"Call Me Israel"

Between 1995 and 1998, I used to travel between Delhi and Guwahati by the Brahmaputra Mail. I do not like seating down at one place during train journeys, and I used to walk up and down the train, meeting various sorts of people and getting down at almost every station. In 1998, when I was coming back to Delhi, we were waiting near Mughalsarai for a green signal. I got down onto the platform and was staring at some black crows when I heard a voice behind me say, 'I so wish I could become a crow right now.'

I turned round to see a middle-aged person looking at the crows in front of me.

'Call me Israel', he said, extending his right hand towards me.

'Israel?', I queried, shaking hands with him.

'Yes, Israel. I am Israel Devadasan. In the Old Testament, Israel is another name for Jacob. It comes from the Hebrew word Yis'rael, meaning 'he who struggles with God''.

Thus started my friendship with Israel, and we talked through the rest of the journey until we reached old Delhi rail station.

One day, three months later, we met in Connaught Place for coffee near Nirula's, and the conversation turned round to the family. Israel was a man brimming over with one-liners and he threw one at me that afternoon : 'Every family, especially one with daughters in it, is a Fascism waiting to break out.'

'How do you mean?'

'Oh, just wait until these daughters grow up and come of marriageable age. Often, even the caste-parity will not be enough for the arranged marriage, it will have to be fine-tuned down to the nearest sub-sub-sub-caste. And if she wants to marry a Muslim or a Christian, ah well, I better not go into that story.'

'You are talking about Hindus?'

'Yes.'

'But the same hold for Christians too. Roman Catholics would usually not marry Protestants.'

'Yes, I know. A plague on all their houses.'

When I was in India in 2003, I tried to call up Israel in his home in Kozhikode and I was informed that he had died of a sudden illness in the winter of 2002.That one-liner of his, however, continues to haunt me, even in his absence : 'Every family, especially one with daughters in it, is a Fascism waiting to break out.'

Or, as I would put it, as a tribute to my dead friend : 'Anti-Tribalism is a higher revelation than religion.'