Enoddu(My) Thathappa...

My greatest strength and my biggest weakness. A soul for whom I have the highest regard, by whom I have been pampered the most and for whom my love has no bounds – My grandfather, whom I lovingly call Thathappa.

From the day I was born, till today I have been lucky to have him around for teaching me values, for pampering me and giving me more love and care than I deserve.

My source of inspiration, my pillar of strength. Spending hours with him when amma and appa would go to work when I was a kid, listening to stories about crows when I was fed food by ammamma or atha after coming back from from my nursery- “Happy Hours”, carrying me from home to the nursery even when I was big enough to walk - inspite being scolded by everyone else, teaching me names of all the buildings on the way to school and quizzing me about it on the way back home, accompanying him to pluck flowers in the morning after he wakes me up, brushes my teeth and make me prostrate before the lord, his stories of “paingaliye” at tea time, the times when he would take me for rounds/walks in the garden, sometimes for horse-riding at leisure, buy me things on the way back – these were a few, very few fond memories that I could pen down on summarizing my childhood days with my thathappa.

His sanskrit and math lessons when I was in primary school, his routine of taking xerox of my answer scripts given at school which he still preserves, the excitement on his face when I give him any report card and how he insists on me giving him a copy of it, his enthusiasm to visit all my schools and colleges even at the age of 87, my good-luck-charm grandfather who would accompany me to all my admissions and be lucky for me, and the life's lessons which he gives me even today are going to stay with me for a long long time.

There are a few things, he does, that makes him get scoldings from everyone but I am always the lone fighter for him inspite of knowing that there is some truth in what other's say. In a way, I pamper him today just like how he pampered me years ago when I was a kid. History repeats. Doesn't it? How can he still have the perseverance to walk for miles to pay the electricity bill, go to almost all banks in the layout or carry a few kgs of vegetables heavy enough for anyone of his age, I still wonder. I save him the trouble of walking when I am at home by making him my pillion on my gearless bike. His dialogue of “Kutti kaalathu lendhu pazhakam” never ceases to be fired even though the earth has revolved more than 75 times since then. Sometimes in this world of Kalyug, it is bad to be good. Inspite of this, he shows his care and love to everyone equally, strangers included, which even raises a few eyebrows at home. His recently developed love for food, coffee and chat gets him a few scoldings but I am always there to pamper him by secretly having chat with him or making coffee for him even though he had one a few minutes back.

I have always felt he should have been an engineer – probably a mechanical engineer on seeing his love for carpentry and playing with nuts and bolts. He is repelled by technology, be it operating a phone(something my grandmother has mastered by now) or even a computer for that matter, considering the simple lifestyle that he has lived for all these years. The typewriter is one of his best friends.

The values he has inculcated in me, the power of prayer that he has taught me, his teachings on how to live life both in times of happiness and difficulties, the things that I've learnt in life just by seeing the way he lives his life, are imbibed in me forever.

From his childhood stories, I have noticed that he has had a very tough life initially. Not enough funding for a pair of spectacles or for a few books, the numerous diseases which troubled him at a very tender age, the sacrifices he made for his family,his sense of commitment for family, the hardship he faced to learn typing and short-hand and master it and using that knowledge working extra time, managing work life with little income but no regrets, makes me feel that life should have been more easy on him.

His white and white dress code in his young days, his black umbrella that would hang on the door in the Sangeetha house, his love for children and telling them stories, his religious attitude and perseverance to learn almost all shlokas byheart (he still continues to do this), his debating skills on arguing with anyone and everyone except me are his signature characteristics.

It makes a huge difference to me when his face lights up on seeing me home or when he comes to me and talks about the void when I am not at home. I would only pray that our bond gets stronger and the lord gives him more happiness to live a happy life and he continues to take care of all of us, just like how he has been doing for more than half a century.