A Platonic affair

He was the teacher, and she his student. When she was introduced to him for the first time, she was a shy girl, perhaps a bit coy. The girl was reportedly a leader among the girls, apart from being an accomplished artist and an avid student. So he found it a bit strange that she was also shy. Or, perhaps she was coy before him only? No, that was unlikely. After all, there was a generational gap between them. So he dismissed that possibility out of his mind.

It was a residential academic set-up, with teachers and students living in the campus. This gave the students plenty of time and opportunity for interaction with the teachers and to learn not only from the lecture sessions but also directly from the mouth of the teachers through personal discussions. Students by and large made use of this opportunity. New students would begin their interaction with the teachers with some natural timidity, but eventually they would find their comfort level with them.

In the case of Shiny, her initial shyness in approaching Professor Raj was eventually replaced by a quiet confidence in him. And as she came closer to him with the passage of time, he was convinced of her sincerity and seriousness in her academic pursuit. She would often approach him with the right kind of doubts and questions on the lessons he had taught in the classroom. Students would customarily keep some distance from their teachers even in such residential campuses especially if the teachers were of opposite gender. But Shiny was of a different make-up. She was not hesitant to approach Professor Raj whenever doubts assailed her mind. As a matter of fact, she had questions surfacing in her mind all the time; and those questions were not of a bookish nature; they were intelligent questions; they had originality and a character of their own. And that meant she had a personality of her own, distinct from the generality of the students. And the Professor used to say that doubts were symptomatic of genuine knowledge; doubts came only from minds hungry for knowledge.

Student turns faculty

It was a coincidence that, after her postgraduate studies and marriage, she joined her alma mater as a teacher.

Her day one in teaching career was marked by a minor accident. She and her husband were alighting from the bus at the College gate that morning. In his effort to steady her from a possible fall, he himself slipped from the footboard of the bus and sustained a foot injury. He had first aid from the nearby nursing home, but was advised not to exert his foot for a while. So he rested there, and she proceeded to the campus without him.

The first thing she did on arrival at the campus was to seek the blessings of Professor Raj. As she bowed before the guru, he noticed that she was trying hard to hold back her tears. From now on, the Professor and his sishya would have a new equation; they were colleagues from now.

Soon, Shiny shifted to the campus as required of her. The campus was on the outskirts of the city, not far from the airport. It was a picturesque site, sprawling over some four hundred acres of land gifted by the British Governor. Once a reserve forest, bulk of its area was still covered with natural forest.  The developed area extended over some forty acres, accommodating the several departments of the College, its well equipped auditorium, student hostels and residential quarters for the faculty and non-teaching staff, besides an indoor stadium and a few playgrounds and play courts. There was also a chapel in the premises. Its several well laid-out and well maintained gardens were a pride of the College.

There was a web of jogging trails winding around the buildings and the gardens. These trails had several narrow extensions in the form of footpaths disappearing into the forest. A casual look at them would convince any one that these footpaths were rarely used. Professor Raj once took it upon himself as an adventure to follow one of these footpaths. His exploration eventually took him to a brook deep inside the forest, which he easily crossed over; from there he moved on and passed through the narrow gaps in some of the hills in the area. These hills were the high points in the campus, from where one could gaze over the city and the airport below. The Professor found it an ideal spot for meditation and spiritual regeneration. Since then, he would often visit the place and spend some of his evenings on one of the rocks there, surveying the vast sky over him and the lighted city below. This high point had given him many of his inspirations and ideas.

A friendship develops

One Sunday evening, the Professor was leisurely watching the descending flight of an airplane that was about to land at the airport. His solitary preoccupation was abruptly broken by the sound of someone approaching from behind. Startled, he turned around. It was none other than Shiny! She too appeared startled on seeing him there. It was the first time that she had come to this spot. She agreed with the Professor that, hidden away from the campus buildings and unseen to any one there, and exposed to the sky, this place was ideal for solitude and meditation. It looked a world apart, “far from the madding crowd” as phrased by Thomas Gray and given wide circulation by later novelist Thomas Hardy. She regretted she had not thought of exploring the forest area during her student days. There they sat together, in each other’s company, forgetful of place and time. There they discussed an array of subjects, ranging from philosophy and poetry to science and politics, oblivious of the passing time. They sat there in their twosome world till dusk. And that was the beginning of a warm, personal relationship between them.  They would meet there over and over again. It was a friendship free from guilt. They could look into each other’s eyes for long without embarrassment or troubled conscience; it was a mature relationship between two human beings notwithstanding their age difference.

On one such occasion when they were together, he declared to her that they were in a kind of platonic love with each other. She said she had often wondered about the mystery and depth of this nebulous concept and asked him what it really meant. The Professor said, “It means a pure, spiritual affection, subsisting between persons of opposite gender, unmixed with carnal desires, and regarding the mind only and its excellences”. “Oh! Then, I agree with you. We are in love, devoid of any non-intellectual nuances to it.” He explained to her that this kind of love was advocated by philosopher Plato in the fourth century before Christ, and hence the name “platonic love”. And they sat there together with a new confidence and a new boldness, with a new joy and a new freedom.

One evening they sighted a huge peacock on top of a nearby hillock. It sat there motionless, in a tranquil spirit, as if in meditation. Shiny said with a twinkle in her eyes that the peacock was a good omen. The bird was sighted on several more occasions, and each time they saw it, there was much rejoicing between them.

On another occasion a nightingale sang. Shiny remembered John Keats’ famous lyrical poem, “Ode to a nightingale”. There was much discussion. That led them on to discuss another beautiful poem of the same poet, equally famous, named “Ode to a Grecian Urn”. The Professor explained that “urn” meant a vessel, a vase, a container. Urns were in use in ancient Greece for various purposes. Mostly they were used for decorative purposes in drawing rooms. They were also used as depositories for the ashes of the mortal remains of royal personages. Often huge urns containing royal ashes would be hoisted on exquisitely wrought pedestals reverentially placed on altars in royal temples. Such urns would be made of special kinds of porcelain decorated with beautiful paintings and frescos. Several such ancient Greek urns had been excavated in recent times, and the best of urns with undamaged paintings on them had been auctioned in the auction houses in London and Paris for hefty sums, ranging over millions of dollars apiece!

Keats might have seen one such urn on his visit to Greece. The exquisitely beautiful paintings covering that urn probably inspired him to write this lyrical poem. “And, as you very well know, ‘Ode’ is a kind of lyrical poem”.

“Yes, yes”, Shiny enthusiastically responded, “as a student I had learnt it from you, and I had memorized for exam purpose that an Ode meant a lyrical poem, usually of a serious or meditative nature, and having an elevated style and a formal structure, expressive of exalted emotion.”

“Well said, Shiny. Here, in this case, the poet sees a picture on the urn, depicting youngsters deliriously singing with pipe instruments, like flute for instance. The poet can see them singing, but can’t hear their music. So he says,

‘Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on’…”

“Let us also join with Keats and say, ‘You go on playing your pipes… forever … and ever … time without end’…” Professor said.

Then there was the painting depicting a pair of happy young lovers, a handsome youngster chasing a beautiful nymph. The poet says,

‘Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal -yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!’

The lovers would go on merrily chasing forever, without ever aging, eternally within hand’s reach of each other, yet unable to catch. She will never fade, his ardor will never cool, and their love will forever be alive.

Shiny said, “They are chasing; they will go on chasing till the end of time; yet they will never possess each other. In a way, that is better. Chasing is more pleasurable and joyful than possession!”

Confusion about the relationship

The Professor would retire soon. One Sunday evening, he took his esteemed guest, a retired Vice Chancellor, for a walk through the forest. They reached the hilltop. There they sat for a while. Prof Raj casually said, he would often sit there and enjoy the virgin air in the company of an intelligent and mature girl who was once his student and now a colleague. Dr Saxena was aghast. “It is a mystery to me that you have escaped detection by others in the campus for so long. Had anyone seen you here with the girl too often, it would have created the scandal of the year!”

“No, Dr Saxena, our relationship is pure.”

“Pure? What is pure? There is no relationship that is pure or impure. You know that very well. She is a woman today. And you are a man. Age difference is immaterial. Are you not both physically capable of joining together as man and woman and begetting children? …. So, don’t tell me all this bullshit. But, what is worrisome is that, if you continue in this habit, you are running the grave risk of scandalizing the College at the end of your career!”

Dr Saxena continued, “It had never occurred to me you could be such an old-fashioned prude. Don’t you realize that you are simply suppressing your libido because of some kind of complexes you are suffering from? Had I been in your place, in spite of being older than you, this kind of friendship would surely have transgressed to the physical level. You are a silly fool, Raj, to go on entertaining such obsolete platonic concepts! And, who knows, even your girl might be taking you as a fool by now!”

Dr Saxena added, “It is important that a person of your position and status should never cultivate this kind of exclusive relationship with one person. Spread your affections as wide as possible. You must be near to every one, yet away from them. You know, that is the way authority figures should conduct themselves.”

Prof Raj saw common man’s logic as articulated forcefully and rather bluntly by his ex-boss. But Shiny was not a “common” person and he himself not a vulgar one to consider such close relationships as potentially scandalous. However, it occurred to him for the first time that the generality of the student-teacher community in the campus, more so his boss the Principal who was a strict disciplinarian, wouldn’t have the fineness of mind or the required sensitivity to understand the situation in a benign spirit. He felt perplexed as to how to break the habit without taking her into confidence with what Dr Saxena said.

After some serious reflection, he took a firm decision to break it to Shiny. To his utter surprise and relief, she took the matter with great calm and maturity beyond her age, and consoled the Professor that their relationship transcended their rendezvous at the hilltop; it was firmly rooted within their selves. Now the Professor saw in her a greater teacher than himself and, for the first time, he saw her as his guru!

However, on the eve of his final departure from the campus, they decided to meet at the hilltop for one last time. There they sat, together in reflection. Then they got up to leave. However, on a sudden impulse, they fell into each other’s arms, and they remained thus, reluctant to separate. It was a royal, dignified hug. They felt each other’s heartbeat, they experienced each other’s warmth, and it was as if they were one soul and one body then. Her head rested on his shoulders, and he felt her warm tears falling on his neck; tears mingled with joy and pain, he thought. Instinctively, he affectionately kissed her on top of her head. Thus they remained there, oblivious of space and time, defying gravity. It was supreme bliss; it was ecstasy of the highest order. For a fleeting moment, he was tempted to press his lips against hers. Quick in a flash, Dr Saxena came alive from within and warned him – “Take care! Underneath your flimsy professorial exterior, you are essentially a man and she a woman.” He recoiled in horror. A swift recollection that even Jesus was severely tested with irresistible temptations from the devil took away his momentary guilt.

They heard the dinner bell ringing. Oh! They were there for too long. Disengaged, they moved, she leading from the front in the dim moonlight that painted weird and confusing patterns along the footpath. She was bubbling and chirpy, and he rather thoughtful. They chose their separate ways once out on the open jogging trail.

The Professor bids adieu

Next morning, he was about to enter the car that was to take him to the airport. A tearful crowd had gathered. Professor Raj never knew he had so many ardent admirers. Amidst the sad faces he saw a lone shining face, glowing triumphantly. She had never before appeared so cute, so beautiful, so beatific. Raj instantly guessed the reason. Instead of sorrowfully dwelling on his departure and on her personal loss, she was determined to keep her cheer level high and to be grateful for the blissful days he had presented her. Silently he said, “Thank you, Shiny; thank you very much, for the good great days you had presented me especially towards the end of my days at the campus. And, if you want to cry at all, have a good cry later, leisurely, in private.”

The car moved, and there was a kind of deliciously painful music in his soul. But the seed of the devil that Dr Saxena had planted in him suddenly sprouted. He asked, “Was she not mocking at you with her triumphant smile while bidding you adieu?”

K X M John

22/11/10