In the internet age, instant reaction seems to be mandatory. Unfortunately, I found out about Tony Jesudasan’s death after a day. Too late for a proper obituary which had already been written by better pens. In my case, perhaps one need not call it an obit, but a peep into the by-lanes of nostalgia. So, this one is not so much about Tony’s unusual career in New Delhi and more about one’s parting from a classmate and a friend of fifty-five years. I am hoping that anyone who has recently lost an old friend will relate to my anecdotage. It is truly a strange irony of destiny: the last time Tony and I spoke, we ended our conversation with the rather dismal statement that “we all were in the departure lounge”. This feeling comes over seventy-year-old persons.
It was 1968, in what was then called Madras, a hot and humid city, a relative backwater when compared to revolutionary Calcutta, sarkari Delhi, or affluent Bombay. Tony and I entered the BSc Chemistry class at Loyola College at the same time. I had come from a reasonable day school in Madras. Tony came from a posh boarding school in Mussoorie.
We discovered a passable love for the periodic table, Avogadro’s number and Grignard reagents. But most of the time, we sat in adjacent seats and exchanged notes about poetry. Tony introduced me to Francis Thompson and what it meant to write religious poetry in the English language. (“Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest, I am He, whom thou seekest”)
Tony had written a brilliant piece on “the literary value of the Psalms”, which argued that the Psalms were ideal reading, especially for non-religious persons! A typical contrarian Tony view. I introduced Tony to T S Eliot. I thought I was an expert on Eliot. Tony surprised me one day by holding forth on how important the Emmaus theme was in The Waste Land.
Tony was not impressed with my undergraduate flirtations with Marxism and Leftist rhetoric. He was primarily concerned with the aesthetics of poetry and music. He introduced me to Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. It was in his hostel room that I first listened to a vinyl record of Cohen singing Suzanne. We were both in love with the image of ‘tea and oranges that come all the way from China’. Whenever I have thought of Tony, I have always remembered Cohen’s short poem: With Annie gone, whose eyes to compare with the morning sun? Not that I did compare, But I do compare. Now that she’s gone.
Tony owned a very nice guitar. He strummed on it, and he sang passably. Another source of great comfort to us was Lawrence Durrell’s ribald poem on “the good Lord Nelson” — Now stiff on a pillar with a phallic air, Nelson stylites in Trafalgar Square.
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A language of our own
Tony came from the north and his Hindi was very good. My Hindi was not so great. We both decided to opt for German as our “second language”. Loyola was the only college in the university which offered this option. Our German professor Bechtloff introduced us to Keller and Kafka. Every time Tony and I had an argument, we always ended the session with ‘Jemand musste Josef K. verleumdet haben’ (Somebody must have made a false accusation against Joseph K) — the famous opening line of Kafka’s Der Prozess (The Trial). Tony and I quarreled and gently maligned each other directly and not anonymously.
Coming back to Tony’s Hindi, sitting in our class during an organic chemistry lecture (I don’t know how or why I remember that specific subject!), he wrote out a half-Hindi, half-English poem using green ink on the rape of Bangladeshis. In Tony’s view, the rivers Padma and Meghna were drenched in lahu (blood) and all of us spectators were wrestling with our nabhis (navels) in helplessness and possibly cynicism.
We exchanged stories about our first girlfriends. The stories were mainly about platonic intimacy and unrequited love as the women preferred other men. Years later as both our “first girlfriends” died, Tony and I called each other up and consoled ourselves. The consolations were not easy. The talk was about pieces of driftwood floating together and then floating apart.
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Life after college
Like J Krishnamurti, Tony had a horror of examinations. He fumbled and stumbled in our last year and went through a crisis. He came out stronger and somehow more prosaic and less verse-driven in his outlook on life. After college, Tony and I drifted apart physically. I never got to live in Delhi which became his home. He moved away from his mother’s place in Paharganj and rented a barsati, somewhere in south Delhi, where I did manage to visit him occasionally.
Tony became friends with my father, who lived in Delhi. My father just “loved” Tony. He knew that the way to the old man’s heart was through gifts of books by Mark Twain, Fredrick Turner and William Faulkner.
Late in life, Tony found happiness in a delightfully romantic marriage. The mutual love of Parul and Tony was palpable. I, for one, was so happy that the tortured Psalm reader had found a safe haven, where the divine shepherd had finally given him his repose.
Tony was very concerned about the fact that he had become a father at a late age. Now, his college-going daughter will have to live with bittersweet memories. Not easy — but such are the whims of destiny. By the standards of 2023, seventy-one is a tad too early to die. It’s the modern-day alpa-aayu (short life span). But a life of fever-pointed aesthetic sensibility is something to celebrate, not just mourn.
Others may write about Tony’s PR skills, his intimate knowledge of the political undercurrents in Delhi, his corporate wanderings. I just remember my friend sitting under the ceiling fan in a chemistry class and writing poetry. Tony: I too am in the departure lounge and hope to see you soon and revisit our illicit college trysts with Old Monk rum.
Jaithirth Rao is a retired businessperson who lives in Mumbai. Views are personal.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)