MY first meeting with Octavio Paz was what may be called a disappointment. I had expected to encounter a man with a wheatish complexion and Mongolised eyes. It was an expectation that had helped me build my confidence when I entered the room where I was to be interviewed for a scholarship to study mural painting in Mexico. The year was 1952.
I spoke little English and this too with a pronunciation that was hard to comprehend. I expected less fussiness on this account from a non-White and one who himself may have had little knowledge of the English language. Disappointment did not come on the day of the interview, as on that day I had fancied another gentlemen with my presumed identities to be Octavio Paz.
This disillusionment came when I actually met him—several days later when I called on him at the Embassy. By then I was no longer the nervous freak who had entered the interview room on an earlier occasion, having already known the outcome of the interview as being in my favour. Still I was disappointed. The legacy of the White man was still fresh in those early years of Independence and it was difficult to feel intimate with a man with White skin. Of course, the disappointment soon melted into affection as Octavio began to speak to me.
The incident may well depict the personality of Octavio Paz. He had a way of winning over the other and helping one stand on one's feet. He had chosen me over many whose credentials dwarfed me by feet not inches.
Not only was I unlettered in any foreign language, I carried the unacceptable burden of being deaf. Nor had I won any recognition as an artist which could balance the other shortcomings. To add to all this, the footnote on my bio-data mentioned Communist affiliations—a point which, though true, was meant only to erase my remaining chances.
Yet, he had chosen me in spite of all that because, as he told me, it was this freakiness that he considered an element that goes into the nourishment of creativity. In this brief remark is the reflection of Octavio's true personality and the essence of his creativity. Both in his poetry and his persona, he injected a seeking for the unrecognised and unestablished truth.
Though not exactly tall, Octavio had a strikingly handsome frame. His blue eyes only added to the sparkle that seemed to ooze from his being as he talked. Even when he was serious, he never allowed a faint smile to leave the corners of his mouth. It was an adorable expression that disarmed his adversaries. And adversaries he had plenty. Even at the peak of his fame, the Mexican intelligentsia were divided by half when it came to accepting him. And that was no mean achievement in a country totally dominated by Leftist intelligentsia.
Octavio himself was bred and nourished by Marxist ideology in his formative years, a fact which helped me because he ignored the footnote on my bio-data. The time I met him, he had shed his Marxist faith, but he had not turned against it. In fact, he remained a Leftist all his life. That is, if being a humanist can be defined as such.
Of course, his parting advice to me, as I was to sail for Mexico was to see more with my own eyes. He wanted me to keep a distance from the reigning monarchs of Mexican art, Diego Rivera and Sequiros, whose work I adored and whose concepts of art were not to Octavio's liking. He instead advised me to associate with Tamayo, who, like Octavio, was persona non grata for the Mexican intelligentsia. I did not follow Octavio's advice as far as Tamayo was concerned, as associating with him would have made me untouchable for the rest of the Mexican art world.
Much of what I learnt about Octavio's life as a family man came from two sisters of his first wife Irne. The Garo sisters, one married to a painter and the other a spinster, had nothing but contempt for what they described as Octavio's waywardness, both in his ideology and his relations with his wife. They also told me about his indifference to his only daughter who was born of his union with Irne Garo.
Octavio returned home to Mexico in 1954, still wed to Irne, but with cracks in their relationship clearly visible. I could never decide whether her fits of craziness were an inheritance that she shared with her sisters or were due to Octavio's neglect. They finally split up. But in parting with Irne, Octavio also had to part with most of his savings.He was almost broke when he arrived in India as the Mexican ambassador in 1962.
It was in his second innings in India that Octavio and India had a stamp of each other. He was a man whose love for what makes India was genuine. Neither its squalor nor its corruption could lessen Octavio's love for this country. He absorbed it like few ever could or did.
It was on this second visit that he met Marie Jose, his wife for the rest of his years. Marie Jose had arrived in India as the wife of a French diplomat in New Delhi when I befriended both her and her husband. The coincidence of her meeting with Octavio is rather strange. I had invited the French couple to dinner with a few other friends including Antonio Gonzalve, then Octavio's deputy who had been my friend since my days in Mexico. Octavio was not among the invitees, but on learning of the dinner from Antonio, he invited himself and thus met Marie Jose. Their liking for each other was instant. And for months, my house served as their secret rendezvous.
They married within three months. My connections with Octavio continued. It grew stronger when I designed the Belgian Embassy. He did a lot to project it in Mexico and wrote about it extensively. For the last few years he was striving to ensure that I hold an exhibition in Mexico of both my art and architecture. Without him Mexico's attraction for me is reduced—something that I cannot afford.
