CMC - Day Thirteen

Today was full of physical exam findings. I was surprised, in examining a young child with bronchial pneumonia, as he squirmed and screamed in his bed, six finger on each hand, six toes on each foot - polydactyly we call it - and a rather less exciting pneumonia. I peered into the eyes of a young boy who'd gone suddenly blind, his edematous optic discs in focus through my fundoscope. I heard shifting dullness to percussion on a child with an pulmonary empyema. Cafe-au-lait spots, sacral dimples and super-sized tonsils. And then a rather symbolic case: isolated dextrocardia. Literally, a child with nothing more than his heart in the right place.

It's Valentine's Day, India's new favorite holiday and one that i cherish. The papers are full of advertisements for romantic candle-lit dinners in Chennai's most expensive restaurants. It's "Hickey Night" at the Taj hotel's Veranda restaurant: "It's that time when love fills the air. When candle lights and roses are standard decor. When diamond rings and men on knees are common. When cosy couples exchange sweet nothings, glances and kisses. And when Hickeys become sweet memories." Again, the changing face (or neck) of Indian love stories. One article acknowledges the love that "blossoms" at college canteens. "College canteens have always been a place where teens find time to catch a glimpse of their crush. According to college student Samyukta Ramani, the atmosphere in canteens is very casual and the area outside is even better. 'By sharing food it symbolizes that you can actually trust someone [I couldn't agree more]. So especially if the member of the opposite sex wants to share food with you, we feel that it shows that they feel that little extra for us.'" The Chennai Chronicle covers the growing, though historic, trend of using charms, gemstones and feng shui to improve their love lives. Ashmita Shah, a young Indian executive, has taken to wearing a silver pendant: "I'm quite fed up with my friends trying to fix me up with some guy or the other so I thought that it would be a good idea to wear a love charm around my neck. Somebody told me that this would accelerate my love life so I decided to give it a shot." A young Indian banker overcame his disbelief when "a friend of mine wore this (Voodoo love amulet) and within a couple of weeks he met the girl of his dreams." Superstition is alive and well, and the article points to hollywood for the renewal of this ancient trend, specifically Jessica Simpson, "who began wearing a rooster around her neck as a symbolic gesture for her current lack of love life." Despite the ringing endorsement by feng shui experts and gemologists, how frightening is it that the youth of India (or of anywhere for that matter) might look to a group of people, celebrities, who couldn't make a relationship last if their careers depended on it?

I prefer the old Indian love stories, filled as they are with the kind of love that could move mountains. Flora Annie Steel has retold the Kashmiri story of Gwashbrari and Westarwan.*

"Ages ago, when the world was young and the mountains had just reared their head to the heavens, Westarwan was the highest peak in all of Kashmir. Far away in the west Nanga Parbat stood where it stands now, but its snowy cap only reached to Westarwan's shoulder, while Haramukh looked but a dwarf beside the giant king. But if Westarwan was the tallest, Gwashbrari was the most beautiful of mountains. Away in the northeast, she glinted and glittered with her sea-green emeral glaciers, and Westarwan gazed and gazed at her loveliness till he fell in love with the beautiful Gwashbrari; but her heart was full of envy, and she thought of nothing but how she might humble the pride of the mighty king that reared hsi head so high above the rest of the world. At last the fire of love grew so hot in Westarwan's heart that he put aside his pride and called aloud to Gwashbrari, 'O beautiful far-away mountain, kiss me, or I die.'
"But Gwashbrari answered craftily, 'How can i kiss you, O Proud King, when you hold your head so high? Even if I could stand beside you my lips would not reach your lips, and behold how many miles of hill and dale lie between us.'
"But still Westarwan pleaded for a kiss, till Gwashbrari smiled, and said, 'Those above must stoop, Sir King. If you would have a kiss forget your pride, reach that long length of yours towards me, and I will bend to kiss you.'
"Then Westarwan, stretching one great limb over the vale of Kashmir, reached over hill and dale to Gwashbrari's feet, but the glacier-hearted queen held her flashing head higher than ever, and laughed, saying: 'Love humbles all.'
"And this is why Westarwan lies for ever stretched out over hill and dale, till he rests his head on Gwashbrari's feet."

There is nothing more romantic, more saturated in superfluousness, than an Indian love story. Their ancestral connection to the great Hindu mythologies provides no greater wellspring of torrential and tragic romances. One of the great Indian epics, the Ramayana**, tells us of a divine love between Rama, the great bowman, and Sita, who's beauty knew no equal. As Rama entered the great city where Sita's father, King Janaka, reigned, he spotted one, "fair as Lakshmi, the very picture of love ineffable..." She saw him as well. They pined for each other that night, unaware as they were that the next day they would be married:

'O cruel night,' Sita said, 'who will kill a weakling treacherously? Let the sun but rise and my lord will be gone!
'O mind of mind, eagerly would you go with that dark sun, and with him return. You, who have been so long with me, can you stay just one day more?
'O moon, why do you wish to torture me, an innocent waning day by day, with your beams, a sharp lance burning like the hot sun?
'O south wind, cool and fragrant, though not to me! Why are you, with your hot breath and moon-beam fangs, prowling for my life like a tiger in a cave?
'Why does a warrior of rain-cloud hue roam the street night and day, trailing an unwed girl? Does this become a prince well-bred?
'If that cruel man, dark and wicked, won't come to me, would it be proper for me to seek him? Is this night a black sea, shoreless and lasting aeons?
'The songs don't stop, the day doesn't dawn; thoughts don't flee, night doesn't end; heartache lasts, life doesn't leave; and eyes don't close - O what a fate?
'Tell me, Sea, are you too a maiden cowed down by Madan's killing shafts? Your bangles loose, body weary, now up, now down, are you too a stranger to sleep?'

While thus she spoke distracted, tired and distressed but in virtue firm, let us tell what went through the mind of the spotless one that night in his palace.

'I saw her but once and my boundless love drew with my eyes her picture in my heart. I saw her again, but have yet to see the fullness of her beaty. Who can grasp the lightning?
'O moon, love's embryo, manure, seed and fruit, all in one, what have you done? Are you incapable of helping one who is helpless and alone?
'The night has spread like the dark eyes of the one who has taken possession of me, squeezing my very life out of me. It won't grow less, like the shame of aman who deserts his lord in the field of battle to save his life.
'My mind! You who have gone with that gazelle, have you lost all memory of me? Is it that you don't think of me, or is the distance too great for you? Or is it that you will not bid goodbye to one who care not to ask who you are?
'That poison is only to be found in the fangs of snakes whose eyes spit fire is an ancient story. In my case, it is in the soft glance of one forever embedded in my eyes and heart.
'When there are so many mountains, flowery lakes and groves around, why should a honey-tongued, bright-tressed woman choose my heart for her playground?'

Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss is a newer, more complex Indian tale that won the 2006 Man Booker Prize. A young girl, Sai, who lost her parents to the Russian space program and who falls in love with her Nepali tutor, thinks about that sentiment's origin: "Romantically she decided that love must surely reside in the gap between desire and fulfillment, in the lack, not the contentment. Love was the ache, the anticipation, the retreat, everything around it but the emotion itself."

I find this statement about love so meaningful in its abstraction.

Thank you for indulging me today (and every other day). I get a bit carried away on Valentine's Day and wrote too much, perhaps. Ah well, today is a day to go above and beyond for those that you love. Do something romantic today.

justin



*From 'Folklore from Kashmir' by F.A. Steel with notes by Lt. R.C. Temple. The Indian Antiquary Vol. XI, 1882 and copied from Classical Indian Love Stories and Lyrics, Ruskin Bond (Ed.)
**The Kamba Ramayana. Penguin Books India. 2002