Essence of Andaal

Maybe Andaal could stand before a mirror and say

“mirror, mirror on the wall, who am at all?”

‘ಹುಚ್ಚು ಮನಸಿನ ಹತ್ತು ಮುಖ’ would be the reply or maybe just an image from Shivaram Karanth’s museum would fllash.

There are some people who enter a room as though they are carrying a secret. And then there are people like Andaal who enter a room looking as though they are carrying three overdue library books, an unresolved philosophical crisis and possibly somebody else’s umbrella by mistake.

“What kind of a person are you?” Aunt Selvi once demanded of her in the tone usually reserved for customs officers discovering contraband mangoes in luggage.

Now Aunt Selvi belonged to that efficient generation of women who believed humanity could be divided neatly into two categories — sensible people and people who caused discussion at family gatherings. Andaal, without trying very hard, frequently became the second kind.

The trouble with modern life is that everybody wants labels. Previously one was allowed to exist peacefully as a somewhat confusing human being. Today one must immediately declare whether one is an introvert, extrovert, vegan, minimalist, maximalist, spiritual seeker, attachment avoidant or gluten intolerant.

Poor Andaal attended one of these modern classes on identity and personality and has never fully recovered since.

She began examining herself the way suspicious people inspect leftovers in the refrigerator.

Was she an early bird? Well, she liked dawn certainly. She liked the sound of birds chirping before traffic and ambition ruined the morning. She liked the smell of coffee, lavender and sandalwood. She liked silence too, especially the kind before people began forwarding inspirational messages on WhatsApp.

But she was not above sleeping scandalously late either.

Was she social? Yes, in limited quantities. Like saffron. Or petrol.

Andaal loved solitude with the devotion some people reserve for religion. She could spend entire afternoons happily avoiding humanity while reorganising notebooks she never wrote in. Yet she also liked companionship provided it came with conditions clearly understood by all parties concerned.

She wanted relationships the way some people wanted seaside cottages — close enough to visit often, but with a reliable escape route at the back.

Too much intimacy alarmed her.

Too little made her melancholy.

As a result she inhabited that complicated emotional territory occupied by cats, certain poets and diplomatic nations.

The Myers-Briggs people — who sound less like psychologists and more like chartered accountants in Fort — had classified her as an INFJ. Apparently this meant she was insightful, intuitive and permanently exhausted by the human race.

This too seemed accurate.

The French say people resemble the cars they drive. This naturally excluded Andaal because she drove nothing at all. She bicycled around town with grim determination and weak brakes. Her bicycle had the personality of a retired government clerk. It squeaked disapprovingly at potholes and leaned existentially against compound walls.

The Sufis say you are what you eat.

This caused Andaal considerable anxiety because she occasionally consumed leftovers old enough to qualify for archaeological protection. If food truly shaped character, then somewhere inside her soul there was definitely week-old lemon rice and half a suspicious cutlet.

Others insist people are defined by what they wear.

Andaal wore tired clothes in uncertain colours that could not decide whether they were faded or philosophical. She possessed shawls suggesting intellectual depth and sandals suggesting financial instability. Most days she carried upon her face a serious expression implying she was silently analysing postcolonial literature.

This was largely camouflage.

Beneath the severe intellectual exterior lived a complete mad-hatter.

A woman capable of conducting entire imaginary conversations while cycling. A person who laughed at funerally inappropriate moments because her mind wandered unexpectedly. Somebody who bought notebooks compulsively despite never finishing the previous ones. She spoke sternly about existentialism but secretly enjoyed terrible detective serials and once spent forty-five minutes watching a squirrel struggle with a biscuit packet.

Her serious face fooled many people.

Professors mistook her for disciplined.

Relatives mistook her for responsible.

Shopkeepers mistook her for somebody who carried exact change.

In reality Andaal’s inner life resembled a tea party hosted by mildly unstable philosophers.

Naturally this produced confusion.

Some days she wished to disappear into solitude with books, music and coffee. Other days she longed for impossible cinematic companionship involving conversations during rainstorms and somebody intelligent enough to understand her silences.

She distrusted motivational speakers, loud optimism and people who used the phrase “networking opportunity.”

She liked old bookstores, empty roads after rain and conversations that wandered nowhere useful.

To be fair, much depended on the mood of the day, what the body said and what the mind permitted. Human personality, she suspected, was less a fixed identity and more a rotating committee of conflicting opinions.

So what kind of person was Andaal?

Possibly the kind who appeared serious while secretly absurd.

The kind who longed for closeness but kept one emotional suitcase permanently packed near the exit.

The kind who bicycled through life thoughtfully, suspiciously, occasionally poetically — and always slightly late.