The Skull Cave

There is a massive stone hill that appears on the highway on your left as one approaches Ramanagara on the way to Mysore from Bangalore  It has probably stood there for centuries, entirely indifferent to the traffic hurtling past it, the changing cars, the changing roads, the changing generations and, most importantly, to people like me who have chosen to give it a name it never asked for.

To me, that mountain has always been the Skull Cave.

When we were children, our summer holidays invariably meant a trip to Mandya. And more often than not, the person behind the wheel was my uncle Vijendra maam. Somewhere on the road, as we approached Ramanagara, he would point towards this enormous rocky hill and announce, with the solemnity of someone revealing a matter of great national importance, that this was the Skull Cave from The Phantom.

That was enough.

I believed him.

Actually, I did not merely believe him. I incorporated it into my personal mythology.

For those who grew up reading Lee Falk’s The Phantom, the Ghost Who Walks was not merely a comic book character. He was an entire universe. There was Phantom, of course, the mysterious man who walked the jungle and struck fear into the hearts of villains. There was Diana, his wife. Rex, his adopted son. Kit and Heloise, the children. Old Man Mozz. Chief Guran. And then there were Hero, his magnificent horse, and Devil, his wolf-dog.

These were not characters we read about.

They were people we knew.

Our childhood had very few of the complications that we adults seem to have a peculiar talent for manufacturing. There were no meetings, deadlines, EMIs, performance reviews, traffic updates, blood pressure readings or existential crises.

There were books.

There was homework.

There was school.

There was getting up at some unearthly hour.

And then there was the infinitely more interesting world inside a comic book.

The distinction between reality and imagination was rather flexible in those days. If a comic told us that the Phantom lived in the Skull Cave, then the Skull Cave existed. Why would it not? We had no reason to doubt it. We had not yet acquired that irritating adult habit of demanding evidence for everything.

And so, somewhere between Bengaluru and Mandya, that rocky hill became the Skull Cave.

But the mountain acquired another significance.

It became a signpost to happiness.

Seeing the Skull Cave meant that Mandya was not very far away.

And Mandya meant Ajja and Mamama.

It meant my uncle Prakash maam, who was much more than an uncle to me. He was my friend, philosopher and guide long before I had any idea that such grand descriptions existed.

It meant that for a few precious days I could escape the regimented universe of school.

No textbooks.

No rote learning.

No homework.

No examinations.

No getting up at four in the morning.

No one telling me what I was supposed to be doing every minute of the day.

There was simply Mandya.

And somehow, in the uncomplicated mathematics of childhood, Mandya = freedom.

The Skull Cave therefore became a kind of emotional milestone.

On the way to Mandya, it appeared on my left.

And when it appeared, my heart knew that the good part was beginning.

On the way back, the same mountain appeared on my right.

And then it meant something completely different.

It meant that the good part was ending.

The mountain had not moved.

The road had not changed.

Only I had.

That strange little piece of childhood psychology has stayed with me.

Even today, whenever I travel towards Mysore and the mountain appears on the left, something inside me becomes inexplicably lighter.

For a few moments, I am not particularly interested in whatever assortment of adult troubles my mind has been diligently carrying around. The mind, which normally behaves like an overworked clerk maintaining an unnecessarily elaborate register of worries, takes a brief holiday.

I see the mountain.

I hear Vijendra maam pointing towards the Skull Cave.

And I am a child again.

Mandya is ahead.

Ajja and Mamama are waiting.

Prakash maam is somewhere around.

And the world is still a wonderfully uncomplicated place.

Of course, the world has changed.

Ajja and Mamama are no longer there.

Prakash maam has moved on.

There is no longer anyone waiting for me in Mandya in quite the same way.

And yet, strangely, the mountain continues to perform its old magic.

Perhaps that is what makes childhood memories so powerful. The people and places that created them may disappear, but the memory retains the ability to resurrect the feeling.

The Skull Cave still does that for me.

There is, however, one rather inconvenient fact I discovered only recently.

The mountain has an actual name.

Handi Gundi Betta.

Actually, handi means pig in Kannada, while gundi is used as a rhyming expression and can also refer to a group. According to the local story, long ago a pig was grazing on the hill, wandered right up to the edge and promptly fell off without realising that the mountain had ended. A few other pigs, presumably displaying an admirable commitment to group activity rather than individual judgement, followed it and met the same fate.

And thus, apparently, the hill became Handi Gundi Betta.

I have nothing against pigs.

Nor do I wish to question local folklore.

But with due respect to generations of porcine geography, I refuse to participate in this rebranding exercise.

It is the Skull Cave.

It has been the Skull Cave for as long as I can remember.

And perhaps that is the more important name anyway.

Because mountains have official names, but memories have their own geography.

That enormous mass of rock existed long before I did. It will remain there long after I am gone. It has watched generations of people drive past it, fall in love, quarrel, make plans, lose people, find people, grow old and disappear.

The mountain does not care.

It simply stands there.

And yet, for countless children travelling towards Mandya, perhaps it has been a harbinger of something wonderful. For someone else it may mean a village, a holiday, a reunion, a first love, a family home or simply the comforting knowledge that they are almost there.

For me, it means something very specific.

It means the little boy in the back of the car who believed that the Phantom lived inside that mountain.

It means comic books and impossible adventures.

It means Hero and Devil.

It means Diana, Rex, Kit and Heloise.

It means Vijendra Maam is driving.

It means Ajja and Mamama.

It means Prakash maam.

It means summer holidays.

It means freedom.

And perhaps that is why, even after all these years, the Skull Cave can still make me happy.

Just for a few moments.

Until the road turns, the traffic resumes and the adult world comes back to collect me.

And when I see that same mountain on the return journey, standing stubbornly on my right, I know what it is telling me.

The holiday is over.

Time to go back to books, work, responsibilities and the innumerable small tragedies that adulthood so generously distributes.

But then again, perhaps there is a small consolation.

The mountain is still there.

And one day, decades from now, some other child travelling down that highway may look up at it and create a completely different story around those rocks.

That, perhaps, is the real magic of such places.

The mountain remains the same.

Only the stories change.

As for me, I shall continue to call it the Skull Cave.

Some childhood facts are simply not negotiable.

Glass is Fragile

“Life is what happens while we are busy making other plans.”
Allen Saunders (later immortalised by John Lennon in “Beautiful Boy”)

There is an old saying that family reunions nourish the soul.

In our family, they also appear to nourish the stomach.

My brother had just arrived from the United States. My sister had flown in from Australia a couple of days earlier. After three years apart, the airport was filled with hugs, laughter, accusations of growing older, and the obligatory family audit of expanding waistlines and receding hairlines. (On the latter count, I had long since decided to embrace aerodynamic efficiency.)

By the time the emotional reunion had concluded, it was well past midnight.Now there is something about emotionally charged reunions that makes one extraordinarily hungry. Either joy burns calories or airports simply have a mysterious effect upon human metabolism.

Naturally, we drifted towards the Subway outlet.

Now I have always admired Subway.

It is perhaps the closest the fast-food industry has come to representative democracy.Every citizen gets to design his own destiny.No two sandwiches need ever be alike.

The process begins innocently enough.

“Which bread would you like, Sir?”

Italian White. Roasted Garlic. Parmesan Oregano. Honey Oat. Multigrain.

I was already beginning to suspect that choosing a sandwich involved more decision making than selecting members of a Parliamentary coalition .

Having survived the constitutional crisis of bread selection came the vegetables.

Lettuce. Tomatoes. Onions. Cucumbers. Olives. Pickles. Green peppers.Jalapenos.

Each one displayed behind an expansive sheet of sparkling glass, almost inviting one’s stomach to overrule one’s common sense.

Then arrived the sauces.

Honey Mustard. Sweet Onion. Chipotle. Mint Mayo. Tandoori Mayo. Peri Peri Mayo. Red Chilli. Barbecue.

Human civilisation has invented remarkably few things as dangerous as the sentence,

“Go ahead, Sir… all sauces are complimentary.”

No Indian has ever interpreted the word complimentary with greater patriotic enthusiasm.

The sandwich grows.The calorie count becomes an abstract mathematical concept.

The stomach begins applauding.

Meanwhile, the wallet whispers nervously from somewhere inside your trouser pocket.

While I was enthusiastically instructing the cheerful young lady behind the counter to add “just a little more” of practically everything, my eyes wandered upwards.

There, written in large red letters across the glass façade, was a simple notice.

GLASS IS FRAGILE.

For reasons I still cannot fully explain, I stopped speaking.

My sandwich could wait. My thoughts could not.

Three months ago, my own heart had decided that enough was enough.

It began innocently with breathlessness.

I assumed, with characteristic masculine optimism, that it was probably age, weight, stress, planetary alignment or perhaps an unusually steep staircase.

The cardiologists, unfortunately, had a less imaginative explanation.

Within days I found myself on an operating table while surgeons calmly performed what they later described as “putting in some new plumbing.”

Cardiologists possess a wonderfully understated British sense of humour.

To them, open-heart bypass surgery sounds suspiciously similar to replacing a leaking kitchen tap.

The plumbing may indeed have been repaired.

The man attached to the plumbing required rather more attention.

The stitches healed. The scar made itself present.The pain in my body slowly surrendered.The emotional bruises linger rather longer.

But the pain in my mind (and heart) I bore, long after it was felt anymore.

My apologies to William Wordsworth. I honestly do not know what I am reaping with my solitude.

Recovery has a curious way of changing one’s conversations.

Not merely with doctors. But with oneself.

Every heartbeat becomes noticeable. Every twinge acquires an autobiography. Every tomorrow quietly ceases to be taken for granted.

Standing there before a sandwich counter, I suddenly realised that perhaps life itself resembles a Subway sandwich.

The bread is our foundation. Our upbringing. Our values. Our family. Our character.

Without a good foundation, everything else simply falls apart in your hands.

The fillings are the ambitions we spend our lives accumulating. Career. Relationships. Travel. Recognition. Books. Friendships. Photography. Success. Failures that later masquerade as wisdom.

Every one of us keeps asking for “just one more topping.”

Then come the sauces. Not what life gives us. But how we choose to respond.

Some season life with Honey Mustard. Others with Sweet Onion. Some prefer the gentle optimism of Mint Mayo. Others insist on living permanently in Red Chilli mode, convinced that perpetual outrage is a personality trait.

The sandwich changes not because the bread changes. It changes because of the attitude we pour over it.

And then, while we are happily constructing what we believe is the perfect life…

Nature quietly places a notice directly in front of us.

Glass is Fragile.

So is life.

Lean too heavily upon certainty. Pile too many expectations against it.

Mistake permanence for entitlement.

And one unexpected moment reminds us that everything we love is held together by remarkably delicate threads.

Marcus Aurelius once wrote,

“You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do, say and think.”

He probably wasn’t standing in a Subway queue contemplating double olives when he wrote those words.

But somehow, they fit perfectly.

Perhaps our greatest mistake is believing that happiness lies in constructing the perfect sandwich.

It doesn’t.

The perfect sandwich does not exist. Neither does the perfect life.

What matters is whether we enjoyed making it… Whether we shared it… Whether we appreciated it before it became another memory.

As we left the sandwich shop that night, my stomach was comfortably full.

My surgically renovated heart was behaving rather better than it had been a few months earlier.

My mind, however, had acquired several fresh questions.

Perhaps wisdom doesn’t always arrive dressed as a philosopher.

Sometimes it hides behind a fast-food counter.

Sometimes it is written on a piece of glass that thousands of people walk past every day without ever noticing.

“Glass is Fragile.”

Three ordinary words.

A safety instruction to most.

A sermon on life to one recovering heart.

And somehow, I suspect Nature knew exactly which of us was meant to read it.