Rajendran was very much drenched. It had been raining heavily. He came in an auto rickshaw. He couldn’t see much of the fabulous scenery as the auto traversed the ups and downs of the two kilometers of the Kerala road and made its final thrust up the wooded hillock.
The auto stopped near a wide flight of rocky steps leading to a grand stone hall nearby.
At the head of the steps he found the monk he had come to visit.
The monk was standing, clad in a vest and a dhoti, looking much simpler and a bit less stout than he had looked when Rajendran had worked with him before.
He smiled and asked, ‘Rajendra, how do you find Kerala and its rains ?’
Rajendran sighed and said, ‘If only some of this rain would come to Coimbatore !’
He entered the fine single-stone pillared hall and looked around in wonder.
After he was dry, the monk showed him around and then they sat down to talk. He had already told the other monks about Rajendran.
Obedience. Loyalty. Tact. Perfection in what ever he is doing. Quiet acceptance of instructions or orders. Confidently leading the younger people who were junior to him. Keeping his reserve almost always and letting it go partially when he knew it to be safe to do so. A little sensitive. Normally nobody would say a harsh word to him. He was like that. But he had come across chronic or periodic roughnesses. He did not talk back at those. He could not. He was not made that way. But he had thought of running away. That was when he was younger. But those chronic or periodic roughnesses had hearts of gold or tongues of sugar and knew his value. And so he stayed.
Can one predict his future ? Will he remain as humble, deferential to all monks and other dignitaries, and quietly and contently go about his business all through his life at the same place for the next thirty years or so? It seems he will.
He is already something of a landmark and may grow to be a steady, fixed, landmark where he works. He has much in common with Palanisamy, who is very much his senior but in another field.
A human needs security. He or she also needs to enjoy variety.
Security sometime leads to fixedness and that to staleness and decay from within.
Variety is joy in experimentation and search and that may lead to frittering away of energies and consequent exhaustion.
Security is a secure, still, Santa Bhava.
Variety is all bhavas, Madhura, Vatsalya, all.
Better they are married in a person. That will be for his or her good.
Rajendra has been provoked by this monk to think a bit about other things than the regular routine. That has irritated him sometimes, but has also intrigued him at times.
Now he sat down at the conversation table looking across to the monk with a bit of apprehension and also a lot of eagerness.
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