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FREE FALL AND OTHER FOLLIES
Title of the book: “FREE FALL AND OTHER FOLLIES”
Author: Mrs.Revathy Gopal
Published in 1999 at Mumbai; 160 pages
Summary by Dr.V.S.Gopalakrishnan
From her young years, Revathy Gopal, who passed away on 7 March 2007 at the age of 59 from cancer, had a remarkable flair and penchant for writing, imbued with acute sensitivity, prolific imagination and great observational skills. Her writings attained maturity in the 1990s as she cleared her Master’s and M.Phil. in English literature. She was a voracious reader from childhood, and books were the staple food that she survived upon.
This book “Free Fall and Other Follies” is a collection of her columns in various journals and newspapers spread over many years. In the Foreword, Rahul Singh, an acknowledged writer and son of Khushwant Singh “the Great”, has compared the everlasting quality of Revathy’s articles to the famed Reader’s Digest. In “Acknowledgements”, Revathy states “There is always a touch of vanity in making sure that one person’s thoughts and observations DO NOT FADE INTO THE GOOD NIGHT”. Was that an early premonition of her impending destiny? Revathy has had a greater name as a poet than as a prose writer, and her emotions, fears and sensitivities generously spilled over into her prose.
The first article in the book is about the potbellied God, one of the world’s earliest three dimensional cartoon creations, that is universally loved in India. Revathy was never an ardent worshipper but exulted in myths and mythologies. In her article on Bombay, she makes a dig at her poet-peers: “The city’s poets believe in an agonizing realism. Every leper, every prostitute, the existential realities of the streets have been immortalized.”
In another article the author articulates thus, “Soft, comfortable ghettos which are what our Indian enclaves really are, with a ‘technologically superior, but morally sick society’ without?” A victim of arranged marriage to this reviewer herself, she lambasts at another place, “..arranging our children’s marriages is a tribal rite that is like a vote of no-confidence in their ability to handle their own affairs.”
In her essay on Coffee, Revathy pays an indirect tribute to this reviewer: “As some one I know who has a real gift for turning a phrase, remarks, ‘what one needs is a sanity napkin, to live in this city!’ ” The ‘sanity napkin’ is from one of my poems!
The article “ A Pilgrim’s Progress From Doubt to Faith” analyses aspects of the Hindu faith and religion. The author confesses at one place, “On the whole religion had become something I was better off without”, and yet at another place she evinces admiration for the acolytes, “Whether it is merely the reaching back to an atavistic past, or the conditioned reflex of one’s inherited responses, one is fairly swept way. I look at the men and women around me, faces irradiated with wonder and joy, unselfconscious and unquestioning, and begin to understand”.
“An Asana a Day keeps Old age at bay” is an account of the author’s personal excursion into Yoga. The author states, “Long years of inertia have made me basically passive, even hostile to prolonged physical exertion; I feel now that a great gust of fresh air has blown into my life, and I look ahead to each class with excitement and anticipation. Each class sees me just that tiny bit more flexible, apparent perhaps to no one but myself. Just last week, I was able to perform the ‘sarvangasana’ without help from Pheroza, and from there quite naturally to the ‘haalasana’. I have not had such a sense of achievement in years.” Alas, yoga is no bulwark against cancer and when the hospital messes up the treatment right from the beginning there hangs a sad death sentence.
The author was struck by Mel Gibson in “Braveheart”, rather it is more correct to say that by the movie itself, and there is an article called “Of Legendary Heroes and Mere Mortals in a Cinema Hall”. A striking view is vented out here: “I have a theory that love of country and heroism is bred in wilderness, and not in cities”.
The author’s agony at the manner of the passing away of her dear father is very movingly portrayed in an essay that is very sensitively written. This essay was concluded thus: “The sooner we accept that we will live only in the genes we pass on to our children, the sooner we can begin to celebrate the miracle of life.”
The intellectual woman’s ( the author’s) poor travails as a shop assistant in Paris merely for some ‘sous’ is well described in “Bird of Passage”. The saving grace was the thrill of meeting Liv Ullman and Nureyev (separately, of course).
Revathy’s versatility in cooking emerges in her articles about ‘rasam’ and ‘dosas’. The book contains many other fascinating articles on a very wide variety of ever-interesting subjects.
Anyone interested in knowing India in all its kaleidoscopic aspects will find in this book all that makes reading a veritable pleasure.
Review by Dr.V.S.Gopalakrishnan
Published: October 04, 2007
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