My Father would have turned 80 today

My father would have turned 80 today (30th April - 1^st May), going by the Tamizh Hindu Panchangam. I felt this would be a good time for me to write a long pending eulogy, something I have wanted to do for almost 15 months now. But whenever I try to write something, words just fail me. My mind goes haywire and I am unable to get any cogent thoughts.

Each person holds his/her father in very high esteem and I am no different. Those who knew him wouldn’t disagree to the pages I can write about his virtues. But then, that is not my style and more importantly, it wasn’t his nature to flaunt his qualities either. The next few paragraphs may perhaps, capture the essence of who he was, for the benefit of those who didn’t know him.

My father was by nature a very loving and caring soul. He was one who wouldn’t partake in the politics of life and preferred to lead a straight life. His tastes were simple, his objectives were ideal and his affection towards his family knew no limits. He could be friendly with a toddler, a brat, a teenager, an adult, a peer and even seniors. He had an amazing sense of humor that ranged from Wodehousian style to plain kadi jokes. “Paropakaram Itham Shareeram” says a Sanskrit verse and that was his motto in life. He was always ready to help anyone in any way possible within his means.

When I was growing up, he was always there with me. My mind is filled with scenes where it was just father-son bonding time at the beach, cricket matches at Chepauk, movies, restaurants etc. In my late teen years, he even had a father-son talk with me – advising, nay suggesting, that I don’t get carried away by my age and do something just out of peer pressure. On a similar note, when I was leaving for the US – the first time that I was going to be out of my house for an extended period of time – all he told me was to enjoy my time there, with limits of course.

Like many of you know, I was not a first-in-academics type of person. Despite all the money he spent on extra classes, not once did my father regret that to my face and for all my failures (I once scored 19% in a University semester exam), he would only say encouraging words. He was probably keen that I do well in cricket, at least to the level that he achieved. I didn’t shine there either, though he did put me into good coaching classes. Never once did he say that I disappointed him and would only continue to encourage me. I was without a job for a year after college and he only had words of encouragement to me; goading me to build up some skills or trying for higher education. It was a different matter that he constantly encouraged me to run or walk and be active, instead of lazing around on the sofa!

When I joined Infosys and was asked to work at an office 50 kms away, he didn’t like it. He was not swayed by the name tag of the company and felt that work is work and could be done anywhere. But he understood why I was taking it up and didn’t keep harping on the topic. He only used to feel sad about my long travel and that was all that he used to say. Of course, he would get tensed if I was late and being telephonically challenged, he would urge my mother to call me for my GPS updates.

It was not just with me, but even with others, he just wouldn’t want to hurt anyone. He never had an issue in helping others, but would never seek help from others, even when he had the rights to do so. My neighbour kid wrote to me after my father died, of an instance where he met him in a department store and offered a lift to him. My father thanked him, but politely refused. A few moments later, he sought out this kid and checked if the kid didn’t feel offended by his refusal. Raghu has many stories about him offering a lift and my father opting otherwise.

He was not really fond of pets and it was only during his last couple of years, that he started warming up to the favourite dog in my street. Not that he hated it or did anything to hurt it, but he wouldn’t go out of the way to do anything for it. But over the years, as he saw my mother and me feed it, he started to buy rusk and bread for it on his own. He even graduated to feeding it after some time.

On the night that he developed chest pain and I drove him to the clinic, he told me to drive in a relaxed manner and not get tensed; always the man who didn’t want to put others in difficulty on his count. Sadly, those became the last words he spoke to me.

There are abundant stories in my family, and more from my mother, about how he wouldn’t let even a mosquito hover around me. He never hit me or scolded me and the only time he made me cry, was when he died.

How I wish he were here to celebrate his 80^th birthday. Missing you appa. 

The Crow in my car

With the arrival of the Blue Eyed Boy at home, 3 months back, my Baleno has been relegated to the front parking spot at home. This evening, a small crow suddenly fell down between my car and the wall of the house. In our attempts to shoo it away, we only succeeded in making the crow take refuge underneath the car.

The next thing we did was to try and scare it by spraying water from one end of the car, with the hope that it would then totter over from the other side. But the poor thing got scared and somehow, managed to rest on the axle of the rear wheel on the right side.

I then tried kicking the tyre and shaking my car, hoping that the crow would budge, but it didn't I then took a rather long broom, reached in from the back of the car and tried to poke it out. And all that I managed to do was to bring out the best manoeuvre of the crow, which somehow squeezed itself on to the tyre of my car. As seen in the picture below:

I now hoped that since it was technically on the outside of the car, it would jump out. I continued to shake the car, albeit this time it was from the back. Again, no movement. I brought out a torch and checked whether the crow was caught somewhere in the gaps and had probably died. But even the dim ray of light from the torch showed that the crow was alive.

I gathered courage and tried poking the crow using the broom. Somehow, the crow didn't mind all this poking and I started to suspect that it probably liked the poking. Maybe it was getting a crow's equivalent of an acupuncture treatment.

I then called up my friend who is generally quite knowledgeable in all matters under the sun (also in the sun, over the sun and to the sides of the sun). But for some vague reason, he seemed to be more interested in talking to his brother in the US than even trying to find out why I was calling him in the first place. And in a twist of fate, his brother didn't continue the call and so, he called me back to find out the problem. And his solution was to start the car or honk it or both or for good measure, try moving the car slowly. I was quite petrified in doing any or all of it, but as any trusted disciple would do, followed my master.

I started my car and released the parking brake, with the hope that the little movement in the wheels would get the crow going. But no. So, finally my parents and one of their senior citizen friends who was talking to them at our gate, strongly advised me to simply walk away from the car. The reasoning behind that idea was that the crow was bound to get bored and walk away.

I accepted this option and lo behold, the baby crow started cawing in a couple of minutes. This attracted a couple of bigger crows in the vicinity and finally, one of them bigger ones came down to ground. It inspected the source of the caw and from the manner in which it was running around the car, cawing back and forth with the younger one, I am strongly inclined to think that this bigger one was the Mother Crow and right or wrong, I am going to refer to this crow with that title for the remainder of this post. The usage of words like Mother Crow and Baby Crow may make you think that I am reading too many children's book, but rest assured that it is not the case. You can see the Mother Crow's work here:

The cawing continued and the Mother Crow started jumping towards the Baby Crow's perch, to try and pull the Baby Crow out. It didn't really succeed and moreover, the Mother Crow also started getting quite concerned that I was standing in the vicinity.



Initially I was only trying to take a video of the whole rescue operation. But I felt that with the darkness increasing, the crows may probably not be able to execute their rescue plan correctly.

So I took the torch and started shining it towards the wheelbase, though I was at least some 5-6 feet diagonally away from the front-right side of the car (as should be evident from the pictures). But the Mother Crow somehow didn't like me acting like the Nightingale With The Lamp and started approaching me with louder caws.

Communication, as you may have heard in multiple forums, is not just about what you convey in your language, it is quite often about what you convey without saying anything, using your body language. Similarly, in this case, while I didn't understand what the Mother Crow was cawing to me, I sure did understand from its rather aggressive approach towards where I was standing,  that it didn't want me to shine the torch at it or its Baby.

After a couple of more attempts, the Baby Crow finally decided to budge out of its hiding or resting place and actually jumped out of the wheelbase to the cemented ground below. The Mother Crow came close and somehow egged on this Baby Crow to fly up, though the flight was just a high jump of 3 feet, into the branches of a tree nearby. You can see this video here (Apologies for the poor quality video):



All in all, it was a rather interesting evening for me. I found the drama that unfolded in front of me, quite charming actually!

You can see both videos here:

Video 1
Video 2