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Splendid stroke, silence of change
By Dr. Paul Roche*

""Scripta manet", said the Latin proverb. What is written, remains. How true and useful it is now in my present state! After suffering a heart attack and a stroke, now I have to write everything down because my current memory is seriously affected. Simple things, names, places and people escaped beneath a veneer of unfocused thoughts and ideas, incoherent and undistinguishable. It takes an hour to get back the thoughts to mind. Fortunately, the hour has slid down to half, quarter and now to ten or five seconds before a vision of what was in my mind returns to give me a clue.

Once it is written down, it does not get lost, at least on paper or computer. Stranger still was the fact that my brain switched over to German, the language I had learnt in Vienna for my university studies, and had to master it for my Ph.D. Perhaps my brain had saved it in a secure corner, and it was unaffected by the stroke. Instantly my brain sought that language for quick thinking and referral. My physician at the Hospital was surprised at how English gave me problems in thinking after using that language for over 40 years, whereas German, Papua New Guinean and my native Tamil came back flawlessly, almost to my pristine original fluency, without any effort on my part!

Since my doctors and neuropsychologists told me that it would be a long while before I recover my faculties. Lecturing or office work may be long way away or might never be possible for me. My books and class notes gathered for the past 25 years went to the garbage bin. It was sad. Material gathered and saved and thought about and summarized-- all went in minutes, torn, scrambled and separated in waste paper baskets. They would not have been of any use for anyone if I had disappeared into thin ether. While I was still at it, a quick glance at the vanishing sheets showed all the poignancy of past studies. Permanence of knowledge is but a sweeping stage of worldly effect. What is still stored in the brain, or its cognizable outlines, might still elevate the soul some day.

Tearing off the pages was akin to a huge loss. Before doing that, for one last glimpse, I looked at all of them: "Introduction to Ethnomusicology" said one notebook of notes, "Anlass und Ziel Naturwissenschaftlicher Untersuchungen an Kunstwerken und Kulturhistorischen Objekten" said another longblown and pedantic title of a lecture.

“Method and Theory in American Anthropology”, was another extract. Is there a Method and Theory in Strokes? But what is crucial and most important in life? I have met and encountered so many professors who are so engrossed in their specialized subjects, that they have no time to think at all about the generality of life. Life itself could be a banality!

Imagine the time we spent typing our research papers and assignments. Those days, before the onset of computers, we typed them ourselves, and felt the thoughts clicking on each word ponderously and patiently. At the end of it, even with over-typed words, and correction-fluid-embellished essays, we felt a pride of achievement. Now the achievement is restricted to the joy of past glories, and dim memories of a bygone era.

“Winter seminar 83/84” screams an older typewritten sheet, co-written with Heinz Bucheggar (who became a Buddhist Monk even in our student days, and Anna Hollerer who was keen on Hinduism already then. I wonder what became of that pretty and very friendly classmate. The University Anthropology Department made us study the context, instead of its bare retention. If some of it is retained in my brain still, so the reasoning went, these materials are redundant!

Being a family man and father of two children then, in the midst of class notes I see a quotation from my daughter: "My hands are so hard that words don’t come out from my mouth!" It was apparently said in the midst of Viennese Winter. Those very words now suit admirably her father after stroke affected hands and speech!

“Roche, 7.10.91”, says another sheet of paper showing all the Islands in the South Pacific, a subject during my second stint at Vienna. The map arouses interest, because of my visit to Fiji for a conference (when I was working in Papua New Guinea), when I met the Coup leader and Prime Minister personally and shook hands with him during a diplomatic party in Suva. Most European diplomats pointedly ignored him because he had usurped power, and was not recognized by most countries at that time. Though the coup was meant against the Indian majority, most of those who were talking to him in his corner of the hall were Indians!! I tried talking to them in Hindi, but their Hindi was markedly different in pronunciation and meaning. They called the snack 'bada', which in India is 'vada'. One could see a language metamorphosing right in one lifetime! The food and spices that Indians took with them to the far off Fiji apparently tasted good for the Fijians, and they are often better at making curried chicken! Its fragrance can be smelt streets away! That was one of the sojourns...and seeing the cultural artifacts, travelling to a distant Fijian village, and reading suddenly my native Tamil "Murugan Thunai" (Lord Murugan's Protection!) near a street brought an ambience of emotions. My forefathers who left ages ago to these distant shores did not forget their native Tamil, but cherished it in their hearts and minds, in sculptures of sacred deity. It was worth coming all the way to Fiji, to have studied anthropology, and learnt cultures and languages, and feeling at home and welcome in a few of them.

I have no regrets about the stroke or its after-effects. The prior-effects will be cherished for ages to come..