Erinnerungsgedichte

 

1.

Als meine Frau, Nirmala, und ich die schreckliche Nachricht bekamen, dass unser liebe Neffe Ranjit nicht mehr auf Erden war, waren wir tief erschūttert. Er ist mit 42 Jahren gestorben, ein junger Mann, wenigsten im Vergleich mit uns. Wir kannten ihn seit  seiner frühen Jugend. Er hat sogar bei uns zu Hause laufen gelernt. Und später, als er in Asien bei der Vereinigten Nationen arbeitete, besuchte er jedes Jahr uns hier in Amerika. (Zum Beispiel, im Jahre 2016 als wir das Ergebnis vom Präsidentenwahl abwarteten, sagte ich zu Ranji, ‘Geh schlafen.  Die Amerikaner sind nicht so doof um so einen wählen zu können...')

Nach der Nachricht sassen wir vor dem kleinen Altar im Hause und meditierten. Fast sofort riechten wir den Tod. “Nimala, riechst du was?” Ihr Gesichtausdruck hat bestätigt, dass ich recht hatte, den Tod. Hinter dem Diwan entdeckten wir die toten Körper von zwei armen Mäusen, die am Klebepapier schon längst tot dalagen. 

Was ist der Mensch dass du seiner gedenkst? Die Botschaft hör’ ich wohl, allein mir fehlt der Glaube. Wie kannst du, Natur, so gleichgültig sein, um einen Menschen, meinen Neffen, so allein wie ein Vieh sterben zu lassen? Die Mäuse sind weg; wir meditieren täglich weiter. Das ist aber keine Antwort.

2

Die folgenden furchterregenden Zeile kommen am Ende eines Gedichts von Emily Dickinson über den Tod einer Frau: And then an awful leisure came/ Belief to regulate. Wir sind jetzt in dieser schrecklichen Freizeit mitten drin; etwas Tröstliches wird kommen, dessen sind wir f a s t sicher.

Für die Überlebenden ist die Erkenntnis über die Fragilität und Kurzdauer des menschlihen Lebens in uns noch tiefer eingeprägt. Dunkel ist das Leben, ist der Tod. Nichts zu tun als ein bisschen Freude aus dem Schicksalszwiebel zu zerquetschen:

Rosen auf den Weg gestreut

Und des Harms vergessen!

Eine kleine Spanne Zeit

Ward uns zugemessen.

Man denkt auch an die erste Strophe eines Gedichts von Lorenzo de Medici :

Quant’è bella giovinezza

Che si fugge tuttavia!

Chi vuol esser lieto, sìa:

Di doman non c’è certezza.

Di doman non c’è certezza—wahr, Ranji, allzu verdammt wahr!

 3.

Wir beenden diese kurze Liste von Erinnerungsgedichten mit einem Lieblingsgedicht von Heine:

 

Es Kommt der Tod

Es kommt der Tod : jetzt will ich sagen

Was zu verschweigen ewiglich

Mein Stolz gebot: für dich, für dich,

Es hat mein Herz für dich geschlagen!

  

Der Sarg ist fertig. Sie versenken

Mich in die Gruft. Da hab ich Ruh.

Doch du, doch du, Maria, du

Wirst weinen oft und mein gedenken.

 

Du ringst sogar die schönen Hände—

O tröste dich—Das ist das Los,

Das Menschenlos--was gut und gross

Und schön, das nimmt ein schlechtes Ende.

Alles in diesem Gedicht ist buchstäblich, d.h. biographisch, wahr, und zur selben Zeit auch ästhetisch perfekt. Die Unruhen von 1848, hat Heine gezwungen, Deutshcland zu verlasssen und nach Frankreich zu emigrieren. Leider litt er an tertiäre Syphillis, eine Krankheit, die ihn paralysierte. Das Ende seines Lebens verbrachte er im sogenannten Matrazengrab. Die Frau die ihn besorgte war ihm nicht ebenbürtig; sein Stolz hat ihn gehindert, seine Liebe zu erklären. Das Sterben hat eindlich seine Zunge gelöst. (Leider wartet man oft zu zu lange um erst das zu sagen, was man längst hätte sagen sollen!)

Es ist das Ende des Gedichts, das mich seit Jahrzehnten faziniert: was gut und gross/und schön, das nimmt ein schlechtes Ende. Der Rhythtmus und Sprachmelodie sind perfekt; erhoben am Anfang, erdrückend am Ende. Ich denke an die toten Mäuse, die wir beim Meditieren entdeckten. Mäuse sind nicht ‘gut und gross und schön’—wir sind fast so gleichgültig wie die Natur, wenn eine stirbt. Aber wir sind Menschen, Lebewesen, die lieben. Trotz Hitsongs, selbst die Liebe dauert nicht ewig. Ihr Ende ist furchtbar hart. Nicht zu vergessen, dass Heine seiner Geliebten Trost einfliessen wollte. Was können wir tun als weiter zu leben und weiter zu lieben?

4.

Ranji, ich werde dich niemals vergessen, nie, nie nie!

In Memoriam: Ranjit Jose (1980-2023)

Mozart’s Coronation Concerto (K 537)

is his most frequently performed

piano concerto of all (at least it was

in the nineteenth century--in ours

it is rarely heard—Absurd!)

 

The previous nine ‘Viennese concerti’

(each one of which is a gem) are,

according to most critics, better—

 

A line of exquisite fish pass

before my amazed mind, each

a brilliant rainbow, happy-sad—

 

Who am I to judge what’s best

among God’s dazzling creatures?

 

They also pass. Three years later

Mozart lay in an unmarked grave--

 

His music’s mostly sunny, although

now and then dark clouds cast brief

shadows.  Chiaroscuro, light and dark

prove even bliss doesn’t last. He knew.

 

Despite the recent death of someone dear

I pedal on—upon my stationary bike

while listening to Mozart on YouTube--

For a while I forget Ranji’s gone forever.

 

When younger than Ranjit was when he died,

I visited the cemetery where Mozart lies

in a pauper’s grave. No one knows the exact spot.

 

Once friends and I pass, after a few years

no one will remember us. (So what? Even Mozart

wasn’t music.) Nothing to say now but listen

as post-concerto silence fills the room: then, then,

Something—

                            We shall immerse his ashes

among brilliant, indifferent, Mozartian fish,

and we will sigh, and we will sing.

In Memoriam: Ranjit Jose, 1980-2023

 

1.

I never expected to write this. An old man commemorating the death of a youngish relative, that’s not supposed to happen. It’s supposed to be the other way around. Instead of a little doggy following a brass band, it’s the brass band following an old limping animal with its tongue hanging out.

My nephew, Ranjit Jose, passed away unexpectedly on July 4, 2023. A Spanish proverb states that when one is born, one cries while everyone else smiles; when one dies, the opposite ideally occurs: the dying person smiles while everyone else cries. But I doubt there was a smile on Ranji’s face as he died in a taxi on the way to the hospital in far-away Solomon Islands. Even if fate had allowed him to become old and weary, death came like a whirlwind, picking him up from the ground and removing him from sight forever. Worse, no one held his hand, no one sang to him; he died alone. His guardian angel—if there is one—must have been underground baking bagels when Ranji fell.

We talked with him on the phone the day before he died. He had fallen; a doctor managed his scrapes and bruises and gave him antibiotics. No mention of a head injury. He informed us that the antibiotics had made him ill. He also complained of indigestion. We thought that he would quickly recover from what we thought were minor injuries. No mention of a headache. When he complained of difficulty breathing, he was brought to the doctor's. He died en route to the hospital; it is thought he had suffered a massive heart attack.  It will take some weeks before we get the autopsy report.

When  my wife. Nirmala, gave me the news, I shouted out, “No, No, No!” Then I thought to myself, “Der liebe Gott ist Zufall geworden—Und der Zufall hat kein Mitleid.” Ja, Ja, Ja….Ja; Doch.

 

2.

Enough about Death! Birth and Death are like bookends, definitive borders of the narrative between them.  In Ranji’s case, the black (the color of death) bookend was added far too soon, yet the book of his life is rich and important. Some narratives rival the length of War and Peace, others have far fewer pages, yet, like Kafka’s Metamorphosis, are short, sweet and no less immortal.

I must write at the outset that what I have to say are only a few of my memories. We had a good relationship, but an old man’s view of a much younger man’s life, especially one who lived so very far away for so many years, is by necessity partial and fragmentary. Ranji had many friends; he was gregarious and well loved by many. My son Philip put together photos he gathered from social media. Who are all these smiling people, delighted to be in Ranji’s company?  I will never know.

Yet I feel I knew Ranji very well. After all, we knew each other for the entire, brief period he spent on Earth. I was lucky to know him so well. Blessed are those who mourn? If this is true, and somehow I suspect it is, I am very blessed indeed.

My son Philip and Ranjit were born  a few days apart in September, 1980. The first time I met him was about a year later, when his dear mother Milla, my wife’s sister, came to the United States for a prolonged period of time.

Ranji was a cute kid. I can still see his jet-black hair that curled up at the end like an irrepressible lapel which even a hot iron couldn't keep down for  long. They stayed with us for some time. Ranji was not yet able to walk; Philip, an early walker, taught him how to crawl upstairs, and, with some effort, downstairs as well. My wife and I still live in the same house. So many persons walked up and down those stairs who are no longer with us, namely Nirmala’s mother, my mother, my stepfather and now, my nephew. Those steps will never feel the same.

Milla, after a prolonged stay, returned to India. We visited India every couple of years until we became too old to do so.

I have a vivid memory of Jose, Ranjit’s dad, feeding Ranji beef by hand. He apparently wanted to toughen him up.

Ranji was a sensitive, emotional child who became a sensitive, emotional adult. As a child, he was a bit tearful. Philip loved it when I carried him into the sea; Ranji cried when it was his turn. One day we took a catamaran ride in the sea. Ranji was terrified and howled the whole time. But he did it.

Fast forward many years. Ranji is now graduating college, an event celebrated in Madison Square Garden. Nirmala and I, in loco parentis, beamed with pride. I kept on taking pictures of him as he sat next to a Black friend. “Ranjit, who is that white dude who keeps on taking your picture?” he asked. “He’s my uncle,” Ranji replied. His friend looked as astonished as many African Americans would be a few years later, when Barack Obama became our first Black president.

At this time in his life, Ranji lived in Queens, with an artsy group of roommates. One was an Israeli named Nimrod, who was nicknamed Nimmy. (Later, Ranji told me, he sang naked in an off-off Broadway review,) Another roommate was a soprano. Ranji, my wife and I attended a performance in Baltimore of Lucia di Lamermoor; Ranji’s roommate sang the title role. She was the hit of the performance, but was no Joan Sutherland. The last  time Ranji mentioned her she was working in a bank.

I remember giving him a driving lesson, during one of his stays with us. I told him, “If you stop at the green and go at the red, pretty soon we’d both be dead!” Well, he laughed. He was a good student.

He was a good nephew; he was a good man.  He was very close to his mother. He cried and cried when he found out that she had terminal cancer. She was an English professor; they read Eliot together as Milla lay dying.

I could relate many other anecdotes regarding Ranji, and others could relate many different anecdotes as well. Suffice it to say, that we loved him and will miss him very much.

Another relative, my brother-in-law, Sudhir, who was very close to Ranji, wrote to me, after Ranji’s death, that ‘grief is a stone in the heart.’ Yes, but we, while remembering Ranji, must keep together lest the stone shatter and we die of emboli. Auden wrote, ‘We must love one another or die.” How true!

Rest in Peace; Ranji, Ranji, as long as we live, we will miss you, good-bye.

A Supremely Immoral Decision

Batting for bigotry. conservative members of the Supreme Court scored a victory on Friday, June 30, 2023; they decided that a Colorado web designer had the right under the First Amendment to deny services fo same-sex couples. Did the designer defend her views by stating that servicing gays conflicted with her religious faith? You betcha. Let us examine that stance more closely.

First, let’s agree that conservative judge Gorsuch has a point when he asserts that the government cannot force an individual to express views contrary to her conscience. But what about liberal judge Sotomayor’s point that this ruling could open a can of worms; one or more of these worms could be used to hook justice and send it flapping on dry land like a reeled-in fish. Colorado, after all, forbids discrimination by any business open to the public. What if the designer believed that accepting an interracial couple was against her conscience? In her vociferous dissent, Judge Sotomayor quoted a 1964 Supreme Court decision that asserted that motels and hotels had no right to refuse Black guests. Protecting the rights of one person while ignoring the rights of  others is hardly fair.

The designer said that servicing same-sex couples violated her rights to the free exercise of religion. I consider that view to be blasphemous. Why? I will now explain why I am convinced.s

Earth has been around for a long time (4 ½ billion years; life on Earth has been around for a long time as well (3 ½ billion years). Life was very primitive for a long time, until multicellular organisms appeared much later, during what has been called The Cambrian Explosion ( approximately half a billion  years ago). Compared to the time life has existed on Earth, human beings are relative  newcomers on the planet—compared to a single lifespan, our species ha been on the planet for a long time as well. Human history has existed for six thousand years or so; the last major cognitive development in the human brain is estimated to have occurred 100,000 years ago. Humans have been hunter gatherers for over 90% of this time; and eons before that as well, albeit in more primitive form. (Many human characteristics, such as the Fight or Flight response, are anachronistic today; genetic evolution is, however, slow).

There is evidence of in-group cooperation; analysis of remains indicate that pre-historical people even took care of those who were handicapped. Cooperation between groups, however, was another matter. Competition for resources was fierce; members of other groups, vying for the same resources, easily became enemies. There is much evidence of ‘war wounds’ on the bones of pre-historic hunter gatherers.  Homo homini lupus, man is wolf to man, thus has a long pre-history as well. Except that man was wolf to humans in other hunter gathering groups.

Thus conflict and war are part of our genetic heritage as well. (If you don’t believe me, pick up and read a newspaper.)

A milestone happened in our species when humans began to settle down in agricultural communities. Civilization, with its many advantages, as well as some negative  aspects, began!

Something else began as well. With the advent of the written word, religion underwent a major change. Eventually the very core of religion became written down: that we should love our neighbor as ourselves. This was truly revolutionary.

This doctrine needed to evolve before it became what we know it to be today. For instance, the formulation in Leviticus; the ‘neighbor’ was first interpreted to be a member of one’s ethnic group. Only later, in the Talmud, was the neighbor defined to include the stranger. We are  thus commanded to love not only members of the ingroup, but members of the outgroup as well.

All major religions have a version of loving one’s neighbor, which included the stranger, the foreigner, those that are different.  Since human beings are still tribal by nature after the long period of existing as hunter gatherers, this takes some effort. It takes such an effort that the commandment remains largely unfulfilled today.

Now let us return to the Supreme Court decision. A young lady said she must refuse, on the basis of her religion, to provide services, which are open to the public, to a same-sex couple. She might be able to hide behind the First Amendment for protection, but not, I am certain, behind religion.

If it has been demonstrated that love between members of the same sex is possible—and the evidence is incontrovertible; same-sex couples fall under the rubric, ‘stranger’ in the commandment. If we are talking about love, who is she to judge? Ditto for the Supreme Court judges.

God is silent. I hold that the young lady is using God as a dummy to express her prejudices. This I call ‘folk religion' not religion. To hide behind religion is, in this case, blasphemous, since it goes against the core of all religions

The Supreme Court decision is, therefore,  an immoral one. A long history of discrimination might make many persons uncomfortable regarding same-sex unions, but the commandment demands that we leave our comfort zone and at least realize that objection to same-sex unions cannot be justified on the basis of religion. The conclusion of the Court opens the door to open discrimination, as mentioned previously.

Things are bad enough. The Supreme Court has just made matters worse.

Centuries ago, Augustine asserted, “Love, and do what you want.”  Good advice! (Unless, apparently, if the lover requests services from a blasphemous bigot).

Refusing services to a same-sex couple on the basis of religion is like criticizing an individual photon for being ‘lost in the stars’. Ridiculous!