realise how important a role she played in the life of Michelangelo.


Well, what we remember is what we want to remember in our subconscious..... Not what we are made to remember.


I remember feigning stomach aches to escape Tuesday's bengali class at Don Bosco (where you got a knock in the head and a remark in the diary for not being able to recite 10 lines of bengali poetry). I dont remember a single line of those poems which i so painfully memorized. I also remember having to take a barium test because the doctor (and my dad) thought i was suffering from appendicitis (or may be a stone in my gall bladder), ... ignoring the fact that this 'appendicitis' kept popping up every Tuesday morning !

It was a heavy price i paid to keep my diary clean and my cranial bone unscathed. One huge glass of white chalk paste(barium) poured down my throat. It took two days to come out. Talk about the agony and the ecstasy !

I remember....

I remember the first time I left home.. I was 19 .. I remember the first time I had curd rice, thinking it was 'paesh' .. I remember my first trip to Shimoga, all the while thinking this must be the train to Auschwitz.. I remember never getting a prize for 6 years of recitation in Modern School.. I remember cracking my head.... breaking my left arm.... fracturing my leg.. travelling 'general' for 2 days to attend Thamma's funeral....... I remember...... Yes, I remember, a lot of things that may have been agonizing .. but has always stayed close to my heart.. and therein lies the ecstasy.

How many times have we seen 'Dont worry be happy' clumsily written on a heavy vehicle's differential and ignored it as the ignorance of the illiterate?

The ecstasy is not a psychedelic drug (as many would have you believe).. it is just a state of mind. What is agony today might be ecstasy in hindsight.

There are two kinds of people who have reached this far in my article.. to the ones in agony, the key word is 'remember' ... to the ones in ecstasy.. thank you for reading something that doesnt make much sense to you in your present state of mind.. but will, when life shows you the other side... so the key word again is 'remember' .

To the rest who are hanging in limbo .. logoff .. you can come back later when you have fallen off the tight rope. Michelangelo's perennial agony may have very well been instrumental in giving the world David. Therein lies the dichotomy of the agony and the ecstasy.

Time to be Ecstatic !!!! Cheers !