Remembering Jonas Thomas

New buds blossom, the old leaves shrivel and fall to consummate the circle. The circle of life. They begin as tender buds. Whispering with the winds. Later they acquire the brightest green to shimmer in the sun; hurting the eyes. At last, they grow yellow, brown and tremble at the slightest breeze. Then they fall. That fall makes way for the new. It goes on, the circle of life. Each one of us falls behind this cycle. Blindly following its wake, knowing perfectly well that at the end of the long day we must retire. Submit ourselves to a dark unknown truth. Does the leaf know that the fall is near? Do we comprehend that death is near? Rather, do we wait for It.? I do not, but here is the story of somebody who I think was born to die.

I do not like to remember him the way I first saw him. I saw a full sleeve arm and a vague figure working behind some unknown strange machines, occasionally pelting out loud comments. I do not want to conjure that amorphous picture when I think of him. I would like to borrow a colleague’s left brain for a while and search for a certain memory. The memory of how he first saw him. A man in his ramshackled Lambretta scooter, flying into the rain with a cigarette between his lips. Drenched fully in the downpour. I have added colors to my borrowed vision. My minds palette sees it in a blue light. Undeterred, in the bluish night of downpour, drenched in the blue raindrops, in a blue full sleeved shirt. I like to remember him thus. Remembering Jonas Thomas.

Jonas or Jonasettan as I call him was the online editor with kairali Tv, in Kochi.A very creative person always game for innovative ideas. I have heard several tales about Jonas' creative outputs and toil during the glorious good old days of the television network.Tales told by many a tongue. I wish I could have met him then, basking in his crowning glory. All I could see and make out was a little less than the last two years of his life.

The first time I met him I was fresh from college into my first working environment and was feeling quite small in front of all the big sharks. I was assigned to help him in the PCR(production control room) and hiding my true nature, I tried to put up a very meek facade before him. It really worked because months later he told me “You were so sweet in those first weeks. Very cute and docile. I did not know that you were such a brat!" I think I got to know him more through our lunch sessions. We used to lunch together. A big group in a bigger circle and Jonas was mainly in limelight during these informal luncheons. Well...his soaring demand was only due to the awesome beef curry which was an indispensable part of his lunchbox. Myself being an ardent gourmet of the meat which most Hindus abhor, naturally was lured into the circle like how the moon draws the tide. Many such lunches and many a days later I think we fell into a close camaraderie. The nurturing hands also came in the form of another ritual, “going for a glass of lime juice from the nearby soda shack" which took place piously every evening. He was one of my close associates by then.Slowly he started revealing more about him. I realized as each day unfurled that he was one of the queerest persons I had ever met. He hadn't fallen in love till date (he was 33), he was on the lookout for a prospective bride who wouldn't want to work and who would bring him an enormous dowry (well, this was before the recession hit of course), he only wore full sleeve shirts, he always had to smother his countable number of hairs in some hair gel, and that he always reeked of alcohol and cigarette smoke.

He was addicted to alcohol. I do not know from when, but by the time I had met him a large part of his earnings were spent daily at the bar. A lot of people had warned him about this including me, but his reply was always nonchalant. He would say that anyhow one had to die at some point and hence why would one bother too much about life. This was always his attitude. Totally without a care in the world. Another fact of interest which I always noticed was his ego. A largely inflated pride which he only did put down in front of a very few people he really cared about. On one hand he was this "don't care”, slightly egoist, and in my words a partial MCP.But on the other hand he was this wonderful hard working, extremely talented technician. He was also a very caring generous person whose behavior I believe was misconstrued by many. He rarely praised anybody for the good efforts they did. His eyes were always for spotting errors. But once after I had hosted a show real bad and had to bear the brunt of others, he came up to a depressed me and said “You have it in you.Don't bother about what the others are telling you. Your first performance was simply brilliant.” That was him. Never ever heard him complement me on anything .But his words then was the best of them all.

Months passed. With me hogging his beef curry regularly and going for tea and snacks exercises. In the middle of all this I came to know about his fascination for many songs and movies. Most of them which talked about despair or some lost love. Out of them a particular song from the movie Aham which always haunted him. We also had our list of favorites among album songs. We had a song that we liked. It also told the tale of a long lost love. It had this beautiful violin piece and words which we used to sing.

Days passed and she came in. As an intern, again assigned like many interns to assist Jonas. She wasn't an exceptional beauty or charmer. A simple girl who brought the last nail down on his coffin. The nail of unrequieted love. The man who had never fallen in love till date was finally smitten by the bug that had caused many a big tree to fall. Maybe it was all because of us. All the harmless "pulling the leg” and making fun must have sowed romantically aligned ideas in his barren heart. And Jonas as he was, wasn’t human enough to accept that love cannot be bought. He could not scale the possibility of a person not loving him back. Months of reasoning, coaxing and persuation by colleagues and family could not douse the agony in him. She could not stand it as well. These ravings of love. She left without a trail. I still remember his tears as I told him that being loved back does not happen to everyone. He could never accept the fact that she could never love him. I still see his teary eyes and a weary face asking me quite innocently “but why can't she love me?”I never had an answer to that. It was beyond my human horizons to explain such a complex theory of the heart and soul. And he emerged a la Devdas.

I soon grew tired of these exercises. Trying hard to explain to him the pros and cons of this strange phenomenon called love. Trying to stop him from turning insane. I was never the angel who could stand his tantrums and stupours.Like all the others i started distancing him. Avoiding him to a certain extent. We all had our reasons. From the amount of unreturned money given to him from time to time, to the constant aura of alcohol he carried around with him, we were all irritated. Irritated at a man who was not human enough to worry about money or his future and move on with life.The final straw came with his hallucinations. He started hallucinating that the people in the office were plotting against him. He ranted like a madman in the middle of the night on the phone to stop the telecasts .Back from the hospital he still had doubts. One day as I was talking to him he asked me “Din't you sit with the other guys and connive against me.?” Aghast, I asked him,” Are you mad?" He said, “But I clearly saw you sitting with the others ,making plans to fire me from here." That was when I realized that he was slowly tight rope walking across that thin line. The thin line between sanity.The thin line between us and them.....

A whole lot of events followed, which I remember vaguely through a veil of misty memory. A group from the office slyly taking him to the de- addiction centre pretending they were going for a recce.His months there having no effect on him but an increased fervor of alcohol intake as he came out of it. Then I beleive came the jaundice part. The jaundice and the liver condition worsened.By then I had left my office and moved to Chennai without even telling him a proper goodbye. I have never called him after that.

On February 13th, 2009 he passed away. Once a long time ago, when we passed by his house for a shoot he had shown me his church and told me “This will be where i'll be laid when i die. You should come and see me then.” I flew on my vision and imagined him lying there in a coffin in his best suit, finally contented .His favorite violin piece from the album would play in the background, and through his unshed tears ill know that hes happy and sated. The lines went,"Do these dewdrops understand my agony? Do these tears understand my pain?"

I am sure now they will not have to know.Coz you are away. In another realm of the unknown. You live to be a profile in my friend's list, you live to be a song I hear, you live to be a memory I share...But you will never cease to live. You shall always remain with us.As the man in his full sleeved shirt with an ever lit cigarette between his lips ,that lived to cement the words of that famous Bard of Avon.

"Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. "