Travails of a centipede

By Shevlin Sebastian 

When I parked my two-wheeler outside a grocery shop, about two kms from my home in Kochi, I saw a thick, red centipede walk across the plastic top of the speedometer, the hundred-odd legs moving in unison, like a military unit during a Republic Day march. I took the end of my key and flicked it away. He fell on the ground, and turned its body into a circle, as a defence mechanism.

Now, what is he going to do? There will be an immediate disorientation. It is in a completely new environment. There may be no other centipedes nearby. Does he have a nose to find its way back to his friends and relatives? At his pace, it will take days. He has no mobile phone to contact his acquaintances and get their GPS.  

There is no greenery nearby. 

Meanwhile, I am sure, the other centipedes may ask, “Where has Bobby gone?” 

A friend might say, “Surely, he has fallen into trouble or maybe Bobby has died. He was always a nosey parker. I have told him many times to stay clear of humans. But he ignored my advice. We have such a large patch of land, where it is safe. Why does he venture out?” 

Bordering my house is a banana plantation. Apart from teak and coconut trees. Grass grows wild in the mud. And there must be many insects, birds and snakes.

The snakes do climb over and slide into our side. So we put sprinklings of kerosene along the wall. Apparently, it cannot bear the smell.

Will the grocery centipede be able to find food? Or will he spend the first day in a state of hunger? Would he be letting out a curse at me? ‘Damn the idiot rider,’ he might say. 

My reply: ‘You can’t blame me. Who told you to move across the speedometer? Don’t you think it is an invasion of privacy?’ 

“Invasion of privacy,” the centipede might shout. “Mother Earth can say the same thing to you humans. You have invaded nature everywhere, destroyed it and made a mess. Now the planet is in danger of extinction because of warming and the melting of the glaciers.”  

 The centipede has straightened himself. And he stares at the footwear of the people who walk into the shop. There is a variety: sneakers, flip-flops, sandals, shoes, high heels, and boots. 

‘Why do these people cover their feet?’ thinks the centipede. With over one hundred legs, the centipede would have to pay a fortune to get footwear for his legs. ‘And why are they afraid to show their body? Why do they cover it up with clothes?’ 

He remembered his mother telling him once, “Humans are shady characters. They are always doing some cover-up or the other. They are not willing to stand naked and look at each other. They feel ashamed. Crazy nuts. They are the only animals who do this. Have you seen tigers, lions, monkeys, elephants, giraffes or zebras do that? But these guys have souls full of darkness, guilt and fear. They spend their time trying to steal or kill each other. They are heartless. They will kill you in the blink of an eye. Just stay clear, that’s all.” 

The centipede shed a tear as he remembered his mother, who had been crushed by the wheel of a speeding car. His father had been on the edge of the road, about to cross, and follow his wife, as they headed home. The family could not say a proper goodbye. His mother was right. He should have stayed in the banana plantation and not venture out. 

The future looked bleak. He went up the steps of the shop and entered the ice-cool environs. ‘What the hell?’ he thought. ‘Am I in Iceland?’

At one corner, near the vegetable stand, he saw a round grey blob with spiky red things jutting out all over its body. 

“Who are you?” said the centipede. 

“Oh hi, my name is coronavirus,” it said. 

“And what is it you do?” said the centipede. 

“Killing human beings and taking revenge for millions of years of domination on the rest of the animals,” it said. 

“You are so tiny,” the centipede said, with a skeptical look. “What can you do?”

The virus smiled and said, “Size doesn’t matter, friend. Will, determination and a game plan matters, if you want to win.” 

“Oh I see,” the centipede said, still keeping the doubtful tone. 

The virus felt irritated.

Without saying a word, it flew up in the air, looking for a human being. 

The centipede began nibbling on a coriander leaf.

A ‘bald’ anniversary

Today, May 26, it is one year since I went completely bald. 

A barber did the act in 10 minutes.  

I am happy with my decision. 

No more depressing thoughts as I looked in the mirror. Earlier, I would watch with dismay at my receding hairline and the growing bald patch at the crown of my head. Now, when I look at my reflection, I feel happy and proud. It gives off a lively look. 

But it is not easy to maintain this. 

A 10-minute shave of the head is required every morning. I use the Gillette Mach 3 shaving razor like a comb. Of course, I could use a Phillips trimmer but a razor is more hands-on. But I have to be careful. 

So far, I have had a nick only once. Most of the time, I concentrate when I am shaving my head: after all, it is the place where my brain is resting. But the best way I realised is to let the fingers do the work. No need to interfere. Because the body has its intelligence. Without our help, it runs our inner physical system. You don’t need to bother how digestion takes place or how the heart is pumping blood over the body and how it fights germs. 

All this is explained in the book, ‘The Power of Not Thinking: How Our Bodies Learn and Why We Should Trust Them’ by business anthropologist Simon Roberts. 

Former cricketer Sachin Tendulkar said something similar during an interview with TV personality Mark Nicholas. “It is important to play not with your conscious, but with your subconscious,” said Tendulkar. “And when you reach the peak of your concentration, you will not notice whether the bowler is coming at you from around the wicket or over the wicket. All you will see is the ball, and your subconscious mind will do the rest.” 

The only problem arises when the mind interferes with the body with its panicky thoughts and soon things descend into chaos. So I am sure the body is happy when we sleep. That’s when they can do their repair work with peace. 

Coming back to my baldness, people used to stare at me initially. But as more people go the bald route, everyone is getting used to it. Even women are doing it. My niece, Aneesha, within months of her marriage went bald, as a style statement. 

Nowadays, I have completely forgotten I am bald when I step out in public. I am so glad I don’t have to use a comb, oil, shampoo or go to the barber. And when it rains, you can feel it drum on your head. That’s a pleasant feeling. No fears about getting sick because your hair is wet. Mums would always tell us this in an admonishing tone during our childhoods.

After a run, I noticed my head also sweats a lot. So, apart from wiping my face with a handkerchief, I have to wipe my head as well. I have wondered whether there was so much perspiration when I had hair. I can’t remember. It is also a fact the climate has become hotter and more humid. 

I don’t have a full round head. There is a teeny bump if anyone looks upward from the forehead. But otherwise, it is round. Most people tell me they like what they see. But some did point out the bump. You can’t please all the people all the time. Thus said the 15th-century monk and poet John Lydgate. 

How right he was.   

For those of you who want to go down the same path, my suggestion is to find out whether your head is round. You can place a photo of yours in Photoshop and remove the hair. You will get an idea of how you look. If you like what you see, take the plunge.

There is nothing more powerful than to be bald and bold. 

You will become irresistible to women. 

Just joking!

A friend dies

By Shevlin Sebastian

Photos: George Joseph and his wife Tessy; the Notre Dame Catholic Church at Southbridge, Massachusetts 

At 7.30 p.m. on Saturday, May 15, I logged on to take part in the funeral service of my friend George Joseph, who died of Covid comorbidities on May 7, in a hospital in Springfield, Massachusetts. The service was taking place in the 109-year-old Notre Dame Catholic Church at Southbridge, Massachusetts. George’s friends had logged in from different parts of America, Australia, New Zealand, Brunei, and in India, from Kolkata, Kochi, Jaipur and other places.

At the start, Gina Kuruvilla, George’s cousin, gave a eulogy. “George was very kind,” she said. “He was one of those people whom everyone will agree did not have a single mean bone in his body. He loved his family. He especially loved Tessy (wife). He talked about you so much.”

I knew George because we lived a few buildings away from each other in Kolkata in the 1980s. He was 6’2” and heavily built. I was 5’6” and frail. It was like David and Goliath. We regularly met up with friends for an evening adda, sitting on a low wall by the side of a road.

We gazed longingly at the girls in the area, and we watched as one friend adopted an almost foolproof method of getting a woman’s attention. He would go up and say, “You are beautiful. Would you be interested in acting in the movies or even theatre?” Our friend was a theatre artist, so what he said was correct. He also knew people in Tollywood.

Many girls stopped in their tracks, zapped by this question and with immediate stars in their eyes. And then our friend, with his silky-smooth tongue, would make the necessary moves to go on a first date. And he succeeded most of the time. To his credit, one or two even tried their luck at the theatre.

We would laugh but felt envious of his skill. This was a time before the mobile phone and its irresistible apps, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Whatsapp. So, it was not easy to get access to the fairer sex, at all.

Sometimes, we went to George’s house, when his parents went out to work and his sister was in school. Our morning college finished at 9.45 a.m. Then we would sit and chat, have several cups of tea, and listen to music. George introduced me to rock bands Led Zeppelin and Jethro Tull but I never became a fan. I preferred the simple tunes of Abba, Boney M, Carpenters, and the Bee Gees.

All these thoughts passed through my mind as I watched the mass. It was a beautiful church. It had numerous large pillars, and it seemed like the floor was made of mosaic tiles. The priest, Fr. Ken Cardinale gave a sweet sermon and remembered some funny moments with George. With relief, the audience laughed.

I couldn’t believe George had passed away so quickly. The last time I met him was a couple of years ago, when he came to Kerala to meet his mum. We sat in the coffee shop at the Gokulam Park hotel, just opposite my former office, in Kochi. George had prematurely greyed. It was only that time had passed, but the ease of conversation and the camaraderie remained intact. We spoke non-stop for one-and-a-half hours.

During the mass, normally, I would have switched off Whatsapp. This time, for some unknown reason, I kept it on. Soon, a friend wrote, as he watched the service, ‘One by one, we will all have to leave’.

I quickly typed out, ‘Yes. This is unavoidable.’

There were messages from other friends.

One asked for a link to the service.

And some, like Suresh Reginald, were present in the church. Suresh has been George’s friend for over 50 years. He stayed just two houses away from George in Kolkata. Like George, he is 6’ 2” but slimmer. Now he is based in Lexington, Massachusetts, an hour’s drive from the church. They remained in touch (George had worked in India, Singapore and Brunei, where he spent several years, before he migrated to the US).

This is what Suresh wrote after attending the service: ‘The funeral service was perfect. The message from the family brought back warm memories of George, always kind, always high-spirited, always joking, and sometimes the jokes were funny. The sermon was given engagingly by Fr Ken who knew George well. There were about 200 people present, filling the church up with social distancing in place. It was a gorgeous, sunny, and warm spring day, with not a cloud in the sky. Tessy's faith has provided her with an enormous reservoir of hope to handle these weeks of adversity with a positive outlook, and she continued to display this inner strength.’

Indeed, Tessy has a deep faith in God. And this faith will sustain her, as she faces a future without George, who had been by her side for 31 years. It will be tough, very tough, but time, as always, will be the healer.

Because of Covid deaths all around, mortality is at the forefront of our minds.

On Saturday morning, I had read an article in the ‘New York Times’ about an American nun, Sr. Theresa Aletheia Noble, whose mission has been to revive the practice of memento mori. This is a Latin phrase that means, ‘Remember your death’.

As the reporter Ruth Graham wrote, ‘The concept is to intentionally think about your death every day, as a means of appreciating the present and focusing on the future’.

In the article, Sr. Aletheia said, “My life is going to end and I have a limited amount of time. We naturally think of our lives as a kind of continuing and continuing.”

George’s death, the first in our group of friends, has made us all focus on our own cessation of life. When will it end? At what age? At 61, 65, 71, 75, 86 or 91. It doesn’t matter. But the years are limited now. The youthful feeling of an endless life ahead has long gone.

The service concludes.

I close off the link and get up.

In Kochi, it is pouring now — a heavy, pulsating, and intense rain, accompanied by howling winds. The effects of Cyclone Tauktae, which hit the Gujarat coast, were being felt in Kochi.

I could not step outside.

So, I walked up and down the house, trying to shake off my melancholy mood...

Memories of Chandra

Nowadays, owing to the catastrophic Covid pandemic engulfing the country, on some mornings when I open the newspaper, I am reminded of the journalism I had done.

That was the case when I came to know former three-time national table tennis champion V Chandrasekhar passed away in Chennai on May 12, at the age of 64 because of Covid-related issues.

His life took a turn towards hell when at the age of 27, a botched knee surgery at the Apollo Hospital led to him losing his speech, mobility and partial vision. Through physiotherapy he fought back, regaining 80 percent of his mobility. But this was followed by a long and exhausting court case against the hospital which he won eventually.

I met him in 1996 at his home in Chennai and spent almost a day with him.

Since I worked for Sportsworld magazine, we had a lot of space to fill with words and photos.

Chandra was intelligent, pleasant, accommodative and spoke with a quiet intensity.

Accompanying me was the ebullient Chennai-based sports photographer George Francis, who sadly passed on April 11, 2019, to cancer. He had been the doyen of motorsports photography.

George and I got along well. He asked me the theme of the story. So, I told him it was a story of being in a sort of prison. Chandra could no longer do so many things. He had lost his freedom.

At Chandra’s home, George and I scratched our heads on how to get an apt photo. It was a typical middle-class flat, with a drawing cum dining room and bedrooms leading off from the main section.

Eventually, George pointed out at the entrance. I was sceptical, even though the door had small bars. George placed a chair just behind the door. He asked Chandra to sit on it and lean forward, his hands on the wooden base.

George stepped outside, switched on two photography lights, resting on triangular bases, which he had brought along. The result is the striking image on the first page.

It was in those days I understood the importance of the collaboration between reporter/writer and photographer. Of how the photos must match the theme of the story. Therefore, the photographer and the journalist should talk about what the story was all about. 

It was also a time when we used typewriters to tap out the stories. So, in our office in Calcutta, the most consistent sound was of keys being hit at high speed as they slammed against the white paper, placed on a roller, and formed words in black letters…. unbelievable for today’s youngsters. 

What’s the future going to be like?

By Shevlin Sebastian

One gets the feeling that while India is changing, thanks to its youthful population, its politicians have not. They are still stuck in tribalism, the caste system, fueling antagonisms and hate, focusing on temples, mosques, and churches, and ignoring the more important things of life.

They may not know it, but all religions have a finite date, even though it is difficult to believe. During the time of the Pharaohs, the Egyptians worshipped the sun god Ra. Now Egypt is an Islamic country.

Christianity is 2000 years old. But it is already in terminal decline in the West.

The truly powerful religions last between 2000 to 5000 years, and then they are gone. New religions and new ideologies will come up, especially now, as we are on the cusp of vast technological change.

Drones and robots are going to take over our lives. Many robots will look like real human beings. They will dress, walk and talk like us. So, on the street, you will not know who is an actual person and who is not.

Robots will gobble up jobs, especially done by labour. No labourer can replace 1000 tiles of a floor in a mere one hour. And there is no need to pay a salary and give other benefits. The robots will work 24/7 for years together until their parts fall into disrepair.

Which job will be safe? Nobody knows for sure. You already have robot dentists. Robots can read the evening news and write daily news reports. They can sweep the floor and lift heavy loads on to trucks. They could become doctors, engineers, or chartered accountants. Or as waiters in restaurants and security guards. And they can provide emotional sustenance, too. You can tell your problems, it will listen sympathetically and provide answers.

There are going to be robot women whom you can make love to. What will that do for marriage? Men mostly marry to get an easier access to sex. Now what? Will marriage collapse as an institution? Recently, a Chinese man married his robot woman. He is not the only one.

See the link: https://www.buzzworthy.com/meet-men-married-robots/

Will the state produce children in artificial wombs? Would they tinker with the DNA to produce perfect children? All criminal genes are edited out.

Those who have superior firepower and lakhs of robots can invade other countries and capture them for the host country.

There is talk of a world government. The nation-state will be decimated.

It sounds unreal, but it could be true.

Computer tycoon Bill Gates said the biggest danger of the 21st century will be from bio-terrorism and climate change.

We are already experiencing a type of bio-terrorism with the coronavirus.

So, a man can take a virus, put it in a small bottle, get a tourist visa, go to the enemy country, release the virus and create havoc.

No Army is required for this.

In case an Army is required, millions of robot soldiers will be at the ready.

As for climate change, in the future, 600 million Indians are expected to suffer from extreme water shortage.

Where are the solutions? What are the politicians doing about this? Maybe they will tell the people to get solace by staring at the Grand Vista.

Oceans are going to overwhelm coastal cities in less than a hundred years thanks to melting glaciers. So, goodbye to Tokyo, Mexico, Shanghai, Melbourne, Sydney, Mumbai and thousands of other cities. Check out ‘The Uninhabitable Earth’ by American journalist David Wallace-Wells. It will give you chills as you flip the pages.

The heat has become so intense that migrations have begun northwards in several countries. All this is explored in social scientist Sonia Shah’s book, ‘The Next Great Migration: The Beauty and Terror of Life on the Move’. Sonia says that even insects like butterflies are on the move, looking for cooler climes. Agriculture will no longer be sustainable. Food will be made in laboratories and in farms located inside buildings.

And what is the mobile phone doing to the brain? I met a Hollywood producer who came to Kochi who said that in the future, a movie will be ten minutes long. Babies who are born today and go straight to the mobile phone, with its endless distractions, will no longer have the patience to sit through a two-hour movie.

Surely, this heralds the end of the book also.

One gets the feeling the politician, sprouting a brain-washed but outdated ideology, will soon be swept away by the tides of human history.