A Message From An Old Friend

The first time I met the Transparent Ironist was way back in 1992 when I was a Class X student of St Mary's Convent, Guwahati, India. He was a student of our 'sister-school' Don Bosco and I thought that he would be a useful person from whom to find out more about that school. We didn't talk much about Don Bosco though; that was the time when I liked to 'essentialise' people by putting them into neat categories, and one of the first questions that I asked him was, 'How would you summarise yourself in one phrase?' Looking back at those days today, I smile at my foolish demand. I also smile, however, at how astonished I was at the Ironist's immediate reply : 'An implacable foe of the Family.'
In the weeks immediately thereafter, I began to dislike the Ironist for that reply. A spiteful angry young man carrying a huge burden of hatred within his heart --- that is what I thought he was.
Today, however, nearly thirteen years after first meeting him, I feel somewhat weird having to say that unknown to myself that is what I too have always been : an implacable foe of the Family.

(The following is an extract from my diary, dated 23 July, 2002, that I have asked the Ironist to publish on his blog.)

We were three sisters, and I was the youngest. Father was a police officer who was almost always away from home, leaving mother to do most of the house-work and bringing us up.

Mother seemed to be very happy that she did not have any boys, and sometimes when I would sit down beside her during the long evenings, watching the sun go down, she used to tell me what a relief it was having three daughters and not three sons.

'Boys? Do you know what a terrible mess boys are? At fourteen, they will start answering you back; at eighteen, they will jeer at girls from the windows; at twenty, they will come home drunk; at twenty-five, they will bring home some girl they have picked up on the street; and at thirty, they will leave home never to return again. Compared to them, girls are a gift from Paradise. They are so much easier to train, to control, and to civilise.'

One day, however, my eldest sister told me, 'Don't you know why she keeps on talking that way in front of you? Don't you see that she was never able to forgive herself for having you instead of a son?'

Something very deep within me changed that day; I think I lost an innocence that I would never recover again, a trust in human beings that I have never found again.

I told the Ironist about this the other day. He smiled to himself, looked at the blue sky and repeated to himself, 'Girls are so much easier to train, to control, and to civilise.' And then he added in his ironic style, 'Yes, I know. That is why girls hardly ever recover from the effects of that education.'

He did not say it with even the slighest iota of cynicism in his voice. Indeed, if there is one thing that I am sure of about the Ironist, it is that he has a singular inability to be cynical about anything.

At that moment, I felt a powerful sense of fellow-feeling with him, as if he too were a being just like me who was trying hard to recover from the very same effects.