This was perhaps intended for our Cousin Koota 2007, don't remember whether we did manage to publish the newsletter on time.

REMEMBERING KUDALI SESHANNA.

I should not have agreed for this!

There you are, the "I" goes before anything else, betraying the fact that this will be almost autobiographical. A kind of catharsis, if I may say so. What else can you expect out of an association of almost thirty nine years?

For, he ceases to be my father and has become me. Just the way Naga Jois metamorphosised into Kudali Seshanna, give and take a few characteristic traits that made them unique. And if I am not regarded as an imposter in this lineage, my life is made!

Even as I accepted this responsibility, I was acutely aware that it will be another intensely emotional trip for me, very much like the first Cousin Koota in 2005, when the sentiments rose to a peak by the time Kudali Seshanna's family was introduced to everyone. Which is why, in preparing for this and in executing the task, I had to embrace solitude and silence. Memories
there are aplenty, can I pick the best and lay before you? I doubt it. I suspect this is only the beginning.

Yes, the intensity I display in doing something which I like, is inherited!

On that day in 2005, we were let off from the peak on to a plateau because our aunt Chinna was around, as if to say, 'all is not lost, I am still here.' Which was not to be, for, perhaps weighed by the thought that all her siblings waited for her elsewhere, she too departed before the next Koota in 2006.

This is inescapable. A homage to Mahatma Gandhi is vastly different from what we write about our own elders who live out their lives before our eyes. Which is why I called it a catharsis, for I knew that once I sit down to write this, there would be no halts or hesitations, leaving the
editor's hands full!

I am sure Anna would have gone through these steps as eagerly as everyone else if we had started the Koota when he was around, because deep inside, he identified himself with his roots. He made attempts to relocate to Shimoga after his retirement without much success. The
exodus from Shimoga that he led more than fifty years ago, has perhaps come a full circle - after Bhanuprakash & Dharini left Shimoga, I think none amongst our cousins set up a home there for a considerable period of time till Ravi did sometime ago.

Our Koota is unique. It owes allegiance to the memories of Naga Jois & Ramakkamma, without any of us affixing the 'Jois' to our names!! This is of course because Kudali Seshanna was the only beloved brother in the Jois family and his father did not wish that tag to be affixed to his son's name. He even took care to depart from the conventional Rama, Narayana, Vishweshwara, Anantha - almost any name which would have gone well with 'Jois' !

What Naga Jois did not cherish about 'Jois' I am not sure. However I have always noted with interest that many of our cousins took to teaching / training / academics like duck to water! Anything to do with disseminating knowledge, our resorvoirs run deep and we constantly
surprise ourselves by adapting and sharing.

Once in High School, I came home and told Anna that I was supposed to speak on 'Aeroplanes.' After a customary period of silence, he settled down and started dictating the script. Three full pages later, I meekly looked up and told him I had only eight minutes to deliver all this. Frowning, he said, 'Eight minutes? I thought you said eight pages ?' Then he got up, swatted the air with his towel and walked away. He was ready for eight pages! How I condensed it into eight minutes and delivered it, is another story.

To end this piece I would like to share something I wrote more than a year after he passed away.


Anna.

How easy it was
for you to fall dead
on the street
and go hide
in that laminated photograph,
one with nature
and everything else,
mute witness
to all that we do
and don't.

You taught us how to live.
Now you showed us
how to die
and be alive
forever.

09/07/2003.