Krish

At 60+ years, S. Krishnamma is Krish to everyone. He left India in his teens for England. Krish has tried many things in his life: he has run a casino, played tennis, coached, got qualified for senior Wimbledon. Krish has been a businessman, and, some years back while dealing in cannabis he was nabbed, tried, convicted and sent to a prison in England. He did ten years in the prison they call the Lazy L. There he wrote a book. It is called 'the ballad of the Lazy L'. This book has gone through press twice. Krish signed one of the last copies left for me. I felt grateful. I met Krish a month back when he came calling to Alie with a few copies of his lazy L. A week later there would be a book reading. Alie is the founder member of the book club, and since Krish was here in Goa she's invited him for the reading of his book. The second time we met was at the reading (the day I lost my ear stud!). Our third meeting was last week, when Krish invited my friends and me to lunch in a quiet little place in Majorda. The food was excellent; conversation jovial. The first time I tried lazy L I simply could not get into the book. I remember entertaining a dismissive thought regarding the book. That was before the book reading. At the reading there were questions asked and Krish spoke about the prison and how the book came to be written. Everyone seemed to have read lazy L. I had not. I decided to read it. In the first sitting I read forty eight pages of beautiful English writing. Krish writes beautifully. When I met him again I said, hay Krish, I read your book. All I can say, I said, is that you write English. He laughed heartily. I also told him how I particularly saw him alluding to ual imagery while talking about a machine he was going to have to work with in the prison, but that his sexual imagery was not sensual, it was anguished. Anguished in a sense of longing, desiring for something you will not get for ten long years. These are attributes of great literature, I told him. "Well", he said, " not great literature, may be not, but it was not bad at all." I could see what he meant. It was not bad at all.