THE COMEDY OF DYING

The grand old man is dying. He is willing to die. He has had enough; seventy odd long years packed with weddings, funerals, births, famines, earth-quakes, wars abroad, in the family and in the country. Aren't these more than enough? He is willing, quite willing, even eager. Yes, he is dying to die. It is now some days since he has opened his eyes. He will not open them even to his wife's piteous entreaties.

His children, his grand children are by his bed-side. They have come rushing from practically the four corners of the world at the magic words, "He is sinking". They want to keep awake all night to smooth his pillow, to pour the last pious drops of Ganges water down his drying throat, to shed a tear or two at his death. Yet it seems they don't want him to die. A few more years of his precious life they plead to the powers above and below. At least one year more, they pray. They couldn't ask for a retrieve of less than a year, for then leave would be difficult and expenses impossible. Just a year more, they appeal to the God in his unhearing hearing. A bare twelve months, so that they might take him to Benaras in fulfillment of his oft-repeated and equally oft-unheeded wish. They plead the more devoutly, because they have heard the doctors say he can't live even one day.

Relatives are trickling in, to see him breathe his last! They are rather frank, they don't want the end to be delayed much longer; they cannot be expected to wait indefinitely. He must have the decency to wait till they come, and the gentlemanliness to die as soon as they have arrived. Gentlemen don't keep others waiting.

High time the old gentleman died. He knows it. He would not inconvenience anybody if he could help it. So perhaps, just to see whether everything is ready and everybody prepared, he opens his eyes. The gentlemen watchers at the bedside start, the ladies suppress their shrieks, the brahmins forgot their prayers, the oil lamp burning religiously and resignedly at his head suddenly blazes up and dies. And the dying gentleman (perfectly satisfied?) closes his eyes again.

Monstrous, unthinkable! So there is hope, which means that there is no hope of the old one saying his last, Good Night, Thank you. (Who will willingly say Good Night, the night being so dark, so lonely......?) Even the blood of his own blood and the flesh of his own flesh, who have spent sleepless days and nights by his bedside, forget their discretion for a moment and exclaim, 'How long, O Lord, how long!' All the wakeful days and nights taken to die will now be taken in the reverse process to live. Is there to be no end to their suffering? Some of his children are really angry and threaten to leave. Some others start drafting mentally, leave letters and medical certificates. His eldest boy, a sickly old man himself, adjourns to the neighbouring room to lie down for a while and rest. "Slow, very slow" he is murmuring. A nephew suddenly remembers that tea must be getting cold and, with other dry throats, moves to the dinning room. Another thinks it is time to take his bath and say his too long postponed prayers. One very loyal niece asks in all humility, asks if it is not wise to send for the doctor, now that there is a "change''. A few mere onlookers agree with gusto, inviting looks of annihilating contempt from true relatives. Still the doctor is sent for.

More and more of the near and dear ones are leaving his bedside. One or two remain only to yawn. A necessary, preliminary, surely, to going out to smoke.

The family doctor arriving finds the sick-room deserted and his patient dead.

THE BIG HUNT AND THE GREAT KILL

Mosquitoes, it is said, go to bed in the morning. I am not sure they go to bed at all. If they do, they must, in the morning; for the nights, they spend carousing on warm human blood, mine and thine. We know that they get intoxicated with it and sing and dance like mad. Insatiable, they come down again and again, for another and another pull at us, poor human bottles. Often they see our now almost desperate hands descending like lightining but then they escape as neatly as, as, as mosquitoes, of course! Still occasionally they are content like good epicureans to die drinking. And then we foolishly exult over our unmerited triumph.

That other friend of ours, the bed bug has never to go to bed at all, never having had to leave it. They don't have to hunt or fish for their food either. Their food obligingly goes to them like mothers, and lies down with them, contentedly to be sucked dry. Still we, nursing mothers, call it treachery, name them the strangest, 'cruellest' bed fellows.

Of course, we have reason to be distressed, and distraught. Our blood up we vow destruction and death for them, the first thing in the morning. Our bed-fellows hear our vows and with the wise lark, the mother of the young ones of the fable, laugh inwardly. 'When a man or a thing bleeds inwardly, it is a dangerous thing for himself or itself but when he or it laughs inwardly, it bodes no good for other people.' said Mark Twain. But nobody hears the laugh, and the rosy-fingered morn peeps in and our good bed-mates are safe. Who among us are resolute enough or vindictive enough to remember the night's resolutions or revolutions or revelations in the morning? We have not had the opportunity of sleeping over them either. With us fools, as with Macbeth, 'They should die, hereafter, tomorrow and tomorrow.' Or more philosophic than even that old murderer, we tell our-selves that when we kill bugs we are shedding our own innocent blood. We feed them and then we kill them. Why be destroyers and preservers at the same time?

But days of agony in our chairs, and nights of tossing anguish in our beds might at last make us spring out of bed shouting 'Today', woe to them indeed then!

It is a mighty chase now and a bloody hunt. Blood naturally will have blood. Boiling blood will not be content with anything less than buckets of it. The hue and cry raised, the mattress turned upside down, and the first blood drawn, it is a world war three, an allout war to the finish, even though it be a war of one against many, so many! Even in the thick of it is a hair-raising thing to see the things, the blood suckers in their thousands the Jungis Khan hordes scurrying in all directions. A single pair of hands aided by just one pair of eyes which have unfortunately only one sight between them, how can it deal with these crawling, Chinese millions, the hit and race cowards now on the run. Many escape. It is then that we find our hearts, our minds, even our bodies, on fire. There is a demon in us. The dirty scum that specialise in the stab in the back now get their due.
But even in their death they plague us. All the perfumes of Arabia cannot sweeten our little hands even if our 'crime' be only the murder of a single villainous bug. Such stench never human nostrils have breathed. Murder even of foul enemies, is murder still and will stink. The whole room, the whole world, will stink' who knows how long

No not for that long. Not even for a week perhaps The pall-bearers are arriving, I mean the ants. Can man ever take part in or ever witness such an august and solemn funeral procession as follows. At the head and then at regular intervals are the bearers, holding the venerable dead shoulder high. In between, and for a long distance behind are the mourners, silent and sad. Moving up and down on either side of the procession are the junior officer busy-bodies apparently doing a lot because they have actually to do nothing. Where is the procession heading? When is the last post to be sounded? Who cares whether they are buried in ant-bellies or worm-bellies?

It is true some of these undertakers, in their zeal, carry away to their graves bodies that are still not quite dead. Much might, much must, be excused in a clean and disciplined race which in spite of occasional excesses, is easily the most efficient of the world's sanitary staff. Haste and sincerity, let us remember, can and will never be divorced. And sincerity covers a multitude of sins.

FOUNDATION – STONES

For the last ten years, or more, I have been obliged, on my way to and from work, to pass and 're-pass' by a vast stone with inscriptions, dates, on which a magnificent Municipal Building or Town Hall was to have risen many years ago. That stone has obstinately refused to grow in spite of the affectionate attentions of boy and bird and beast. Remember it was laid by Hope. Nevertheless it remains so hopeless and helpless. How our Hopes come down in this wicked world! Yet perhaps the thing was not so useless: I have often seen an unfortunate man afflicted in the head delivering sermon after sermon from that not too elevated mount.

In another compound not so public are two or three stones in different stages of growth and still far from completion. They are going easy, having comparatively lighter burdens to bear than expected. The crows, in whose dictionary the word 'useless' finds no place, polish their beaks on them. One of these was laid by a great nationalist and another by a big white Sahib. When the Congress first came to power the nationalist stone showed some activity. But better times intervened and the other stone got its turn of luck, (Kind fate be thanked) for a short while. But now, with independence and a feeling of having arrived, both have ceased to trouble about growth and are now content to dream of 'what might have been.'

One foundation-stone in a remote village, meant to develop into a wonderful sanatorium, is now a gaily or-namented, vermilion-painted, bright and beaming, wonder-working idol. It cures more people than the hospital would have. And very cheap too, one cocoanut per cure on its lusty head. Buildings have come up around it, raised by the hand of piety and the greed of trade. Foundation-stone "well and truly laid", I say.

A friend, who I find some difficulty in disbelieving, tells me that a stone in his village, long deserted, has become so venerable with its mossy head and fading inscriptions that historians are being attracted by it. No wonder! Let no wise Pickwicks smile. Stones, especially heavy stones must attract, otherwise what will happen to Newton's law of gravity! My hope is that the Archaeological Department at least, being heavier, will be saved.

All this is nobody's fault. It is this new democracy, this independence that many have fought for and died for, some like myself have merely lived for, that has accelerated so phenomenally this stonelaying (or brick-laying?) activity. No minister is allowed to leave home or office without laying a stone on the way. But no strutting cock or humble hen ever comes out of these stones. Our friends who are organizing these foundation laying ceremonies seem to labour under the impression that the fathers of these stones could be expected to be not entirely indifferent to the fortunes of the young ones they have laid; that a stone laid by an education minister immediately becomes the favourite of the education department and cannot but be 'granted' all prayers. But they must remember that love of children is not in direct but in inverse proportion to the number of them one is encumbered with. Let them re-read the chapters on the laws of diminishing love. Let them not complain that they asked for a school and got a stone, or that they begged on bended knees or a hospital and got a 'concrete' block!

If only our great men knew the ancient history of foundation-stone-laying they would have thought twice, and shuddered thrice, before approaching a stone. Our savage forefathers thought that no town, no bridge, in short, nothing that was meant to endure, could so endure unless a human being was sacrificed under it. Or to convert it into philosophical jargon, that nothing could endure that was not built on blood, on sacrifice, on sweat, on tears... The idea probably was that the person so sacrificed became a protecting spirit, the only true foundation for anything great. In those days people were not unwilling to die for their town, bridge, etc especially as they lived for ever after as Gods. When willing victims became scarce first strangers and then the mere shadows of people were substituted; the owners of the shadows died soon after. In some places even the measurement of the shadow of the person put under the stone was sufficient to fix the thing and secure his ghost for it. This murderous bloodstained business is what has developed into the innocent festivity of foundation-stone laying, with no harm to layer, to the 'layee' or the flock looking on in enthusiastic admiration and hope.

One thing remarkable about these foundation-stones is passing unnoticed, that they are no longer foundation stones. They are not content to do their selfless work under the ground unseen unhonoured. By the way, who is? I have seen foundation stones five, ten, even twenty feet above ground. I hope to see them well above the first floor shortly. An understandable principle this, that foundation stones are not to support but to be supported, nay, held aloft. Do you think, in these days of world wide publicity for everything, that a great stone laid by a great man would willingly bury itself under the earth, supporting huge edifices? (The foundation stones of our homes, our solid women, even they are not so content to remain). I won't start objecting till after these have become coping-stones or weather-cocks or revolving lights on roof-tops beckoning ships to 1 heir doom.

Occasionally a foundation-stone has the good fortune, in its own life-time, to see the building complete itself. Verify, very verily, does its heart rejoice then. It sees the well-dressed crowds gather again to witness another ceremony, the grand Opening ceremony. But often the opening is long before the structure is complete, before it has any doors or windows, except the one hastily provided for the occasion, to open. More often the opening is too long delayed, classes have been in full swing, the doors and windows have been opened and closed a thousand times by active little urchins, the building itself is being subjected to analysis and parsing, when the august personage arrives. Doors are closed again to be really opened with acclamations and heaven-shaking music.

This is of course inevitable and ought not to be too much lamented. Buildings must wait, like maids, though decaying, till the great man arrives. How else we are to honour, and be honoured by our great man? Institutions can be opened but once, and except in schools there is no 'reopening'. Within my knowledge, (I seem to know a little too much, don't I?) a few (very few, thank God) institutions have been opened more than once, first by a local grandee, and then suddenly an all-province figure swimming into view, by this new figure. Neither the local population, nor the proud edifice is known to have protested even slightly. Prize distributions in schools too are sometimes conducted twice in similar inevitable circumstances but without additional expense.

I understand the opening of buildings. But when they talk of opening bridges, I am horrified. Bridges built at enormous cost to cover up dangerous streams being 'opened again'! and men, women to drop down to take holy dips, their last! Do they sometimes ask people to open innocent little children's stomachs?

ARISTOCRATS

Can aristocracy be wiped out? There are many enthusiastic people who think so. They have, of course, their very good reasons. With taxes beginning with birth and extending far beyond death and comprehending unselfishly buying, selling, and gifts, profession, income and expenditure, water, light, house, education, pilgrimage and what not, how and where could aristocracy live, much less survive? Yet it lives. And it might live for ever.

I first realised this awkward truth in a moderate sized T. B. Hospital. I had accompanied a friend who wanted to be X-rayed. We had to wait. It was a long and tiresome waiting. The patients were only slowly gathering near the X-ray rooms, from the wards, from outside. There was certainly equality there, they were all suffering from the same disease. Yet what variety in their entrances! Some came walking briskly in, rosy cheeked, plump. Many were weak and thin and pale. A few came in with difficulty and had to lie flat on their backs and pant with closed eyes. One or two came in wheeled chairs. There was neither doctor nor nurse as yet; and there was talking, some laughing, even good jokes from the apparently depressed. Then a stretcher arrived. The gathering was suddenly struck dumb. All those who could, stood up; those who could not, turned their heads or eyes most respectfully. A fair smiling nurse suddenly appeared from nowhere, went grave and helped to lower the stretcher. The doctor too walked in, respectful, almost obedient. Other doctors, nurses, were soon racing from other wards leaving even rich patients attended only by their illness. No king, arriving to visit a moffusil hospital was ever received with so much real respect. A stretcher is a throne, a more comfortable one, for there one could fully stretch one-self. Surrounding it is no mock courtesy, no reluctant bending of knees or necks. Perhaps, there is some flattery, trying to make the patient believe that his condition is not so bad as he feels it to be or it really is. Some hypocritical cheerfulness too might be there, put on to conceal and dispel the misery within doctor and patient. If at any time one has the misfortune to enter a hospital, one must enter it on a stretcher. Better to be adored by the world for a few minutes and die, than be contemptuously dismissed with a scrap of paper before one has so much as opened one's mouth about one's complaint. That, at least, is the out patient's mind. The inpatient is luckier. He can be occasionally impatient. The 'innermost-patient', he who has been to the operation theatre, the sanctum sanctorum of the hospital, can even dictate a little if he has the energy. Even where illness levels all, what orders, privileges, classes, gradations! Consider also, with what contempt even lords of illness can and do treat those who escape with a weak's confinement.

That reminds one that one has the same feelings when one visits a jail. With what feelings of awe the visitor approaches the cells in which the condemned are lodged! Even the most virtuous, the most self-righteous of men would bow their heads (and hearts) before these offerings to the stern deity of The Law. The Jailors, the warders, the (other) criminals are no exception to this. The condemned are verily the kings of the jail. The solitaries, the lifers, are the lords. How they sneer and scoff at the riff-raff, the birds of passage, the ones who are making a grand jail a mere lock-up. There is and can be no mixing between these classes. Even in a jail-riot these distinctions will, doubtless, be kept up. There are, perhaps, as many class distinctions in a jail as there are sections and sub-sections in the penal code.

Coming back from the hospital with my friend, by train, I was struck by the same distinctions. (I am talking of those who travel third. I have no complaint against the other class system, because that is going if not gone) The best places, and more are occupied by the long-distance passengers the ones to Delhi for instance. They sleep out-stretched in the seats and berths, while most of us do not have even standing space, The ticket examiner, who is commanding and gruff to us, dare not disturb the snoring lord. He would, rather, soothe his pillow. Even we, the suffering short-distance passengers, if we are well-bred, are respectful. There are, ofcourse, the ill-bred, the savages of travel, who respect none. They would sit, as if by accident, on a long - distance man's sleeping head. But these are treated like the animals they are, by every one in the compartment. Every one, it seems, is for these distinctions. May be, they are right. At least I thought so, that day.

SNUFF AGAINST SMOKE

How fashions change! I mean, not how quickly, but how unreasonably. We were all snuff-takers once. Where are the world's snuff-takers now! Literally smoked out of existence, in spite of their valiant efforts to snuff out flame and smoke all at once. Sulking in the country where it is not without friends snuff has been threatening to stage a come-back; but it hasn't. In this madly galloping world of ours there are no come-backs, there can't be, and snuff knows it. But snuff has things to say against its triumphant detractors and must say it.

They say snuffing is dirty. Every snuffer, it is alleged, carries about him evidence compelling condemnation of the habit. His hand-kerchief, his shirt-front, his nose-front, the palm of his left hand and the fingers of his right, and (going nearer home) his bath towel, all prove the charge......but if only one is prepared to concede that snuff is dirt. It unfortunately isn't, atleast not more than smoke. What is smoke, my dear enemy? Ask any scientist if you don't happen to know. He will tell you that it is just finer particles of dirt, of the same dirt, dirt of dirty tobacco. And can you deny, you smoker, that you too carry about you evidence, inescapable evidence, of your being the devotee of dirt? Examine your once fair fingers, especially the ones that have been hugging cigarettes too much: study your lips, as you study your friends, and see how dark and dry they are, lips which were once so invitingly rosy and moist, lips that you ought to keep as a sacred trust for your partner, be or to be; inspect your clothes and observe in how many places they have smoked in imitation of your admirable self, leaving dark dirty holes behind; and then remember that all the harm you have done yourself is permanent, while a little water and soap can and do make us and ours as clean and fresh as ever.

We make ourselves, our clothes, our furniture, our rooms, dirty, we admit it for arguments sake; but you, you incurable smokers, contaminate the whole atmosphere. We don't send our snuff up other people's noses; you do, unconsciously, often consciously and mischievously sometimes. Have you ever practised toleration, a little consideration for the feelings, the noses, and the delicate lungs of your neighbours? You are lords, such sweet-smelling lords that the innocent, unsophisticated ones in our country hold their noses in your presence. And yet you don't learn. You won't learn. What is the result? Our Governments are stepping in. You can't now smoke in cinema houses; you have to ask your fellow-travellers' permission before you smoke in trains; you shall not smoke in buses; you dare not smoke near petrol-bunks; in short you cannot smoke wherever you badly want to. And you deserve it. For yours has been a policy of aggression, naked aggression against the peace-loving noses of the world. We would have taken your case to the Disunited Nations but we remember Kashmir and refrain. We don't want to remember Algeria because she is smoking all over...... Apart from us your enemies, what are your friends the Doctors telling you? A weak heart, don't smoke; a sluggish liver, don't smoke. An ulcer in the intestine, don't smoke; a touch of bronchitis, don't smoke; frequent colds, don't smoke. No snuff-taker has ever been so pestered by the people, Governments or doctors. Change, change quickly, friends, come back to us, the fatted calves are ready, we will stuff your nose with snuff.

If you are still hesitating we invite you to compare the effects. You fumigate (or incense?) the Gods within and, they and you become stupid and lethargic and go to sleep; you might call it a divine peace. You might even claim that smoking clears the mind. But we know that smoke can only cloud and darken; what you call peace, clarity, is only a settling of the soot...... And pray tell us, how can smoke ever illuminate except by ceasing to be itself? Now, see how snuff works. We put a little of our innocent looking explosive into our nostrils and just wait But what tense waiting (We don't have to ignite our stuff as you have to. See what a lot we save on matches alone. We would not have known what to do with all our money but for income-tax) We feel the quick fire running up our eyes fill, our whole being is supercharged, and then after a tremendous moment, with our whole body we burst. And the peace that follows is not of darkness and torpor but of purgation; our eyes are bright, our noses are clear, our lungs are clean, our minds are free, we see into the life of things. Only our hand-kerchiefs are dirty, but we have plenty of them to spare. But who has lungs or lung-space to spare! Come back to our fold, friends, we will help sweep your lung clean, with a simple pinch snuff.

Smoking, they say, promotes friendship. Borrow a cigarette and see. Cigars and cigarettes are so costly these days that they bolt rather than open hearts. But, even now, with snuff a mere anna (penny) will buy, one can enlist armies of friends and collect tons of love. At the preliminary raps on the snuff-box the eyes of the company open, nostrils enlarge. When the box is gently opened all Arabia breathes from it; the charmed friends begin to sniff like horses. As the box at last passes round and the fine powder ascends every eye is full of tears of joy and grateful love.

The first smoker was the first to be ducked; and he deserved to be. I am referring as you will have seen to Sir Walter Raleigh and his faithful servant. But that pail of water did not mend him. His expedition in search of gold on the success of which, you know, depended his life, ended in smoke. Which smoker would go digging when he could lounge fuming. But King James was no smoker, and sent Raleigh promptly to the gallows. Of course he was allowed to befog his poor head with smoke before he went to his dance at the end of the rope.

But ducking is the least of their contributions to the world's woes. They are the world's worst incendiaries. Cigarette-ends thrown carelessly (or deliberately) away are every year causing goods and buildings worth crores and crores of rupees to go up in smoke, no doubt enjoyable to them. More is destroyed by them in any century than by all the war-mongers of the period. Yet these, though guilty of arson think themselves the true gentlemen, and despise the poor snuffers who never did anybody any harm. Newman's definition was never true; more harm the better gentleman. But let me not be unjust to these smokers. They are good, but for them there would have been no Fire Insurance Companies. No smoke, no fire.

What in these civilized days is the human nose for? To snore, say some; to provide a safety-valve for the smoker who might otherwise burst, say others; to be the first to smell the atmosphere of one's own mouth, says a cynic; to act as a buffer for the face, says a friend with a prominent nose; to wear nose-rings says an ancient beauty, to give the face a right and a left side in the interests of symmetry, says an artist; to lead men and women by the nose, says demagogue, to poke one's nose in other peoples affairs, says isolationist. I prefer Coleridge's answer to the smoker, "you abuse snuff, perhaps it is the final cause of human nose." I have, however to protest against that word 'perhaps', though it denotes the caution, the tolerance, the humility, the philosophy, so characteristic of the true snuffer and so notoriously absent in the typical smoker.

ON THE ART OF RECOGNITION

In older days when people lived in tribes, every one was related to every one else. One approached strangers only to kill them or to carry them off as slaves or wives. Later, village life developed and still everyone knew everyone else. At both stages there was no question of not recognising people.

But now we are civilized and know practically nobody in the City in which we live. And we are not expected to know either. One should not know one's neighbour, nor try to know. That will be prying curiosity and worse than reprehensible.

If a stranger were to enter a village he would immediately face a barrage of questions, rather a series of barrages at] every step and from every one. He would have to answer all the questions found in application forms, full name (pet name also), father's name, place of birth, caste, present pay, etc. He would have to give in addition, the latest entries from the birth, death and marriage register of his family and place, submit a meteorological report for purposes of comparison, be prepared and eager to discuss details of the cost of living index, willing to open, though rather cautiously, a school for scandal, (colleges thereafter), and all the rest of it that would eventually secure him not only admission to the village, but invitations to every home and to every feast. But if a man were to meet another man in town, both develop suddenly and against all pathology, stiff necks, day and night blindnesses, physical and mental deafnesses, and repel each other with all the force of personal magnetism and electricity. That is civilisation.

These 'citizens', they see so many that they see none, they hear so much that they hear nothing. But they can and do see and recognize when they want. They know only too well that a man's success depends upon a mastery of the difficult art of recognition.

A nod for a stranger who seems to, or seems to want to recognise you; a look of sympathy for the familiar beggar by the roadside which saves you pies without making him lose his hopes of, and prayers for you; a twinkle in your eye for the girl whom you often see, just enough to keep her too in hopeless hope; a slight twitching of your lips in contempt or recognition of the notorious bore; a broad grin and a sweet showing of teeth to your enemy whom civilisation teaches you to treat as friend; more mere nods for your inferiors or for those who are not presently useful but might be; a refusal to see the ever so many who want to receive not give; a sudden seeing of the formerly unseen because you have suddenly remembered something you can receive from him without giving; a rushing onward to, a warm shaking of hands and bodies and pot-bellies, the face meanwhile contorted and twisted with beams upon beams of smiles, especially if you are expecting something from him; thus do you, you favourite of fortune, you bloated embodiment of the pure spirit of success, progress along the highroads of life. See on the other hand what happens to the man who is unable or unwilling to learn this art. He finds himself shaking hands with the bore who would not leave him for love or for money. He frowns at his enemy and buys more undying hatred. He throws a coin at a beggar as if he were a dog and wins his ill-will and loses his money. He embarasses his girl by recognising her too much in the company of her not too friendly friends or even sisters. He stares his inferiors, who are trying elaborately to win his smile out of countenance. He sees all those whom he should not see and has no time for his real friends. Thus blundering at every step he finds all the roads of life leading inevitably through wildernesses and precipices to the depths of social hell.

How do we win friends? By recognizing people. How do we loose them ? By not recognizing them, of course. We meet somebody in the train, in the race-course, in the theatre, in the blackmarket. If we choose to recognize him when we meet again friendship is born. The more often he is recognized the more intimate the friendship becomes. But if we pass by, from motives gentlemanly or otherwise, we have lost a friend and perhaps for ever. This is true of friendships made under even more auspicious circumstances. Even the best friendship cannot stand half a dozen non-recognitions. It might be that our friend is shortsighted (physically, I mean) or has many worries or is notoriously absent-minded, that wouldn't save him. (In fact no single physical defect is so ruinous to friendship as eyes placed in thick lens cases). More divorces result from defective recognition than from drunkenness, habitual cruelty or brutality or even denial of conjugal rights. Recognize a woman, her presence, her absence, her qualities, her demands on you, everything but her imperfections (beware of recognizing them too often, except as perfections) and even the worse marriage becomes a tremendous success.

Recognition is a weapon which judiciously used can gain one the friendship of perfect strangers. I know one who is a past-master of this art of science. He just pretends that he recognizes in the person before him (an utter stranger, of course) an intimate pal, goes to him with out stretched hands, wide open mouth, floodlighting eyes, unmindful of the other chap's astonished stare. When sufficiently near he stops suddenly, starts, expressess his surprise, tells him he is sorry, tells him how strikingly like some Pythias of his own he is, and then proceeds legitimately to ask him his name, his address and what not. He has won a new friend. This works most admirably, he has assured me, with men newly come to town. Thereafter it is a matter of recognizing him often enough, and he is bound with hoops of steel. True, this method does not work with some of the veterans of the city. For instance, one hungry morning recently he happened to accost a middle-aged gentleman. He began in Tamil, realising his mistake changed suddenely into Telugu, and then more astonished still into broken Malayalam, but his friend would recognise nothing but Luck-now Urdu and that was beyond his depths. His good friend brushed him away like an unwelcome buror cur and turned to enter the gates of Hotel C.

But these failures are few and far between in my friends disinterested campaign for friendship and more friendship. He has a slower but surer process, for the more intractable type, if only he could know them at sight. And he generally does know them. Every time he meets one of such type, by design or accident, he puts on a longing lingering and at the same time a little puzzled look, as if he recognises in him somebody whose name he just cannot remember, someone whom he certainly knows but cannot say where they met, some one whose soul atleast he has met in some previous birth, or antenatal existance. Even a man of stone does not fail to have his interest reciprocally roused after a few weeks of this subtle process, especially in view of the fact that man is not a soulless animal. The man of stone slowly brings himself to studying this strange staring creature and might so far forget his property as to make enquiries about it without ofcourse its knowledge. And then comes the next step. An attempt at a smile, an unconscious lifting of the hand in salutation, he might suddenly change, become more stony and stare, or the face might soften and develop cracks and smile. Even if he only stares to-day my friend knows that he cannot but smile to-morrow. And then, the rock is cracked, the ice is broken and the highroads are open to lasting intimacy.

Recognition is double-edged. It can destroy as well create. Very often the most ardent friendships are destroyed by an injudiciously employed smile of recognition. Your superior officer is engaged in conversations that are to lead to unearned income, if you but in and nod your recognition you will certainly get the sack and even the rope to tie it up securely. A friend's ladylove is flirting with arrival and accidental recognition of this will very probably transform the girl into a hissing serpent satisfied with nothing less than your blood. A friend is leaving a house trying under the 'benefit of the doubt' clause of our merciful laws. If you recognise him then you have lost him for ever. So, you see, as in the exercise of every other art, there is a time to do and a time to refrain from doing.

There are less desperate cases of this sort. Go to a General Hospital. Recognize one doctor and smile, you have immediately lost the services of all the other doctors. They scatter and avoid you like the plague, though you might only be a harmless cold. Speak a kind word even to the most homely nurse of the institution, all the other nurses are your enemies. Go to a Government Office and recognize some clerk, all the other clerks grumble and become, in their distress, more intimate with their files. Re-visit your old college and recognize one out of a bevy of old lecturers moving to the canteen, all the other lecturers will nurse a secret grievance against you. In all such cases it is not safe to recognize one individual; you have to recognize the lot, though it might mean in effect recognizing none. Let your smile embrace all, let your eyes flit with the precision of a stop-watch secondhand from face to face from bald head to bald head. Then, if you want anything, make sure of the man you want before descending from the general to the particular.

All success depends upon this power of recognition. The inscrutable criminal lawyer emerges out of his den, stares vaguely and cruelly at all the supplicating repentant sinners, cannot recognise any, and then suddenly lights with a smile on the man whom his purse and he instinctively recognize. That means success and eventual elevation to the Bench, where he need see none, not even justice. Let him but once identify the wrong criminal, there is an end of his career. Those who can pay, desert him; those who cannot, flock to him; for they recognize him all right. So with doctors, officers, merchants. So even with States. The U. S. A. recognized Israel, of course, because Israel could pay, and Israel has won.

All knowledge is but recognition, said Plato; all wisdom all success too, says I.

LANGUAGE INTO LITERATURE

That gasping cry! What relief to the waiting! The baby is born, and it lives!

That cry betokens the birth of language too. If crying is not language, it is at least its raw material. The baby cries not with its vocal organs only, but with its whole body. Its body jerks, twists and bends, its legs and arms kick and slash, in crying. Here is the first expression of feeling, of pain or joy, who knows! It soon becomes, to be sure, an expression of desire, for food or for ease from pain.

In a few days new sounds are heard from the baby. These are apparently grunts of satisfaction, as they are usually heard after feeding or a warm bath.

The baby is now master of three kinds of sound patterns, the cry of hunger, the cry of pain and the gurgle of contentment.

The next stage is when it begins to 'reply' to the talk of father or mother. This reply is a kind of cooing or crooning. The baby is now become a sort of social being.

How delighted the mother is when she hears her young one make a sound like 'ma aa'. She is sure that the child has learnt to call her 'Mummy' or 'Amma' or 'Ma'. How lucky it is that in almost all languages the word for mother has this 'ma' sound as a basic element! When the 'b' 'k' 'I' sounds appear mothers can take them for 'cow', 'crow', 'milk.'

Within the first year the child produces practically all the sounds in all the languages of the world. It can, if required, now become Chinese or Peruvian or Congolese, in addition to being Dravidian or Aryan. Every baby is born a citizen of the world, whatever it might grow into.

The baby is born an assiduous student too. Each new sound that it learns of itself to make, it practises. This practising, by repetition, is most noticed after food. Not rest after food, but work, seems to be its motto. And it enjoys its work too. Happiness is as intimately connected with the activity of the vocal cords as un-happiness. With the baby the making of sounds is also a kind of play, a play it can play alone.

This play, this talking to oneself in delight, continues till it is about a year old. By then it has begun imitating words that it hears from elders.

Mother has been teaching baby to pronounce 'papa. About the eighth month it succeeds in imitating the sound but without knowing its meaning. Not much later, however, it starts pronouncing the word when it sees father. Meaningfully calling mother 'mammamma' follows. Curiously enough this is sometimes followed by calling both father and mother 'mamma.' Occasionally a new coinage 'mammappa' also is heard. Why separate or distinguish or discriminate where there is no difference in love!

Imitation of sounds heard, now extends to the sounds of cats, dogs, calves. This is about thirteen months after birth. One or two months later begins pointing at things as well as imitating sounds. Gesture language is gaining in importance. Internationalism again?

Even after twenty-four months the imitation and practising of new sounds continues. The repetition of new words delights it and makes it laugh. The little one names something and laughs as if it were a big joke. But alongwith this is invented a new joke, making meaningless sounds that look like words and then laughing. The child is the original inventor of nonsense literature. Lears and Carolls were only imitating them when they thought they were being pioneers.

Understanding one word leads to understanding two words and the consequent using of two words, two-word sentences. A sentence like 'papa go' (papa gone) is heard two or three months before the second birthday.

The little child, one finds, is afraid of using the word 'my'- It fears that if it calls its shirt my shirt it would become everybody's shirt. The safe thing to use is baby's shirt or later Nalin's (its name) shirt. And it plays for safety. The sense of property is strengthening. 'I' and 'mine' are everybody's and only 'baby's' 'Nalin's' is its. 'Mamma', 'papa' also become unsatisfactory. Nothing less than 'Nalin's papa' will do.

From this is seen following a curious development. Everything must be somebody's. So 'brother's rain', 'father's moon' follow. But whose baby, father's or mother's? This presents a real difficulty. Some children are very clever, cleverer than diplomats. They claim they are 'Pama's'!

Adjectives, adverbs, question forms, more verb forms are increasingly used with the passing of months.

And then suddenly child bursts into literature. About the age three and a half when shown the bee winging from flower to flower Nalin coolly remarks, 'see it flies holding an umbrella'. This little poet reports seeing a piggie to father: pig come showing buttocks, there is a tail tied up there (like that on mother's head eh!). Looking up at the sky to see echo balloon he sees stars, and remarks, 'These stars, after a bath, and putting on fresh clothes, they are waiting to see the rocket!'

Developing fast, sure, into an Alexander Pope or a Collay Gibber!