Last week, I went to see the headmaster of the school that I went as kid in late 70s. He’s pushing 90 now. This short and swift man in a shape hiding age, smartly dressed as a matter of routine, was terror of a man in those days. A glimpse of him on the school premises would chill the bone of even the cockiest and cheekiest, forget about the herd of lamb and sheep shaking in their boots and wetting pants. We’d cower in our seats if he happened to walk into the classroom and cringe like a meek lamb as he walked past us. One never knows whose hand was itching for his rod or who is goanna get welts on his back. His words were not any the less harsh, like a villain giving an earful to his victim before pulling trigger of his gun. He’d sparingly use his rod, wielding it though. He believed in a disciplined approach to education which means, spare the rod spoil the child.

As a kid, my image of him was a cold, tough-looking man, made of sterner stuff, a sinister face, bereft of humor, not having a bone of compassion in body, a badass. During my seven-odd years back and forth the ‘shrine of learning’, I never saw him revealing row of teeth.  He always took a tough line on discipline breaker.

I went to see him after a gap of nearly 30 years, last week, spent two good hours with him.  No wonder he’s now a man of ripe old age, decrepit, lonely in the family, sagging facial skins, sinking spirit, a timid voice, straining ears to catch what I was saying, a somber looking desolate thing.

In his twilight years he’s lonely, all by himself, away from and yearning for the town he grew up, like a dethroned king driven into exile, the town where he ruled a school ruthlessly as headmaster for 30 years or so, built a reputation, earned respect, made quite a name for himself, figured among top echelon of society, headed charities and organizations after retiring from school. The merciless age of him has sent all his wealth and influence down the drain. Like a king living a pauper!

The ‘somebody’ of yesterday is ‘nobody’ today, living away from his deserted, derelict home where his mind and heart still live, away from the town that sings his paean, away from people who bowed him in veneration, away from everything that he is psychically and emotionally attached to, only to throw himself on the mercy of his son, living in isolation in a town where nobody bothers to recognize how many feathers he’s carrying on his cap, or trophies under his belt.

The first thing I did soon after settling myself on a lounge chair before him was to get down to plumbing his psyche and sort of x-raying the state of his mind, or rather the whole of his being. What I was able to gather about him was that he was far from settled for the ‘life’ he’s living. He was feeling empty deep down. I figured out that his mind, or all that come into play in giving him thoughts, was not in sync with the rest of him. There was, I guess, a constant conflict going on in him taxing on his mental as well as physical health. I assumed that his mind was making shrill demands from an old, decrepit body that was incapable of delivering it, and hence, only deepening the void in him.

I decided then and there that I’d work the conversation with him around things that make him happy and then work jokes and anecdotes into it to amuse him.

I began by telling him that he was an absolute terror in those days.  His withered lips creased into ghost of a smile. His response to it was that, “If I weren’t what you think I were, you wouldn’t have been living a life that you are living.”

I gave him a gleeful laugh of approval hiding my noisy thoughts from him screaming out in my head that it was this badass who hammered ‘a way of life’ into me by instilling loads of fear into my head, a life which I always fought to defend than to detest. That way I carried crushing loads of ‘this life’ for quite long like someone carrying a corpse of a loved one refusing to part with it. I couldn’t throw ‘the life’ off me, lest I’d end up being ‘empty nothing’.  I dreaded being reduced to ‘nobody’ or ‘empty nothing’ cause I was made into ‘somebody’ a ‘real something’ and I foolishly clung to it.

Anyway, I did give him a good laugh. He revealed row of teeth on and off every now and then throughout the course of conversation. He laughed like drain at few events and anecdotes I picked from my memory deposits. I was successful in transporting him to the school days and living as the headmaster that rejuvenated him for a short while and lifted his dwindling spirit sending a flush of joy across his face.

And then, I touched the sore point. I asked him what his take is on his own life or the state of existence he is in now. His smile died away, a gloom fell on his face, looked pensively at the leg of my chair unseeingly, spoke after a pause, “Living a secluded life like an alien in a foreign land, feeling cut off, feel like going back to the world I created and lived this far. The recurring memories of those days rob me off sleep.”

To this I responded, “You have to go. Time is close. It is good for you to live all by yourself, cut-off, alienated from the world you created, secluded and isolated. You have no way but to accept and appreciate seclusion and isolation, enjoy the solitude, and allow all the bonds of yesterday crumble away. It is a wonderful opportunity to do away with all the attachments by and by, thereby pave the path with ‘empty nothing’ for the final journey. Slip into a different state while what you call your consciousness is miles from it.”

The headmaster shook head. I bid him adieu. He kept staring at me emptily as I walked away.