In the light,Me and my Nilavu

The name Simon Britto Rodrigues is the one which stands fervidly engraved in the Kerala psyche, heart and soul. His storybook-life is on the dissection table of the medical students. He is referred to as the man who loved life to a great degree. His soul mate Seena metaphrases his life to the ‘one who loved life with unquenched fervour and passion’. Seena Bhaskar, his dear comrade in life is ferrying down the straits of memory, sitting in her house  ‘Kayam’ which in literal sense approximates to the ‘depth’ at Vaduthala in Cochin,  close to three weeks since her husband breathed last.

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This is a story told by Seena Bhasker, Britto ’s wife to Vinod Payam appeared in Deshabhimani dated Jan 20, Sunday 2019.

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The graceful automated wheel-chair looked askance at me as a forlorn figure, pleading; ’why I am being left alone. Britto wouldn’t leave me with such ease like changing apparel”. I caressed its arm with a white kerchief. The waft of the tender dust swept into my nose. It is three weeks, the passenger disembarked. When back as usual after switch-on, the mechanised chair accosted me as Britto does; “Seena, everything ready, No?’

Britto! Biji Hilal, our friend dropped in yesterday. She came weeping, pale as paper with a tender coconut in one hand. She said you had been vivid in her dream!! The girl, who wouldn’t even see her mother in her dreams, was weary and devastated, talking with you in the witching hours. Britto chided her in the dream; “Nilavu craves for the tender coconut. Why don’t you take it for her?” I laughed at the fallacy wondering as to how on earth, could a fervent materialist like him, could show up in her dream!  

Britto! You don’t forget to care Nilavu’. Do you? Didn’t you ditch the darned thrift on me when Nilavu came amongst us?  Do you recollect; when we started life I asked for 5 rupees to buy a rose stem, you mercilessly cared no two hoots making me cry out like bamboos creak. Certainly, I do!!  The last 20 days, Nilavu and I are shrouded fathoms deep in your memory. She would ask for the Abba. The nervous queries of the girl in the Vth class drown me in the dire straits of grief. She, knee-high to a grasshopper, would wipe my eyes in a way as if come of age, console me: “Amma, Abba is with us here.”

Britto ‘walked back to life from certain death’ sharp 35 years ago on Oct 14^th when he clenched back his life from them. After 10 years and a day, we were married, till then we were friends. Our relation blossomed not with intent to become partners in life. It so happened. The friendship led to the nuptials on the culmination of my desire to remain his friend forever. Those days I remember him asking me “Seena, Do you vouch that our friendship would endure if you were married to another man? “ It was because I was serious-minded to remain in the shade of his life that I pulled out of the campus and my relatives to enjoy the half slice of his distressed life.

Now in this huge vacuum, how gracious were our journey and our days that spun with love for life. I had never seen a man with such tenacity to stick on to one’s life. The happiness you enjoy,  given one moment more- vanished like a line drawn by a chock, so suddenly and mercilessly. When I was away on an errant at Patna, Nalanda university, you were on an eternal journey from Thrissur. Why was it? I was at Nalanda to bring Arjun Das to Kerala. Didn’t you tell us to rummage the library to find the travel accounts in India of Xuanzang, the scholar and traveller?  Didn’t you wish to make such journeys as early as 2012? How will we go now? Who would write a book on the experience of such a tour? How I could read that book, enthralled, flummoxed and speechless? With whom Nilavu would quench her curiosities?

When the sourness grew in our private lives, we have shifted to a newly built house at Vaduthala. To reflect the profundity of his thought, he christened it “Kayam”.When the baby came there, she became our “Nilavu” (literal sense ‘the soft, silvery moonbeam’)  Nilavu, our little daughter did not make a fuss, never imposed herself and was discreet enough to know that our life was the incessant journey of troubles and turbulence. As early in her sixth month, she would be on all fours and help him when the book slipped or when his plates fell.  Even as a toddler, she didn’t give a whimper to make sure not to trouble us. Only now after being grown up like her sober father, she has turned to whine, grizzle or groan.

Britto was worried as Malayalam is not taught as a subject in central school curricula. He taught her the language by purchasing the Soviet children books. Britto taught his Dukka-as she calls her- the candy-like Malayalam laying her on the chest. Both were crazy about football. It was sitting on the wheel-chair that Britto dreamt of the vast play areas of life. Britto was a fan of Portugal while Nilavu was fanatic about Brazil. I stood in between their long arguments as a crappy referee, tired and taunted, who knew no ground rules.

Nilavu loved to travel with us. Britto often wondered that not many children at this age would have partaken in such arduous journey to Himalaya.  Britto had always wished to travel unplanned and hassle free. His final exit was unprepared and undecorated leaving no cue. He believed that the travels should not be aimless. It should be like an uncomfortable journey in a general compartment. Reaching out for the references of the places he visited he would say; “Learn about the places where you go, if necessary write on it”

 ‘Britto’s wife’ is not an appellation or an epithet that we both liked. We were friends and comrades. Whenever his masculine supremacy lay bare, I would remind him; ” Britto ! No.” The response would be an amorous and disarming smile. He was a good listener- which I felt was his great plus. He would talk hours together with the fisher-women. He would listen attentively to their miseries, keep an umbrella over their miseries and find solutions. I would swipe at him; ”Who that Britto !! Was she your old fancier? The quick rejoinder is shot back; “Not that Seena. It is great to feel their pleasure when they find someone to listen-somebody who cares them. I have watched that trait in him while he was an MLA. Britto’s intervention had paved the way for the increased attention of Kerala to the problems of specially-abled people. The ramp constructed in the Kerala assembly was after his mediation. Britto moved a bill in the assembly for constructing a graveyard for the castles and religion less who die sans the funeral ceremonies. It was rejected. He was also concerned with what will happen to him after death. After Abhimanue’s murder, the concern had scaled up. He entrusted me to provide his body for the medical college and avoid the wreathe and such other post-death rituals. The only thing he desired was a party flag on his body, which I passed off as black humour, to happen after a long passage of time.

  Britto had planted a passion fruit in the front yard. When Nilavu reaches her 7^th class its canopy would spread over the garden. The mango tree, not far, that gives fruits for all seasons would grow to bring the fruits by then. The picture of a father and his daughter- together they peal a mango and relish its taste!! It is an unfinished art. Britto left us for the immortal journey leaving the palette over to me. I want to finish the painting. There is a huge vacuum in my heart now-the void left behind by the shock when the giant tree fell. Britto would never allow me to keep the vacuum unfilled!! New sprouts would never cease to evolve from beneath the fallen trunk. Britto! Let the yellow passion with lush green and dense canopy flourish that is nurtured between us. My daughter and I would bash in the moonlight- in the twilights sitting under the shadow.

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Britto was a living victim of violence in campus politics. He had been stabbed by opponents in 1983 when he was an activist of the Students Federation of India, left wheelchair-bound. With urine bottle and walker, he had travelled across the country with the never-say-die spirit to live. Britto authored a couple of novels: Agragami and Maharandram. Agragami won a Sakti award and a Patyam Gopalan award. He was a state representative of Kerala Grandhasala Sangam and the first MLA to take part in the proceedings while sitting in a wheelchair. The  officials had organised a ramp to let Britto's wheelchair in and to saw off a part of a seat to accommodate the wheelchair. Britto is 80 per cent physically disabled. But he prefers to say: ""I am 20 per cent able." His body is paralysed chest down.
 
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Can Poojari's be Marxists?

Can the Poojaris, Christian padres, Islamic clerics and the manifold evangelists and holy men, work with communists? It is an old question several times being answered by EMS in toe with the famous Lenin’s narrative in ” The attitude of workers party to religion”. In a nutshell it is-when a priest becomes the part of the day to day politics, conscientiously be part of the party responsibilities, and imbibe and acknowledge the party policies,(The comprehensive Lenin's work: volume 15), he is eligible for party membership.

Lenin has been unequivocal that Religion cannot be annihilated with resistances, putting blinkers to its roots, and atheism which blatantly negates religion cannot be integral to the proletarian movement. Lenin decried the strapline “ down with religion, atheism lives long”  and pooh-poohed the myth, dismissing it as superficial decor that does not conform with communistic concepts.

The resolution of Cuban communist party on religion in Oct 1980 concedes this argument in currency that the religion is a system which alienates men and is a construct to legitimise the exploitation of one class over the other. It is historically true too in that, religion overtime has acted as the ideological moor for political hegemony. Today our experience is that Faithfull’s can turn into a revolutionary who responds well to the societal obligations while equating himself to be a devote religionist. Fidel Castro has explained that the camaraderie of the two can liberate the world from exploitation. When people converge for the resistance against the predatory exploitation and imperialism, it is immaterial to double-check their stripes for faith or revolutionary spirit.

 Harold Sin asserts that the famous quote from Marx; “Religion is the opium of the people” wrung out-of-context had been misconstrued and misinterpreted by the anti-Marxist historians and propagandists with negative overtones that Marxism is anti-religious to its core. Marx had made the remark in the context of the negation of the Hegel’s ideology, in the introduction of Marx’s “A contribution to the critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right” by extending his notion that it is not religion that created man, but the converse is true. Marx writes; “ Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions.”  It is in continuation of this narrative that the opium phraseology (It is the opium of the people) steps in, wherein he delineates how the religions work as an anodyne. When the stormy winds of the harsh realities of life strike on the face, the balm ceases to relieve your pain, it becomes dysfunctional.


Lenin, speaking of religions in 1905 alluded to this Marxian metaphor and said;” Those who toil and live in want all their lives are taught by religion to be submissive and patient while here on earth, and to take comfort in the hope of a heavenly reward. But those who live by the labour of others are taught by religion to practise charity while on earth, thus offering them a very cheap way of justifying their entire existence as exploiters and selling them at a moderate price ticket to well-being in heaven. Religion is opium for the people. Religion is a sort of spiritual booze, in which the slaves of capital drown their human image, their demand for a life more or less worthy of man.”

 

The religion constructs an unreal public conscience that consigns men to the freaks of fait.  Marx underscores the truth that the circumstances that gravitate the layman towards religion is of import. Without due regard to its underpinning causes, any criticism targeting religion ceases to be scientific.

Marxism is not a mechanical instinct on materialistic view. But while it ascertains that the material cosmos is primary, it recognises the different ideologies for its efficacy to influence man. Marx opined that when once an ideology has been accepted by the people it becomes the material forces for a change. Marxism as an ideology strongly disproves the religion when it becomes the tool that strives to hold back the reforms and keep humanity struck in the present.  Marxism recognises the believers who seek solace in their faiths. It is not an ideology that is in perpetual conflict with religion. It is the art and science of class struggle. It understands that the major chunk of the oppressed and the tyrannised are religious adherents.

This is based on an article authored by Sri.P.Rajiv, a RajyaSabha  MP from Kerala.