Before you read this, i just wanted to point out that I in no way preffered Martin over any of my other siblings, there seems to be some misunderstanding that in writing this about Martin means that i Have put him above all, I have respect for all my family. Now please read on and enjoy.......
Martin John Curran was born in London in the winter of 1950, he was the youngest child of Dermot and Ivy Currans marriage. He grew up around the Battersea area of South London, and done his secondary education in Spencer Park School in Wandsworth London.
Martin John Curran was born in London in the winter of 1950, he was the youngest child of Dermot and Ivy Currans marriage. He grew up around the Battersea area of South London, and done his secondary education in Spencer Park School in Wandsworth London.
After leaving school, he done various jobs, but eventually joined the Royal Navy, where he initially took up the job of marine engineering mechanic, and later a ships diver. He was stationed on HMS Rothsay, a Frigate. He had travelled very well with them, and visited Dakar, Rio de Janeiro, Miami, Bermuda, The Cayman Islands, Washington DC, New York and Gibraltar. He would always regale me with stories of his travels when I was a boy.
After Leaving the Navy, he got married to his first wife, Janine, they settled and lived around the Sheen area of London, Unfortunately the marriage ended up in divorce. At this time, Martin was being contracted around the world for his diving skills, usually within the oil industry, working on drilling equipment and pipelines underwater. Though working mainly in the North Sea, he also travelled to the Mediterranean Sea for construction of a harbour in Rome, also in the Persian Gulf, off the coast of Libya, Egypt and Saudi Arabia too. During this time, he had to give up the diving job, due to an accident that he had whilst underwater, he was very fortunate, and just about survived being trapped by a large pipe falling on him, he told me he had to be resuscitated, and said that he had an out of body experience. He told me later many years after, that his absence from Janine, and losing this job were probably contributing factors to his divorce.
After the divorce, he seemed to be from where I was standing, a kind of lost spirit, just wandering from job to job, he would get little private jobs here and there, like decorating or building and suchlike, he even roped me into them every now and then, I thought it very kind of him, considering that I too was unemployed at the time. But that was the way he was, he was always willing to share whatever fortune he had with his favourite people, and sometimes to his detriment. But he always made a fuss over me, right from when I was a baby, and now I look back, and appreciate all the good times we had together.
He was always trying out new things, when he was earning good money working in the oil industry, he seemed to have an endless supply of sports cars, his favourite was the MGBGT, and was always bigging it up with them, he also had a really big interest in Hang gliding, which I must say, he was very good at, and I would always go with him, and we travelled extensively around the south coast of England. As an early adolescent, myself and my friends were always really impressed with this.
Eventually, he decided to start a new life, and decided to move to Canada, and get a pilot’s licence out there, he successfully gained this, and eventually came back to the UK in 1984. He continued flying albeit only leisurely, and didn’t get the opportunity to gain employment in this field.
At this time, he met a lady called Sandy and they moved into a house up in Northampton, Martin then reinvented himself as an electrician, and gained his qualifications on a government work scheme up the, this would prove to be a pivotal point of his professional life, and he generally worked in these lines hereon in. Unfortunately he split up with Sandy and moved back down to London.
Around this time, he gained a job for the summer as a lifeguard, in Serpentine Lido, in central London. This was probably another pivotal moment of his life, as a fellow lifeguard that he was working with at the time was a sanyassin, a follower of the spiritual leader, Baghwan Shree Rajneesh. Martin was at this time in his life, in my opinion, a little mixed up, and needed direction. The sanyassins took him into their fold, and he started a new life of healthy spiritual life of meditation, diet, and self discovery. Eventually, he met another fellow sanyassin, Shanti, an Australian lady, who lived in London, and was also a person of great experiences like martin, also at this time martin took his sanya name of Deva Pagalo (meaning divine madman) apparently Baghwan had seen a photo of him and had to give him a sanya name, and decided this was the name for him, I suppose it makes sense now, but at the time, I thought he was absolutely off his rocker!
Shanti and he became man and wife, and lived together until his passing in august 2008, but Shanti definitely put him on the straight and narrow, He got a job at reuters newsagency, and held it down for many years, and eventually got a job that was something close to what his lifelong pursuit was, he got a job at London city airport, albeit as a maintenance man, but now he was working in an aviation environment, I must say in the time he was there, he was always talking about his job and how great it was, I suppose some of us aspire to many things and I think this was his aspiration, he didn’t even need to fly, he actually needed to be just with aircraft and people who worked with them, he was very well respected in his job too, as was shown by the turn out of staff at his funeral, I chatted to a couple of them, and they said that he was a very happy go lucky man, in a positive sense, and to hear this, meant to me that martin though he died young and left many unhappy people behind, that in the end he was happy, he was with his spiritual partner, Shanti, and he was with his aeroplanes.
When I found out that he had been taken ill, I just kept being so stiff upper lipped about it, but he gradually deteriorated, and unfortunately I was not with him at his passing, maybe I should be glad that I remember the last time we spent together in the June before he died, watching planes at London city airport! It was a nice time we had (as usual) but he did seem a little withdrawn that day, and had dropped hints that he was ill, but I was so stupid I didn’t realise them until after. I asked him what was wrong, he just said he wasn’t feeling the best, I said he should go and see the doc, and he said what if it was serious? I laughed at him and told him not to be stupid, and go and see the doc anyway. In this case, hindsight is very bitter, but I have martins picture on my mantelpiece, with all the other people I love, and think and talk about him all the time, he was the best big brother. And I’ll never forget that.
He was always a bit of a scoundrel as a young man, though nothing really serious, he did have a few clashes with the law, but this probably made him the kind of lovable cheeky chappy that he was, I remember as a toddler, I would always get excited when he was around, because he always had time for me, whenever the fair was on Clapham common, we would go up there, and as far as I was concerned, he was king with the bumper cars! And he always seemed to win me a little teddy bear. I remember when I was about eight, and his warship came up to tower bridge in London, and he came out in his shining uniform and gave me a guided tour around the engine room and the guns, bridge and well, of course the helicopter on the back! My last conversation with martin was about a week before he died, he rung me, this really surprised me, because I knew he was so ill, and he told me how much he loved his little brother, and that this may be the last time we would talk. So I told him something that I always felt about him too, and that was that I too loved him, and that from a toddler, he was always my hero. Because he was always the man who done that.
After moving in with shanti, he adopted her family as his own, and the first time I ever met any of them was at his funeral, and to meet a bunch of really nice people, they certainly were all like shanty, just all full of that kindness, openness and beauty that she seems to show every time I ever met with her. They were from all over the place, and it was really nice to hear about his exploits with them. Shanti’s two daughters adopted him as their dad, and in turn he took up the cause, and became a very worthy granddad. One story I remember them telling me was about the time they were in a restaurant in Australia, and martin and his grandchildren were connecting all the straws together and drinking the drink across the table, and as much as the grownups told him to stop, the kids loved it. I think in this, this sums up mart, he is someone who tunes into everyone, and brings out the best in them, even if it means making an absolute fool of himself, Osho was right to call him Deva Pagalo. Here is a quote from Osho about the name Deva Pagalo, and this sums him up too.
“Deva Pagalo, it is not a coincidence that I have given you a name which means ”the madman.” It is a very rare and unique situation to be meditative and to be mad.
There have been millions of mad people but their madness is a sickness, their madness means they have fallen below the mind and they have to be brought back at least to the normal state of mind.
That’s the whole profession of the psychoanalyst, the psychiatrist, the therapist.
But there have also been a very few mad people who have not fallen below mind but who have gone beyond mind. As far as mind is concerned, both are out of the mind. Both are mad, but the man
who has gone beyond the mind has come to a state which is the ultimate blessing in this existence.
When I gave you the name Deva Pagalo I had seen the possibility in your eyes that you can be one day a madman of the highest quality, a divine madman. It is not sickness, it is the ultimate in health.
What you are saying actually needs to be understood by everyone. You are saying, ”There is nothing I need to know.”Certainly, there is nothing that one needs to know. In a deeper
sense, there is no one who can have the need to know. You are an utter emptiness, silence, serenity..”
Reading this, reminds me of the fact that Mart was, like most men, a child at heart, but funnily he was more so, I remember him when I was a kid, and he was always tuned in to what me and my little friends were up to, he always always seemed to have sweets and treats, and was probably a little more interested in them than I was, he was like peter pan, he never lost the magic of youth. As a teenager, it was great hanging around with him, the ladies really loved him because of his youthful ways, and good looks of course, he had a bit of a wonky eye, which looked quite endearing even quite a twinkle, and a trademark scar on his cheek, that gave him a very masculine look too. All the girls in battersea, when i was growing up, were swooning over him, and had me pestered for them to have a chat with him, I suppose if you look at it, there is petes older brother, just back from working abroad, he's a diver you know, he earns a lot of money, don't he? and he's always driving around in the flashy motors ain't he? I was envious of him, but he was always my hero.
There have been millions of mad people but their madness is a sickness, their madness means they have fallen below the mind and they have to be brought back at least to the normal state of mind.
That’s the whole profession of the psychoanalyst, the psychiatrist, the therapist.
But there have also been a very few mad people who have not fallen below mind but who have gone beyond mind. As far as mind is concerned, both are out of the mind. Both are mad, but the man
who has gone beyond the mind has come to a state which is the ultimate blessing in this existence.
When I gave you the name Deva Pagalo I had seen the possibility in your eyes that you can be one day a madman of the highest quality, a divine madman. It is not sickness, it is the ultimate in health.
What you are saying actually needs to be understood by everyone. You are saying, ”There is nothing I need to know.”Certainly, there is nothing that one needs to know. In a deeper
sense, there is no one who can have the need to know. You are an utter emptiness, silence, serenity..”
Reading this, reminds me of the fact that Mart was, like most men, a child at heart, but funnily he was more so, I remember him when I was a kid, and he was always tuned in to what me and my little friends were up to, he always always seemed to have sweets and treats, and was probably a little more interested in them than I was, he was like peter pan, he never lost the magic of youth. As a teenager, it was great hanging around with him, the ladies really loved him because of his youthful ways, and good looks of course, he had a bit of a wonky eye, which looked quite endearing even quite a twinkle, and a trademark scar on his cheek, that gave him a very masculine look too. All the girls in battersea, when i was growing up, were swooning over him, and had me pestered for them to have a chat with him, I suppose if you look at it, there is petes older brother, just back from working abroad, he's a diver you know, he earns a lot of money, don't he? and he's always driving around in the flashy motors ain't he? I was envious of him, but he was always my hero.
Grandad, you are not only a hero to your brother Pete, but to me as well. I will never forget you, and you are always in my mind and my heart.
ReplyDeleteI still can not believe it has been three years already. I hope you are flying high wherever you may be and i know that the universe is singing your song.
All my love
Matthew