A Sandal Wood Tree

Chandan is his name – for which I always had a regrettable pathological absentmindedness, calling him Kishan in a typical Freudian slip of tongue.
The modest guy used to correct my Freudian slip, saying “I am Chandan.”
After my repeated failures to address my Freudian slip, I changed his name from Chandan to Sandal, taking a cue from text-book Memory Techniques.
To my absolute surprise, the technique worked wonders and my monumental Freudian slip never displayed any concern to revisit me.
Both were happy at the arrangement which would have made Dale Carnegie swirl in his coffin.
I must admit that he is like any other commonplace young man.
I can vouchsafe that he is not an angry young man, but joyful.
I also observed that he is always filled with compassion and humanity—two commodities readily not available in the society, especially among the young men and women swayed by materialistic aspirations.
A thin, fair complexioned youth, his frail body would slightly bent forward as if to tell you that he is either weighed down by the weight of his head or his weak neck is not able to bear the load of the head.
Thoroughly dedicated, I know Chandan as ready to take up any mission from his boss.
Though an employee at the lowest rung of the hierarchy, he draws a decent a salary that would put even call centre workers to shame.
One day he appeared to me in my cabin in search of me, saying that he had already called me upon earlier in the day, but could not “catch” me.
I noticed that he was holding a bunch of invitation cards in his fair, slender, left hand along with a few dak (mail) obviously meant for distribution.
On the other slender hand was a slim pen.
Extending one of the invitation cards to me, he announced that he was getting married, for better or ….
I was elated and honoured simultaneously at the invitation.
It is a routine affair that every now and then someone would drop in to invite me for the marriage of himself, herself or someone else.
AS usual, I accepted the invitation with a glee and exchanged some platitudes with him, which was usual whenever we used to meet somewhere in the office or when he was on his way to distribute dak and I rushing nowhere to demonstrate the world that I was busy with work.
After his departure, I carelessly put the card beside my whirring Computer and returned to my brown files.
As usual I decided against attending the marriage due to… my lethargy and claustrophobia.
Casually, at the end of the day before winding up the day, I fished out the Invitation card from among the heap of brown files – wanted and more wanted ones- and lazily went through the attractive calligraphy in ivory paper.
Two lines below the bride’s name attracted me and made me review my earlier post-haste decision to avoid attending Kishan’s nay Chandan’s Marriage.
I rubbed my already impatient eyes and read the lines in calligraphy below the name of the Chandan’s bride again.
I could not believe my eyes.
The serendipitous reading overruled my own resolution to stay away from the crowd that would assemble in the marriage hall.
Along with his obliging boss, I attended the marriage in the small but imposing Parish Hall.
The marriage solemnised in a dignified manner.
The motley crowd that attended the marriage and blessed the lovely couple appeared to me like a huge herd of believers attending a mammoth Prayer Meeting, assembled to celebrate the return of compassion and humanity.
The marriage feast tasted the best in the world.
The ambience refused to fade out of my diminutive mind.
While returning in the SUV along with his obliging boss and others my mind was intrigued by a question – a more defiant question evading a reasonable answer “Why did the young man choose to marry from Ahmednagar Orphanage while a person in his situation would certainly have opted to marry from a rich family to inherit wealth from in-laws, which is the order of the day?”
Then that is our Chandan – a Sandal Wood Tree in the dense forest of selfishness and self-aggrandisement.