Mahesh Bhatt - A Taste of Life

Prologue

A t about quarter past eight on the morning of 22 March 2007, Susan screamed, Oh my god, Mahesh, look, ants! I turned and saw thousands of black ants marching in line on the white carpet, up the white sofa and on to U.G.s stone-like face where they spread out and completely darkened the left side. We moved closer and saw that there were thousands, moving with the frantic intensity of life, in contrast to U.G.s utter calm. I shouted to Larry to come help us. I remembered that someone had once asked U.G. what the ants were doing in his room. He had replied, Theyre coming for me.

We used a repellent and with great effort managed to drive the ants away. Susan had bought the eco-friendly spray only the other day and little did we know that it would be put to use so soon and that too for such a bizarre task. Susan then used her doctors dexterity to change U.G.s sheets with Larry and me assisting. The question that bothered us was how the insects went straight to U.G. with all of us keeping watch. Larry said that he too had been bothered by the ants when he was meditating in the room; maybe the ants only approached when one was absolutely still. I was reminded of U.G.s prophetic words: Unless man comes to terms with the fact that he is no more significant than the mosquito or the ant, he is doomed.

By midday, I began to feel restless. I walked up to the tiny fridge and opened it. It was bare except for a golden box of Leonidas chocolates with four pieces in it. I offered them to Susan and Larry; they took one each. I turned to U.G. and said, Happy death day, U.G., before popping the chocolates into my mouth. As I ate, it struck me that U.G.s death saga had turned into a kind of black comedy which he himself had orchestrated.

In the afternoon, Susan suggested that we should go away for a while and give U.G. a chance to make his exit. By 2.30 p.m., Larry and Susan were in the garden, calling me out to join them. Everything was still. I walked towards the door and turned. My master was clearly alive and breathing. I bent down and touched his feet; they were coated with flakes of dry, ash-like skin. I felt my pulse throb in my fingers but hardly any life in those toes with which I had such friendship. I gazed at him affectionately and said to him, U.G., Im going out so that you can go away. I want to thank you for all that you have done for me in case I dont find you here on my return. Something in that very explosive silence told me that my words had reached him in some subliminal way. I bent down, kissed his feet and made a brave attempt to go out but couldnt. I am me; U.G. could walk away from things and never look back but I cant. So I turned back and looked at him, inhaling the moment deeply; it was the only point in time I would retain with me and forever find sustenance from. I left, feeling strangely like I was walking away yet was somehow standing next to U.G. My cellphone beeped, it was an sms from Vishesh, my nephew: Please thank U.G. on my behalf. I have no words to express the importance of meeting him in my life.

Susan, Larry and I wandered the lazy, deserted afternoon streets of Vallecrosia. We stepped into a departmental store and tried to figure out if anyone needed anything but soon realized that this was only one of our excuses to stay away from the villa. We then walked into a coffee bar to have a cappuccino. An Italian soap opera was playing on television and the coffee bar was deserted. Susan was feeling guilty about leaving U.G. unattended. I told her that we were doing the right thing; that we had chosen to give U.G. a chance to go away. She calmed down slightly.

In spite of all our efforts, we soon headed back. We walked through the gate and the three of us were doing all we could to keep ourselves from rushing into the villa. The time on my cellphone was 3.08 p.m. Larry finally decided to step in to check and disappeared for some time. Susan turned to me and stared. Then we heard Larrys voice, He has stopped breathing. We entered, pretending that everything was under control; that everything was as it should be. We found U.G. exactly the way we had left him. My old man had kept his pact. I was the only person he wanted to see in his final moments and that was how it happened.

Uppaluri Gopala Krishnamurti

I was born in 1948 to a Brahmin film-maker father and a Shia Muslim mother in free India just after the trauma of Partition. My parents were then living in sin in the middle-class, Hindu locality of Mumbais Shivaji Park, a place where religious and political leaders regularly made speeches about the greatness of India. My mother, fearing discrimination, cleverly concealed her identity behind a large bindi and mangalsutra, gave us all Hindu names, and sent me to an English-medium school run by Italian missionaries. I wasted eleven years of my life cramming for meaningless exams and learning meaningless values which did not operate either in my life, my teachers, the priests or my parents. They were trying to shape me into someone I was not and I grew up always feeling that I was not the person I longed to be. I was lonesome and spent all my energy trying to be less lonesome. This lonelinessand my hormoneshurled me into a teenage romance, an early marriage, parenthood and a disastrous start to my career in the film industry. I wanted to escape the pain and humiliation the reversals in my life inflicted on me and became part of the bogus, acid-dropping, enlightenment-seeking culture of the early 1970s. I experienced the mystical highs of LSD; I sought Osho, the sex guru, and the messiah of the no-messiah cult, Jiddu Krishnamurti. Unable to cope with the brutal truths that faced me, I dropped out of life even before the main credits had begun to roll.