Colours of time

He was born in Mysore, where he spent his childhood in a sprawling four-acre home. He admits he spent more time on the trees and the woods than in the house.

After graduation he went to Burma, where he found himself in the middle of the Second World War in 1942. Fighting the Japanese army, he remembers the gory scenes of warfare vividly.

Says Rowe, “I was a cavalry officer in the war. I was leaning against the cannon on the tank, when some young fellow fired it without warning. I lost 90 per cent of my hearing and I had to leave the army.” After Independence, the Government of India refused to pay him any compensation.

Then started the hunt for gainful employment when he returned to his mother in Pune. “People will naturally reject a hearing-impaired person. I used to reach the interview stage but they used to see the wires of the hearing aid and say, `okay Captain Rowe, we will get in touch with you’, which they never did, of course,” he remembers with a chuckle. He renounced his hearing aid in a fit of pique.

For 20 years he lived in the world of silence. He stayed well within his den, going out only after sundown and avoided talking to people. He learnt painting and languages to keep himself busy. “Otherwise I would have gone stark raving mad,” he laughs.

“I taught myself painting. There were books by the great masters which I studied. But I followed my own style.” Rowe’s attractive water colours are based on nature. His landscapes are serene compositions, with a marked absence of human figures. That the environmentally-conscious painter is close to nature is obvious.

Rowe’s love for languages increased over the years. Spanish, French, Italian, Urdu and Marathi are some of the languages he speaks fluently. But Spanish remains his all-time favourite and he rattles off in the colourful language, thinking of the years he spent in Argentina, many moons ago. Today he takes up translation work to keep in touch with it.

But he recollects the tough days when the quest for a job was supreme. So in 1950, he went to Washington with the meagre amount of money he possessed. Once there, he culled the first name from a list of vocation consultants in the telephone directory, a certain gentleman called Tripp. “I called up and said, Sir, I want to meet you but you will have to shout loudly if you want me to hear.” He was advised by Tripp to attend a course in copywriting, “a word I had never heard of before,” grins Rowe.

This turned out to be a blessing in disguise, leading to a career in advertising. He worked for Seares in the United States of America and Canada, before returning to native shores. In Pune, he eventually settled down to work as creative consultant for Pratibha Advertising. But he kept painting and has amassed an enviable collection today, which people in the know pick up from time to time.

In 1966, after much hardship and determined efforts to live a normal life, he was able to get his ear operated. “I am a bionic man. I can hear now because I have a gadget inserted in my ear now,” says Rowe. And it has made all the difference to his life, although initially he had problems emerging from the silence he had got used to. “The gadget amplifies the sound too much and I still feel things are very noisy. I had got so used to the quiet of those years,” he discloses.

What kept him going all these years? His extraordinary philosophy, based on the Red Indian way of life! “The South American Red Indians are very close to nature, it’s part of their life and they are part of it. They believe in the powers of nature, and if you make them your allies, you can live in harmony. But paradoxically, although the natural forces are revered, the Red Indians believe that these powers try to trap you and kill you”.

“So you have to be a disciplined warrior, constantly at war with your allies,” explains Captain Rowe. He doesn’t believe in rationalism, “because there are many questions which the scientific temper cannot answer,”- a way of thinking that has stood him in good stead through thick and thin.