Sairam Krishnan

The thing no one tells you about chemotherapy is how it gives you no time. My wife was barely able to recover from the last dose that the next one would be upon us. She was almost always in tears when we had to go, but we would trudge down from our flat without fail, and our driver would bring the car out. His name was Muthu and that year he drove our red Polo to the cancer hospital at the opposite end of town every second Saturday.

He was a short, thin, hardy man, with rough palms that had stories to tell. He smiled easily, but the lines in his face were from more than his laughter. He had been with the family for more than half a decade, before I came into it. I knew he enjoyed talking. But all through that year, when he drove us to the hospital, he would be quiet, understanding the gravity of what my wife and the family was going through. 

He knew everyone in Secunderabad. Everyone waved at him, and he would call out to them, sometimes looking back and telling us who this person was and why they were important in the area. He spoke Dakhni Hindi, of course, but it was also weighed down by his native Tamil, so it was a complex, at times confusing tongue.

I got to know him well. The local barber told me about Muthu. I got a few other details from neighbours and a few from his own mouth. There’s not a lot, but I guess there’s enough.

Muthu came to Secunderabad from Madras years ago, part of a long legacy of Tamil working class migrations that began during colonial rule, and that some might argue has never stopped. Tamil migrants worked in Australia during the world wars, fought in them, went to Malaysia and Guyana and Suriname to farm sugarcane, went to Burma and Indonesia to make money, and now go to America to run technology companies. Muthu just came some distance north, but it must have been an uprooting nevertheless. We Tamils are a fiercely proud people, and to leave home is the toughest thing for us to do. Our ooru is who we are.

He was a troublemaker by his own admission. He wasn't educated, and lamented that he should have tried harder at school. He told me how his father died a broken man because Muthu would not work or become responsible. He told me about the legendary fights he would get into, the people he had beat up. This was backed up by others I talked to. He was a fighter in his time, I was told, and feared as a local enforcer. This obviously wasn’t very respectable, and he could never hold down a job. He was also a terrific drunk, and would drink himself to oblivion almost everyday, and had to be picked up by friends or family in the morning from a ditch somewhere.

His children changed him. It must have been an effort, but he tried to straighten himself out, and worked as a driver so he could send his kids to school. His daughter made him proud, she was a college graduate and worked in an office. He worried about her future a lot, but not as much as he worried about his son, a happy-go-lucky young man who took after his old man’s worst tendencies. Muthu did slip up once in a while himself, once memorably when he was in our employ. He got himself drunk one night and turned up late the next day, bloodshot and dirty, whereupon he was asked to go home.

That was the last time, he swore, and it was. He never did anything like that again. I will never forget how he was there for us, no questions asked, when we needed all the support we could get.

Muthu passed away last month. He had had a heart attack. I went to his house, comforted his son, paid my condolences to his family. He had not been working with us for a while, but we were heartbroken too. The people who are with us when we are down are the ones we hold on to the most.

On the back cover of the 40th anniversary edition of Graham Swift’s celebrated novel Last Orders, is a phrase I remember often: the extraordinary courage of ordinary lives. Ours is a large country, there are too many people. We need to remember. We need to bear witness. 

Muthu was our driver. He wasn’t perfect, but he loved his family and conquered himself to provide for them. There was pride and courage in his life. He had fought his way through, and got somewhere. He had a family, he had friends, he had a job, and he was loved. May he rest in peace.

The first thing I ever wrote with some regularity and intent was a cricket blog I started during my undergrad years. This must have been 2008 or 2009. I called it A View from the Pavilion, and it wasn’t bad. I know this because I sent a piece to the former England correspondent of Cricinfo, George Dobell, and he was quite happy with it. It was probably the first time someone told me I was a good writer. 

For some reason, I grew tired of it, stopped writing, and deleted it. Not the writing though, just that blog. I started writing on another blog - it’s still up - a few months into business school. I would usually be able to write one post a month, at times two. It was angsty, romantic, sentimental stuff, and I cringe when I read it now. But some of it is still surprisingly readable, even good. My professors encouraged me, and gratified by the attention, I kept at it. 

That blog got me the most important break of my life. When I applied for a marketing role at a small startup called Freshdesk, the founder, Girish Mathrubootham, read it and decided to hire me.

Through those years and after, I kept writing. I wrote everywhere. I tried Wordpress, Tumblr, Medium, but was never happy.

I like classification, order, and neatness. None of these spaces gave me that. I was too lazy and technically inept to make something for myself, but I kept writing. I published a piece in the Hindu, a few pieces for Scroll, and worked on a book. This was all during a gap year when I was back home in Pondicherry.

Returning to work after, writing took a backseat and life took over. But soon the restlessness came back, and I craved a creative outlet of some sort. And now I had a few things to say about work. The CMO Journal was the result. A newsletter on marketing, I have been writing it for 2 years now. It's easily the most satisfying writing I've done, and it’s added so much value to so many people.

Around the same time, I also started writing another newsletter called East Coast Road, for other things I'm interested in. I have quite a few pieces up there now.

But late last year, as I was thinking about starting on another long term writing project, I realised I had to tighten it all up a bit. My writing was thematically scattered, and it couldn't be found and read in one place even if people wanted to.

I realised that East Coast Road was not a newsletter at all. It was a blog, an old-fashioned personal blog. But again, I had the problem I had since the time I began writing: There were too many places to write. I needed a simple personal blog, I didn’t want to sit and code it up, and I didn’t want it to be fancy.

That’s when I found Posthaven, where you are reading this. It’s a blogging platform whose promise is that it will stay online forever. I love its simple clarity, and I love that I can just spend my time writing, not worrying about how things look, what I can fiddle with, and so on. This is exactly what I wanted.

So, over the next few months, I will be migrating every single thing I’ve ever written to this place, this blog of my own. I will also be deleting my other blogs when all that is done. East Coast Road will go down, so will my old college blog.

Simple, then: The marketing writing will go to my newsletter, The CMO Journal. Everything else will be here. 

Why do this now?

A huge part of this is just me indulging my order-obsessed brain. I'm absolutely certain no one else cares. But the other is that once this is over, I will have the clarity to launch a couple of projects that have been in my head for while. And having one place where all of my work can rest, and be read, is something I’ve always wanted.

What does this mean for you, the few of you who think my writing is worth reading?

It makes it simpler for you to follow my writing. All you have to do is click the Follow this Posthaven link underneath this post, and the posts will land in your mailbox, much like Substack. And finally, I will be revisiting, editing, and publishing again my older work. I get to go back down memory lane, refresh a few things.

There will be a lot to read. And I hope you do.

A few days ago, there was a question on Twitter: What did your ex leave you with? I think specifics were expected, like music, or movies, or art.

But what came to my mind immediately was too long to write out there. So here it is.

Ours was a closed campus, and though the boys were allowed to go out and roam the city whenever we wished, the girls usually had only two gate passes a month. Which meant that our time together, at least outside campus, was limited. We were aware of this, though we had enough time together that it never weighed on us. It was just that we couldn't eat out, or go on coffee dates, or travel.

She was a feisty character, gorgeous, studious, and driven. I was the opposite, more interested in the library, in long walks, and in volleyball, which I'd just discovered.

One of the first times we were out together, on a gloriously pleasant day, we were shopping, and I did something that irked her. I don't remember what it was, just that it was minor enough to not matter to me, but important enough for her to get worked up. I knew these moods of hers. This was going to be a long day, I thought, and braced myself.

But when we exited the mall to bright sunshine, she was back in the radiant mood she had been in all morning. I was taken aback, having anticipated glares and taunts. But no. She took my hand in the cab to the restaurant, and talked as if nothing was amiss. I was confused, but only too glad to go along.

It was a good day, full of laughter and love and that silly optimism being young affords you. We went to get coffee before boarding the train back. I walked her to the hostel. It wasn't dark yet, and I could see her face, slightly flushed after the long day and the walk from the station. She was happy. I was too.

At the gate, she turned, and to my surprise, started chewing me out. She told me to go to my room and call her immediately so she could give me a piece of her mind.

Even more confused now, I walked back to my hostel, changed, got some water from the cooler, and called her. She did what she told me she would. I told her I didn't think it was a big deal. I know better now, but it was obviously the wrong thing to say. The argument ran its course. I went down to meet the boys, played a game of volleyball, read a bit (I think it was my economics phase - Nouriel Roubini and Raghuram Rajan and Tim Harford), and then called her to say good night.

She had been studying, as I knew she would be. I asked her what had been on my mind all evening: Why, if she was so angry, did she wait until we came back? Couldn't she have brought it up then, and sorted it all out face-to-face?

But, she said, that's the only time we have with each other outside campus. Why should I ruin it? I can be angry with you later. Why waste the time we have together?

This was more than 10 years ago. I've never forgotten it.

Indeed, why waste the time we have together?

In 2007, I was trying to pass my large backlog of engineering exams, and was studying like a madman, starting at 3 in the morning. The tea shop near where I lived then opened at 3 too, to cater to the fishermen who needed the pick-me-up before leaving to sea. I would go and stand there, along with all these rough and sun-cooked men, and I would get a steamy cup of milky, strong tea without having to ask. I would go again at 4, and again at 5, punctuating my studies with tea so I wouldn’t get tired or fall asleep. And I would never say a word, I’d just stand there, sometimes with one of my large, unwieldy textbooks in hand, and the tea would come to me. Never coffee, or the special tea. Just the normal tea, everyday.

I was a regular, with a usual.

In 2009, at my university under the mountains, the tea and coffee would arrive in large cans to my hostel, and I’d be one of the first to come get a mug. This was because it was cold there, and I was one of the few early risers. I would nod at the guy who brought the cans everyday, who knew me well. I would take my mug and walk outside to the volleyball courts, and wait. I would wait for the light to come up, and ponder the day ahead. Much later, my friends who had rooms that looked out on the courts would tell me that this was what they saw every morning when they woke up and opened the windows: Me walking around with a mug of coffee, looking up at the sky.

In 2011, at my first job, and in my first real experience of the world, I would wake up and walk to a mosque nearby, at the entrance of which was an old man selling Irani chai. I had no money and no clear thoughts about anything, but this was a routine I understood, so I would follow it without thinking. Every single morning I would be there, sipping that fragrant tea and looking around at the faithful, thinking about where life was going to take me. That city of the Deccan held me close then, and would call me back later. But I didn’t know that yet.

In 2012, in the Tamil capital, I lived near the sea, and ran laps around the road near the old church. Later, drenched and exhausted, I would go to a moderately famous restaurant on the main road. They would be just setting up, but coffee would be ready. It would arrive as soon as I sat down. The waiters knew me and also knew that at times I’d have two, reading on the Kindle. Once a friend of mine was visiting, and because she ordered tea, I asked for tea too. The surprised waiter told my friend, in Tamil, that ‘sir usually drinks only coffee’.

In 2013, in the national capital, my best friend and I were in that phase when we were rebelling against everyone and everything. Every day, he would take out his motorcycle, and we would go to the shop nearby to buy beer. One day, we told ourselves we wouldn’t drink, it had become too much, and we should stop. We would just go home that day, and watch the cricket or something. But as he drove home, he inadvertently, by sheer force of habit, drove to the liquor shop. We looked at each other, and bought bottles of Tuborg.

In 2016, in my town, I was attempting to write. I would come to the French library at 10, write for an hour or so, and go out for a filter coffee around noon. Every day for a few months, I would do this. I would go and have a strong coffee in the bar from where you could see the sea. I would stand there with the clerks from the government secretariat, and wonder at the beauty of the place I was born in.

In 2020, in a city surrounded by hills, where the idea was to slow down a bit and get some more time, I was delighted to find a Irani chai place, complete with bun maska and colourful bottles of Ardeshir. I spent some time there every morning, reading. It was a delight, and I thought that this was something I could get used to, having a place to come and read in, and go back home from. For some time, it was. And then the pandemic hit, and soon another move happened.

One day, I’ll go back home. I’ll have a boring routine. I’ll have nothing to work on, nothing to get to. I’ll just have time and a sense of contentment in my head. And I’ll have a bar to go to, one I’ll go to everyday with my friends. I would have made a couple more friends there. I will sit down there in the evening, drink a beer, and marvel at some small thing, like an insect, or the afternoon light, or the smell of the ocean. And I won’t think about anything else.

I’ll be a regular, with a usual.