Confessions. For years I have been going to his house functions only to listen to his stories. All the small talks with the other guests just bore me so quickly; his presence was the motivating factor that drew me there. With his ever-smiling demure and his stories that transport me to a time when my country was a fledgeling confluence of people trying to stand together under the shade of a flag of a country named Malaya, Uncle Kesavan was the reason I was there.
Now aged 84 years old, he is still so passionate about his work that he will painstakingly tell every detail of the time when he was almost working like a secret agent, minus the licence to kill. His team, of the Malaysian Royal Police, was the pioneer in the heeding times of the communist insurgency. They were sent to the UK to learn the then-novel way to intercept communists' radio transmissions. From the stories, or rather life experiences, that he narrated, he must be easily thousands of unsung heroes in this country who are yet to be given due recognition.
He is a living example of how one can give up smoking just at the snuffing of a cigarette butt. It was a time when he was almost in his late 50s when he fulfilled his pilgrimage at a holy shrine in India. Due to the pressures of his work and the company he kept, he was already a chain smoker, burning 60 sticks daily. After descending the hill that held the deity of his liking after completing his religious obligations, he lit his first 'post-Enlightenment' fag. He felt an instant dislike for it. Thinking that the stick was a defective one and he lit another. And that was the last stick of cigarette that he ever held. He is living proof that willpower alone (maybe with a bit of divine intervention) can stop any addiction.
Then a few years later, after losing his dear beloved and fulfilling his fatherly duties, he felt a little queasy over his chest. To the utter disbelief of the attending medical practitioners, he was diagnosed to have four critical blockages in his coronary vessels. He was labelled by the cardiologists as a walking timebomb, saying that his situation was precarious and needed urgent intervention. Contrary to his physicians' advice, Uncle Kesavan, by around 70, decided that his treatment modality should just be masterly inactivity. Despite his doctors' predictions of not lasting Long enough to celebrate the next new year, he defied medical wisdom and is living to tell his stories some fifteen years later, perhaps even outliving some of his learned caregivers. Now and then, we have outliers. He must be one. Now aged 84 years young, he is grinning from ear to ear at the launch of his story in a book written by his daughter.
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| S Kesavan PPN, PPM, GSM |
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