When I think about the retirement that my former employer has forced on me, and there are plenty of opportunities every day for me to think about the series of events and the personnel that led to the end, I am always reminded of the Chinese Buddhist parable that captures well the unpredictability of life:
A poor farmer whose only worldly possession is a mare wakes up one morning to discover that the mare has gone. He runs to his parents’ house and breaks the terrible news. When he’s finished, they ask, “Are you sure it’s bad news?”
“Of course it’s bad news!” he replies, stomping angrily away.
Ten days later, his mare returns, bringing with her a magnificent stallion.
The farmer runs to his parents and tells them the wonderful news.
“Are you sure it’s good news?” they ask.
“Of course it’s good news,” he declares, leaving in a huff.
Days go by, and the farmer decides to try to break the stallion. He bridles the beast, climbs on its back, and is promptly thrown to the ground and trampled. The village doctor informs him that he will be a cripple for life. When he can do so, he makes his way to his parents and tells them the dreadful news.
“Are you sure it’s bad news?” they reply.
He doesn’t answer, but he mutters to himself all the way home. Two weeks later, a detachment of the Emperor’s army arrives to draft all the able-bodied men of the village. Of course, they pass over the crippled farmer. He hobbles to his parents’ house to share his joy.
“Are you sure it’s good news?” they ask.
The story has no end, of course.
The involuntary retirement has been good news, and there is no doubt about it, for what I read and think about.
When employed, the academic terms were busy enough, and grading essays were often too darn depressing, that I had no time nor energy for reading full-length fiction. Not too long ago, one of my job responsibilities was to grade many "goodly" written essays that I could have done without!
It was only in the summer that I could devote time to read fiction and reflect on the human condition. It took effort to curate a reading list, order the books, read them, and then blog about life with the new understanding gained from those books. While I did systematically expand the diversity of authors and the tales they told, it was nothing like what I have been able to do since I got laid off.
If the parable's question of “are you sure it’s good news?” were asked about the unplanned unemployment, then the vastly diverse fiction that I am able to read now is evidence that it is fantastic that I am jobless.
Segu is the latest entry in this new reading universe.
It is an epic of a tale that weaves together the arrival of Islam, Christianity, the white man, enslavement for transport to the US and the Caribbean, and all these are told through the transformations in the Kingdom of Segu and its people--the Bambara.
Of course, until I started reading this magnificent fiction, I had not even heard of Segu or Bambara. Now, they are etched into my memory forever.
In the first couple of pages before the story begins, the book provides a map of West Africa, through which the reader is able to understand the geographical context of Segu. The family tree of the principal characters is listed on another page.
I practically jumped up from the bed when I read the names in the family tree because two of them were familiar to me. It will be like if a white Oregonian is familiar with the name Venkataramasubramanian. What are the chances, right?
The following morning, I took a photo of the page with the family tree, and texted the image to my old graduate school friend, Kayode. His first son's name is Babatunde. What are the odds!
With the wonderful sense of humor that continues to live in him, he wrote in a lengthy reply, "the author has chosen some excellent names!"
I ditched engineering, and then came to the US for graduate school, which is where I met Kayode. Had I continued on in engineering, or if I had opted to go to the University of Iowa instead of USC, my life's trajectory would have been very different. Every moment in life has "is it good news or is it bad news?" implications. But, we do not think about life that way.
For now, at least, it seems that the university delivered good news for me by terminating my tenured full professor status.
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