The Hindu (Thiruvananthapuram)
Perfectly normal
Our concerns with normalcy persist as we cross every milestone in life
This happened on April 14, 1950. I was about 18. It was a hot summer day in Madras (present day Chennai). My parents, elder brother, younger brother, and I were sitting on our terrace. My mother had poured buckets of water in the evening, so that the terrace would cool down by dinner time. Amma had prepared a potful of curd rice for dinner.
Those days it was common in all households to sit in a circle on the terrace floor (dining tables were unheard of back then). Amma would put a ball of curd rice in our outstretched palms, by turns.
That day too this happy dinner ritual was going on, when suddenly I saw a bright dazzling light go up to the sky! The others could not see it because they had their backs to the direction from where this occurred.
When I exclaimed and pointed to what I had witnessed, my father said, “It must be some fireworks going on.” But those days, except on Deepavali and Karthika Purnima, nobody lit fireworks. We discussed this for some time but did not know what it was.
Next morning, when my father opened The Hindu, there it was in bold letters, “A meteor of unusually big size and brilliance was seen in the sky exactly at the time when
Bhagwan Sri Ramana attained Videha Mukthi. The devotees gathered at Ramana Maharishi’s Ashram were thrilled by the sight of the phenomenon, and its coincidence with the sage’s passing away.”
I have read that when Saint Tyagaraja shed his mortal coils, thousands of people saw a brilliant divine Jyothi going up in the sky; he died nearly two centuries ago. This, it is believed, happens when divine souls shed their lives and merge with the Lord. I feel I was blessed to see this phenomenon.
In September 1989, I was working as subdivisional police officer at Mangrol in Junagadh district of Gujarat. The Superintendent of Police, Surinder Kumar, one day, called me to discuss the security arrangements for the annual Kharwa fair at a coastal village in my subdivision.
Mr. Kumar told me that traditionally, there was a lot of drunken revelry at the fair and the participants also indulged in gambling. Whenever the police tried to stop it, the merrymakers clashed with them resulting in
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If I were given a chance to choose the most enduring word of all time, I would zero in on ‘normal’. It might sound unremarkable but in our chaotic world, normal has come to mean the absence of conflicts, uncertainty, disease, deprivation, and all other irritants that affect the smooth passage of life. In fact, it is a word we crave to hear at every stage of life, from childhood to old age, whether it is about health, wealth, education, or relationships.
Once a baby is born, the first query invariably is whether it is a normal delivery, and if the mother and child are in proper health. Next, it is about the Apgar score — a screening test done to find out about the newborn’s overall physical condition. The relief that ensues the moment the doctor says “Everything’s normal!” is immeasurable. With the passage of time, similar scenes are bound to repeat themselves when one is in need of medical care due to illhealth or advancing years. Then, it is about blood pressure, glucose level, and all the other parameters that ought to be normal, that is, within the reference range.
Our concerns with normalcy persist as we cross every milestone in life, from nursery to school, college, and career. In reality, not many
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parents can reconcile themselves to the word ‘normal’, when it comes to mean ‘average’ as far as their wards are concerned. Ironically, their initial concern for the normal functioning of a child soon turns into a passion to fulfil their dreams through them. Hence, children wilt under parental pressure.
By and by, as we step into the material world of jobs or business, our mind is focused on income and the visible trappings of success. Here of course, many of us would love to have the prefix ‘ab’ to the word normal – as we look for an exceptional gain in