Golden Lotus

For sometime now I have been harboring a character sketch in my mind, of course for now painted only in superficial strokes. The finality, and consequently with it, the actual beauty, would ironically surface, only when I go deep. But for now here are the broad strokes.

He is a synonym for Genius in all lexicons. He is an iconoclast. He is a giver. He is selfless. He is enigmatic. He is everyday. He is sublime. He is beyond compare. He is charismatic. He is solo. He is among the crowd. He is a geek. He speaks Greek. He is a luddite. He is a techno guru. He is a charmer. He is royal. He is loyal. He is a rebel. He is an erudite. He speaks simple. He speaks hard. He is a free bird. He is an Archer. When he rises, people around him rise.

He is a vegetarian.

He is at ease with Carnatic Classical, as much as he is with Jazz or Hindustani Classical. He can quote The Vedas and P G Wodehouse with the same elan with he can shake a leg to a Hyderabadi teenmar. He can hold forth on M.S.Subbulakshmi, French porn, Clive Lloyd, Mohammed Azharuddin, and Sicilian defense in chess and you will be craving more. His cartoon features are to die for, and you don't mind skipping your morning coffee to his creations. He is a Marriott man and yet his heart truly longs for the early morning street cart food. The letters that he writes could put the SMS kids to shame. His handwriting can make Nizam pearls squirm.

He is an erstwhile I.A.S officer, highly adorned diplomat who has tried and truly tried and given up on the system. He has moved on to better, bigger, larger, deeper aspects of his existence he is so proud of. He is a family man, very devoted at that and yet he is aloof. He is a visiting professor, and yet a student, to put it clichedly, of life. He is a nomad. He is mad.

Upon being broached the women in his life maintain a dignified, respectful silence about him smacking of pure love. Their pupils dilate.

At times he has his hair pulled back to a pony. He wears plain kurtas with The North Face jackets. Yes. The soles would take Quovadis sandals and Timberland boots. It is only Levi's 501 for him. His backpack and his glares are respectively Jansport (black) and Ray-Ban only. He rides either an Enfield Bullet or a Yamaha RD-350. He has a Parker/MontBlanc for a weapon. He is a Nehruvian Bandhgala man. His radio is a Bose. When he sports a white half sleeved shirt angels almost drool. He is a Raymonds man. Yet he does all this with such elegance and class of a different order that it all seems so inadvertent, and not thought of. He doesn't care.

His thoughts and commensurate actions and not him put wannabes and pseudos in their place. He shows why men are men and where kids belong.

He looks somewhat like this. God sure lies in detail. He is detail.

Meet my Ali

From 4 to 54, for all you have done in these 50 glorious years, many thanks Kamal Haasan.