Joseph Ollapally

I am lucky to have spent a lot of time with Joseph Ollapally during his last few weeks on planet earth. He touched my life with his madness and clear and present sanity, all at the same time. Joseph lived his life like it was an idea whose time had come. Some say that there is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come. And his time was the present moment.

I would have great conversations with Joseph, the type where one free flows and from the depths of this connection emanate things from oneself, one thinks they never knew, but has always been there and has been made evident by the interaction.
 

 Joseph and Arun have a conversation

What some people thought to be only craziness I felt to be a deeper connection, appreciation and understanding of existence. I believe Joseph had a deep sense of his own divinity.

 Some people attempt to draw connections and find meanings in things after a tragic accident has taken place. This is not my endeavor here. I made some photographs with a pocket camera just a few days before he died and soem others from elsewhere. I hope they illustrate the larger experience of Joseph Ollapally, his humanity and insanity, his connection with the earth, his own body and the people he engaged.  Because it is so worth recording.

At his funeral, I was amazed at the number of people who attended and more so by the number of lives he had touched. I sat at the rear of the church on a large balcony and along with me sat laborers from his families construction company. They sat about quietly throughout the service, in worn shoes and chappals and some wiped tears from their eyes. This is not something you see in India very often. People of different socio economic backgrounds don’t cry for each other. 

I recall another time when he told me that he went to Harvard to become a “Kakoose cleaner”. Joseph said it with pride because he cleaned toilets for an extra job in Harvard. In India the “lowest castes” do the same job and Joseph would laugh when people asked him what he did at Harvard. “I cleaned shit! I was a Kakoose cleaner!” For those of you'll who live in Bangalore, there is immense value in these words. Jordan, a friend of his writes that Joseph was especially proud of getting his hands dirty cleaning toilets and did away with his gloves. So beautiful this if you understand its achievement. He spoke seriously to me just 3 weeks ago of getting a job as a laborer at a construction site, to experience the daily humiliations of the poor. There was no vanity in his suggestion. He genuinely wanted the "experience."

 

Posing for an image I made for an art project

Jean Paul Sartre said that he felt his mind was a cage full of birds. Some of Joseph's birds were cuckoos and many definitely got out and spread their droppings on various heads and intellectual offspring in various nests. 

 One flew over the cuckoos nest

One of the first times I connected with Joseph was at a fancy dress party where he came dressed as a mutant tadpole, in a wetsuit, wearing two large fluffy clawed monster feet. I was dressed as a watchman and proceeded to tell him about an eastern European girl I had kissed at a nightclub. Joseph casually mentioned that he thought it was his girlfriend at the time and then proceeded to ask me if she kissed back, what the lip movements were and whether I had enjoyed it or considered it merely just another random eastern European kiss at a nightclub. Later, I learnt that she had become a nun and Joseph quipped that she had chosen Jesus over Joseph. What was remarkable as we spoke, was his expression. His face was thoughtful. Like an Indian Rodin’s thinker. He was feeling various emotions and during those feelings Joseph was watching himself and asking questions and watching some more. And this observance, this separation from his self and ego and his intense curiosity separated Joseph from most of the people I have known.

 Kindly note: All males in above image are heterosexual including tadpole and watchmen

I felt he was in some ways what we all want to be from the deepest portions of ourselves, unfettered by convention, the good opinion of others and conventional frameworks of thinking which often allow us to make decisions based on fear rather than our inner callings. Whether it was walking a marathon naked totally unembarrassed, or jumping for no good reason down the road as high as he could, or dancing like no one was watching, Joseph filled me with delight at these manifestations of our greatest potential, to live wholly and with intense enjoyment in our present moment. Unembarrassed and un self conscious.

Women were intensely comfortable with him and he hugged and held them with no "ulterior motives," at least most of the time. When he did have different motives, I don't think they minded. Peter Pan. He's like peter Pan, said one. The Little Prince, said another. Porki paya! (translates to street brat)  said another. Bloody little rascal, said yet another.

 Spot the Joseph

A young lady, just broken up from her boyfriend of many years and suitably in need of wisdom and possibly marriage with a suitably wise boy, invited him over for dinner. She cooked dinner for Joseph. According to the girl, after some conversation, which probably included the phrases  “Why not?” “”Really?” and “hmmm” Joseph politely asked the young lady if he could roll about on her floor.

"Why would you want to do that?" said the puzzled girl.

"Because I feel like it" said the Joseph.

Spot him?

She said it was okay to do so and he rolled for a while, stretching and contorting himself, before suddenly getting up and leaving. Later the girl tells me that he "touched her soul".

So whats a nice Malayali like you doing on the floor like this?

I recently chatted with him and told him how I was afraid I was becoming what I hated. Arrogant, a victim and judgmental.

“Be kind to yourself, embrace it and I am fine with you being in a bad mood, as long as it’s authentic” said Joseph and then fell to the floor and did a handstand.

It was not just what he said but Josephs whole body that did the speaking sometimes. Inaudible often, but sometimes understandable.

 Joseph does a handstand

A young lady at a party seemed rather low. She had come to India on a Fulbright scholarship and her expectations of India did not quite match up to the reality she had created for herself. I told Joseph that she had had a rough time. Immediately, he said that he felt her toes needed sucking. After washing them, very much like Jesus would have maybe, he sucked them, very much like Joseph would have. The young lady did not protest and allowed her toes to be rolled about in Joseph’s mouth.

“I felt she needed it, she really did Ryan”

I find it remarkable that Joseph could do this, and be so unembarrassed, though when I raised the camera he did say he did not want his face to be on face book, while sucking a strange girls toes. He said it was okay if he covered his face. I hope you’ll enjoy looking at the image as much as Joseph might have enjoyed those toes.Mys sister Leisha took this photo.

Joseph knew how to hug. He did so whole-heartedly and took time to do so, holding people close and saying things they knew he meant. He made people feel special by seeing and genuinely appreciating good things about them. He told people he loved them, when he was alive. Several people have recently told me that they regret not having told him, the same, when he was alive. Some regret not having showed him. Some so much more than others. Maybe we take our time here for granted sometimes and don't see it as the precious gift it is.

So many girls. So much sadness and some of it is so much their own creation. As Arjun says - they were like passing clouds and he was the blue sky, the same spirit, dancing and unchanging. He might have asked a cloud to stay, or maybe two, but they chose not to and losing Peter pan can be quite a loss. Basically, Joseph was also a rascal, maybe of the finer kind.

Sometimes a death is like a lens. It brings people into focus, and the photograph is not pretty. Everything stops, is frozen and people take stock of their own lives. So much grief now and so much of it can be externalized. Peter Pan lives on, young and Dionysian forever while Wendy realizes that she grows old and Tinkerbell dies.

Some people have told me that they wish they had met Joe when he was alive after reading about him on face book and this blog post, which reveal the loving, mad joe as his close friends and family knew him.The truth is that there is beauty in the people they already know and maybe often, they do not see it, appreciate it, give and take from it, because that is how they see themselves, with less love.

Wendy can remain young at heart and Tinkerbell can fly into the sun, but one has to bring ones own self into focus, and that can be very hard.We so often let fear masquerading as practicality rule our decisions and present moments. So important to tell and show people that you love them, now. So important to love yourself truly and follow your hearts innermost callings also, now.

Only now.

There really isn't any other time.

 hug hug

I recall Joseph telling me that he so enjoyed doing nothing once when I asked him what he was up to. Being at home alone. Having a bath and doing nothing. Meditating. stretching. nothing.

“Its amazing, its so amazing” he would say, describing his shower. And he meant it.

So many people are worried about their purpose in life, their mission, and ambitions. I fell Joseph felt viscerally that his purpose was to enjoy, experience and live and love in the present. So many people spend their lives striving. Joseph enjoyed arriving, I feel.

 Mock fight

“You have to surrender when you fall,” said Joseph and I remember us shoving each other around at a party. Joseph was trying to teach me feldenkrais moves or greater awareness of ones own body through movement. 

“Relax your body”

 Freeman and Joseph stretch a bit.

He showed me dancing where one used someone else isometrically, whirling and allowing the push to become a part of you, spinning, and not resisting but allowing and actually enjoying the force of impacts. 

Freeman and Joseph spar

“Don’t resist it, embrace it, enjoy it, watch it, appreciate it” and he would whirl and recover and come back as I shoved him as hard as I could.

 Joseph and Freeman shove each other

This flexibility, this awareness of Josephs body he claimed one could apply in ones own life experience. 

“Surrender, learn to surrender”

 

Joseph died by falling off a waterfall in Thailand while trekking. The girl he was with wrote in an email that he fell gracefully. I was initially offended by what she had said but during meditation, the words above came back to me. She said he did not make a sound as he fell about 30 feet. I would like to believe that he died as he lived, immensely.

If you were to tell me that Joseph would die the way he did, I would not  have ever thought so. He was superbly fit, a feldenkrais expert, a kalaripayattu martial artist and an athlete. The future is promised to no one indeed. As he was being buried I noticed a kite stuck in the tree next to his grave. The kite flyer has flown.

 Joseph reads "Take me to your leader"

 We have only a few precious moments with each other. Two minutes with that man sitting next to us on the bus, a few scattered conversations with neighbors, a few years with friends, a few more with family, some years with parents and then, they are gone and so are we. Joseph in some ways showed to me the immense value of our time here on earth. The immense power we have to enjoy ourselves, the value of suffering and what precious treasures we have to offer with love and immense enjoyment to the world.

I give thanks for the time I have had with him. It has been and is a precious and timeless gift. The poetry of his being will remain with me.

 Joseph