Memories shot through with some philosophy
Written by Padmanabh Vijai Pillai but published posthumously, this is a work that, as Manjulika Dubey says in her introductory note, “was not written for any eyes but those of Vijai Pillai and his intimate friends”. Dubey adds that it was written in 1998-99 at her urging, but when she suggested that he get it published, he demurred. By his own description, he lived as “a tortoise with in-drawn head; just him and his heart’s beat”. But we can be glad that this deeply thoughtful book has finally been published.

Born in Delhi in 1941, Pillai studied at The Doon School and St. Stephen’s College and, in the footsteps of his diplomat father, and as young men of the period tended to do, joined the Indian Foreign Service. However, Pillai’s stint in the service was brief: Dubey’s introduction mentions “an international incident during the Cultural Revolution” during his first posting in Beijing. After drifting for a while, Pillai eventually returned to academics to obtain a PhD in history from an American university. During his career as an academic, he went through the breakup of his marriage and the deaths of his parents. The final years of his life were spent in Kerala, where he had his books, music and friends, and where he occupied himself with the retirement activities of housekeeping (“Householding is a guru, a Zen master”), cooking (“an act of equipoise”), gardening (“digging, manuring, weeding, watering, and then, calendrical surprise, fragrance, form, colour”), yoga and meditation. This book is the result of his meditations.

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