By KHASA SUBBA RAU ¹

(Joint Editor, The Indian Express, Madras)

I hear people cry everywhere, "O, this dull, drab, dreary world!" It is indeed dull, drab and dreary to those who think so. But to others who have eyes to see and ears to hear, there is exciting drama and romance in every common sight.

The exterior surface of life is a placidity veiling turbulent storms underneath. We may miss them when we think only with the eye, but they will be thrown into relief in the sidelight of imagination.

Imagination is a quality of the mind which it is difficult for the self-satisfied to attain. A touch of distress is needed to evoke it. Castles in the air spring into being when means are lacking for the construction of terrestrial mansions, and the poor, the discontented and the unhappy live in a phantom world of the imagination where desires are gratified without reference to the vexed question of expense.

The superiority of acquisition over imagination is not so axiomatic as it is generally assumed to be. A work of art does not cease to belong to its creator after it is purchased by the collector; and it belongs none the less to every appreciative critic. Dante adored Beatrice from a distance. But the world acclaims her as his over the head of the husband of whom we know next to nothing.

The enjoyment which a cultured imagination can confer is independent of all limitations and nothing can take it away from its possessor. The greatest loves are born in this way and are cherished for ever, irrespective of reciprocity. The falling-in-love process is one of the most complicated feats in life’s experience, achieved in a trice, but producing effects which years may not be able to undo. It is like a knot which you can only tie but not untie.

Love produces in fact a monstrous mental state. To fall in love with one means to become utterly indifferent to everyone else. What makes one love another is rarely intelligible. I am certain, beauty has nothing to do with love, because, if it were so, the more beautiful should supplant the less in one’s heart; which it rarely does except with some Don Juans of the sex-hunting type.

Nor is character the inspirer of love. If we could order our love on the basis of character, the saints should be ruling the hearts of all of us. Whereas the saints are a rather lonely lot whom common people are somewhat reluctant to get into close contact with.

The exclusive quality of love seems however to have suffered a set-back in this restless age. Cupid, it was said, spends no second arrow on the same heart. I am not so sure. Cupid, I think, is not now what he was when he was born, and has adjusted himself completely to the twentieth century. Nowadays he is less careful with his arrows. The result is that not a few receive from his bow a fresh arrow in their hearts each time they come across a fair skin in a bright ‘sari.’ As this is a frequent occurrence in this part of the country where we are happily free from ‘purdah,’ I guess in the case of several there must now be only the arrows left where once the hearts used to be.

Humanity cannot get on without love. Dogs and books are humanity’s refuge against the emotional storms of an uncertain world. If you happen to be poor, all the difficulty of the poor man in the matter of raising money will enter into your heart and strengthen your bond of affection for the books which you have managed to buy. These mute companions of leisure hours are irreplaceable; they are like children, friends, philosophers, guides, all rolled into one. I like to have them near about even when I am otherwise engaged, just as we love to have in our homes the children of whom we have grown inordinately fond; and my exasperation knows no bounds when acquisitive men come rudely on with the demand, "But you are not reading this particular book now. Do lend it to me just for a couple of days." I have known couples of days that have become eternities in the hands of borrowers of books, but even if they did not, do people with natural human sentiment ever part with their babies for a couple of days for the reason that they do not want them in the interregnum?

As for dogs, you can feel with your dog that you come first in his affections. He may have his partiality for bones, and sometimes his amours with other dogs, but never can you have any doubt about the enduring constancy of his devotion and friendship for you. There is no tinsel in the delighted wagging of tail with which a loving dog greets his master. A dog will stand by you against all the allurements of civilisation and snobbery. This is more than what can be said of the friendship of man which, alas, is so ready to fly away from you in your moments of adversity or when others, better endowed with the world’s goods, appear on the scene. Pascal therefore said. "The more I see of men, the better I like dogs." Despite Pascal there is no more beautiful thing than a genuine and sincere friendship.

A faithful and true friend, said Robert Hall, is a living treasure, inestimable in possession, and deeply to be lamented when gone. Nothing is more common than to talk of a friend; nothing more difficult than to find one; nothing more rare than to improve by one as we ought.

It is perhaps just as well that improvement by friendship is rare. If you and I set about to improve each other, it is only a question of time when we are to fall out. One of my earliest friends had a passion for improving others. He analysed human perfection into so many virtues. He made a list of them. He made also a list of the besetting vices that flesh is heir to. Day after day, we were weighed in the scales of perfection and iniquity.

He was generous to appreciate merit and ruthless in waging war against weakness of every kind. We admired him prodigiously. But we also feared him. Result, posing took the place of easy, spontaneous existence. We bought his good opinion with falsehood.

Admiration stifles friendship. To admire, one should feel a little small. We cannot forgive being belittled. Nature hence takes revenge against the admired by becoming exacting. A little flaw becomes a fall from grace. Distance alone can save admiration from the cruel fate of disillusionment.

Respect is a common ingredient of friendship, but by no means indispensable. Strong attachments are not destroyed by loss of respect. Nothing can shake a friendship that is sustained by affection. Affection is a mystery that is inexplicable. It has no relation to merit or even to character. The greatest love is perhaps lavished on scamps.

Gratitude between friends is a contradiction in terms. Gratitude implies separation. We are grateful for something that another does to us, which is a little in excess of what is expected of him. But nothing is an excess in friendship. Its give and take is subject to no calculation.

The ordinary affection of friend to friend is exclusive. Jealousy battles with it on every side. If you grow too fond of a friend, the wife at home gets jealous; and your friendship is doomed, from start to finish, to banishment from the home.

Triangular friendships are risky. The essence of affection between two is that each should be all in all to the other. Friendship will survive disparity in age, station, wealth and attainments, but it must perish at the blighting touch of jealousy. Hence, for ordinary mortals, one absorbing friendship is as much as poor human nature will allow, but even that one is rare to find. Ambition, snobbery, and incapacity to get out of one’s skin often work as factors to ruin a dear friendship. Any one of them is enough to bring about the tragedy of unreciprocated affection, which is one of the hardest crosses for the heart of man to bear.

Self-centred as we are, a touch of divinity is needed for anyone to become anyone’s friend. But life throws up many tests for affection. Access to fortune of one of two friends acts as a test which either strengthens it greatly or makes it perish. To the snobs of the world, money means status, and affluence a fascinating deity to be worshipped with incense. They are incapable of becoming friends either of the poor or of persons in adversity.

The thrill of friendship is not for these men of false ideas and poor spirit. Misfortune, poverty, disease, sin, are the transmuting fires that separate false friendship from true; and since affection is not for prosperity alone, those must count themselves blessed whose ministrations have been able to bring some cheer and comfort to friends in distress shunned by an unkind world.

 ¹ By Courtesy of the All India Radio.

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