A.G.Cronin (1896-1981) was a doctor by profession and eventually he became a writer. As an under graduate student, I had my exposure to his writings in Readers Digest and later I read some of his novels. His passion for writing was there alive and kicking until his death.
A.G.Cronin’s classic write up , the resurrection of Joao Jacinto first published somewhere around mid 60s was again reprinted in the late 2000s , as it was a superb classic masterpiece .After returning from Paris, I happened to read once again. It is really a true story of a man who came resurrected after death. He was humiliated and wounded and highly embittered by erstwhile lady love, who moved towards greener pastures after hearing about his death. By a strange quirk of fate, he then bounced back to work with a dilapidated body while his sturdy heart craved for erecting a kind of monument which no one could hardly imagine and believe emerge out of his soiling of hands with mother Earth.
As a young man of 30 years, well built, he chooses the hard way of a Fisher man for living and he is engaged to the prettiest woman, Manuela Maria in his home town. In one of his trips on the sea, a calamity strikes him and the news come from the parent ship that, he is gone once and for all.
No sooner than Manuela Maria, his lady love weeps over his death with all sadness in her heart in the church, she marries a young man as she has brought with her sufficient dowry of cultivable land, ideal for growing oranges. At one moment she was genuinely crying for her lover and at another, she was smiling holding her hands with new hands of husband, forgetting the past , as a false memory . A typical earthly girl, a pragmatist.
After some time the unexpected good news comes: the ship that ran over his boat had collected him his ribs and leg bones broken and the region round his pelvis being virtually crushed into little pieces like marbles. It took many months for repairing his wounded parts and make him walk with a stick, walking all bent forward.
His lady love, once and for all gone to somebody’s arm for comfort ad pleasure in a typical earthly way and his old mother ,craving for some care and some space, he willingly accepts the offer to serve as the official of the Parka, which is always dusty and littered with fruit peals
It is frustratingly an irritating experience to live this way and carve out a world of his own- a world of seclusion and exclusion from others. But he does not have any complaint with life or himself until that fateful day, when a more devastating event virtually shakes him up and folds him into an excruciating pain. That was when his erstwhile girl, to whom he was previously engaged shows her indifference and disregard towards him first while passing by his side and then giving a glance –a sharp and quick one, with all contempt packed into it, which comes as an insult to the injury to him . He was unable to digest and tolerate this humiliation.
This sarcasm and despising look, virtually resurrects him to a new life which even he could not have imagined. He resolves to do something durable and memorable in order that, no body could bury him and that he would live for ever. Overcoming his physical disabilities with the help of his two strong arms alone he transforms the surface of the soil, taking out the stones, shifting the soil, planting shrubs and plants and watering them daily. Making a garden this way the hardest way with a single minded focus , instills a lot of change and pride in him . Respect returns to him with renewed vigour and strength. With change of seasons, the garden grows with infinite color and festivity giving the shade and smell . The author , A.G.Cronin meets the gardener at work and shakes hand with him . He says, that he sees the famous Portuguese poet ,Camoes in him. Like the famous poet, the gardener is also a creator and the inspirer. To our Jacinto, he owes to garden as much the garden owes to him and they both grow together. It is really a shared growth. Indeed they need each other for survival.
Personally it is a rewarding experience for Cronin to meet this old man, virtually battered by life but not yielding to its cruelties, wickedness, and all its absurdities. For weeks he had been cursing and pitying himself, nursing his symptoms in sunshine, and escaping into indolence. But here is a old man with all his physical disabilities under the sun and denial of love, not to speak of a grand betrayal and ridicule by that pretty girl who was once engaged to him has survived and lived well radiating happiness all around, could now resurrect himself like Jesus and bounce back to life not by any spiritual miracle but by sheer physical work, creating beauty out of chaos and more pain rocking his mind. A physically disabled man, but mentally strong and vibrant has shown the way to a Doctor who also happen to be a writer/ novelist.
The image of that bent man in the Squares garden would be an inspirational symbol and act as an inducement to master adversity in life as symbolically implied by Voltaire, when he said, “we need to cultivate our gardens.”
A.G.Cronin ends the article by saying, “only in fulfilling ourselves at the highest level of our capabilities, developing our lives in terms of social usefulness and benefit to the common good can be justified ourselves as the members of society.”
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