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. 

A brief history of the events in my life in the last 3-4 weeks

* Picked up a neck sprain in the first week of October. Self-medication with pain relieving gels and ointments didn't work. An Ortho' prescribed tablets, but to no avail. Registered 5 days of leave in October alone. Second opinion took me to a scan centre for an MRI. After the wallet became thinner by Rs.5,500 an obvious fact was documented - I am fat! Doing some basic stretch exercise which have definitely alleviated the pain. I am better.
Root cause - posture while operating the computer and while traveling.

* MRI scan is a 15 minute torture on the ears. The noise that the machine makes is very loud and quite irritating. And while I was inside the chute, I somehow felt nervous.

* Have been going more often to the office closer home to avoid the long distance commute.

* Had a rather quiet birthday. Some friends and team-members did organise a cake-cutting event in the evening and I had a tough time convincing them to stick to my principles of not wasting cake by smearing it on the face.

* Celebrated a very quiet Deepavali, though the officials seemed to hold a different opinion. Either I became deaf or my town has been moved out of Chennai!

* Seeing many resignations in the company at all levels. 2 in my team have quite in Sep-Oct. I have a feeling that a couple of more are due.

* I cleared all the exams mandated at work for a promotion and have been given strong indications that there are no slots for my band of employees! If it is available, I am not eligible. If I am eligible, it is not available!

* Learnt that murungaikkai is used in an oorugaai.

* Attended an awesome spectacle called Annaabhishekham at the Ratnagirishwarar temple near home. Refer pictures here.





* The rainy season finally started in Chennai last week. Pretty heavy rain. Saturday was non-stop. Memories of last year, when we witnessed a similar incessant downpour, came up.

* Nothing else of any significance. Hope to resume blogging with earlier frequency at the earliest. Have been staying away just to avoid spending long hours in front of the computer.

Give and take policy

Those who follow Tamizh movies closely, would fully understand what the give and take policy is all about. For the uninitiated please see this video to understand what I am rambling about.

The point is that I very rarely, if ever, indulge in the whole give and take policy. For many people its a natural skill and an acquired one for many others. I have been observing some people around me use this technique to extract information from others.

On Friday evening, I implemented this on the unsuspecting Ramadurai. You see, while we were returning home from the office, we were chatting as usual and somehow the conversation moved into the realm of gift vouchers and the likes. I saw an opportunity to use the aforementioned give and take policy here.

What I wanted to "take" was this: It was his daughter's ayush homam function on Sunday. And he'd invited many of his friends from office. We were all discussing about what we should get for his daughter. As usual no decision was taken and we all left office without finalising anything on Friday.

That's why, I thought I could check with him about what might interest him. So when the topic about vouchers came up, I mentioned to him that he could use it to get toys in the big stores. He said that he could get the same toys at a lower cost in other shops. I asked him if he could name those other shops and he told me about one near Alwarpet.

I had also somehow managed to get to him to confess that he was planning to buy a tricycle for his baby girl. So armed with this information and also with the list of people in our group whom he had invited, I went directly to that very shop he talked about. The first thing I laid my eyes upon was a tricycle and when the shop-owner approached us (me and Raghu), we practically closed out the deal. I had that guy bring out a couple of related models, but the piece I saw at first was the cleanest and nicely bubble-wrapped one and I took it.

I called Ramadurai right away and asked if he'd bought the cycle that he was talking about. He replied in the negative and so I told him that I'd already bought it and so he needn't buy one. He sounded pleasantly surprised at this and I too felt happy that I was able to buy a gift that someone actually wanted.

So my first conscious attempt in using the give and take policy worked out real well.

Embarrassing moment at work

As most of you know, last Monday was my birthday. One of my teams had planned a cake cutting for me.

No, that was not the embarrassing moment. I didn't mind the cake cutting. Luckily the team had more girls and fewer guys. And even these guys haven't worked that much with me. So their request for smearing the cake on my face was rejected like an auto driver reacting to the red light at a signal.

So where was the embarrassing moment? That came up when the team gave my gift. The gesture didn't embarrass me. What really put me in a fix was the packaging it came under.

You see, the team got me a super cool Park Avenue shirt. But it was bought at the shop that is synonymous with ladies' undergarments in Chennai. I agree that this shop has diversified into men's and children's wear as well. They have opened up branches all over the city. They even have a trendy (but idiotic in my opinion) name to break away from what their core business used to be.

But for me, I still see them as only that - sellers of ladies' inner garments. Call me biased, chauvinistic or whatever. I don't care.

My mother buys sarees from that shop. But I keep telling my father not to buy anything there for himself, just because the men's section is one floor away. And if I ever have to take something in a plastic cover, I NEVER use their bags. I would rather go without a bag, than be seen holding one of theirs.

Given all this, I was under a major dilemma when the team handed that bag to me. Since I respect gifts, I didn't have the heart to throw out the cover and keep just the shirt box.

So I dutifully brought it home, just the way it was given to me. The first thing that my mother asked was how come I even touched that bag. There were of course remarks about my "attitude" when it comes to that shop, but I let it pass.

The shirt BTW, was very good. I liked it a lot. But it was very expensive and so, I've informed my team that for their next project party, I would be a co-sponsor.

400 full moons

Today is my "star" birthday. Doing a quick calculation, I realised that around 400 full moons must have been witnessed since my birth!

The calculation steps are given below:

Sadhaabhishekam is celebrated for one who has witnessed 1000 full moons. This in solar terms is around 80 years. Since I am now 32, the direct ratio-proportion calculation gave me the number of 400.

Hectic weekend

This weekend - Oct 27-28 - has been quite a hectic one for me.

On Saturday, I had to go to a resort near Mahabalipuram for an official project party. I had a lot of fun there, especially playing cricket.

In the evening, I went out to dinner with Raghu, Madhu and Nilu. Was meeting Nilu after almost 4-6 weeks I think.

We had a pretty good dinner at Wang's Kitchen in Adyar. Nilu and Raghu conspired to make this my birthday treat in advance. While booking the table (and occupying it first, buy virtue of arriving a few minutes earlier than us), Nilu had apparently told the staff there that he would be joined by a birthday boy and asked them to do something special.

So I was surprised when a place of salad was brought to the table. There was a carved capsicum in the middle and inside it was a small candle. I humored these guys by blowing out the candle. One of waiters had even come to enquire about who the birthday person was and after being pointed in my direction, he even shook hands with me!!!

Anyways, dinner was good, though we couldn't finish most of it. They did screw up our order of fried ice-cream. I used my negotiation skill and had one of the extra items on our order canceled out.

We had ice-cream at Arun's Unlimited in R.A.Puram. It was nearly 11 when I returned.

On Sunday, there was a small hiranya shraardham at home for my father's mother. In the afternoon, I went to Raghu's place and dragged him along to buy a watch for me. You see, my mother is gifting me a watch for my birthday and sanctioned an amount of 3k towards this.

So, I went with Raghu to Landmark at City Center. Got a Casio Edifice watch costing me 3.5K post discount.

Then, there was a dinner tonight, hosted by my colleague Rajkumar. Ganesh, Raji and Vidya had come too. The dinner was at Creame Center. The place is really good. Great ambiance. Good crowd too. However, I wont give them good marks for their Mexican dishes. It failed on all parameters - taste, quantity and price. But it was a fun evening.

After such eating binges, it comes as no surprise as to how I've managed to put on 6 kilos over the last one year and how I've increased my trouser size by 1 (pre-eating).

Smearing of birthday cake

At some point or the other, all of us have experienced this rather vile act of getting someone to cut their birthday cake and then use the top of it to cream the person's face and surrounding body portions.

Pretty much like many traditions that we have, this one is quite popular. I have been a victim of it and have also shamelessly indulged in smearing others, till a couple of years back.

During my evening tea break at the food court at work, I find that on at least 5 out of 7 days, there is a mini birthday celebration by a group of people. Considering the country's population and the number of people who work in my company, the frequency is probably bad.

But, once the candle is blown, the singing is done, cake is cut, a customary piece given to someone, the rot sets in.

There is one entity in each group who considers himself/herself the champion cake "smearer". He (quite often it is a she, but for typing convenience, I am going to stick with only a he) uses his hands, takes a good piece of the cake and simply smashes it on the "birthday baby". He is of course helped by a couple of friends who restrain the recipients movements, thereby ensuring that a pukka job is done.

Needless to say, quite a bit of the cake is wasted.

All things said and done, there are quite a lot of people on this planet who simply cannot afford even one square meal a day. And here we are, wasting what is a perfectly edible and consumable cake. As should be evident from my shape, I do not like to waste food. Any food that comes to my plate is invariably sent into my food pipe. Unless I am ill or the food is absolutely unpalatable, I never ever waste food.

But, here are people who for absolutely no reason waste food. All for 5 minutes of "fun". And the ironic part is that, these are the very folks, who after returning to their seats, will be forwarding emails that talk a lot about how one can contribute to the improvement of the society. There is this specific email that keeps getting delivered to every mailbox every 3 months (for the past 3 years). Its a collection of 'pictures of the year' (Its a different matter that the same pictures have been awarded pictures of the year, 3 years in a row). There is this really haunting picture of a scrawny Somalian kid searching for food near a garbage dump and a vulture sitting in the vicinity.

Why do they send those emails and also step out and waste at least 300 gms of cake in the name of fun? And why do they also complain like old hags about how everything in life is so unjust?

At least, when I was participating in this revelry, I didn't indulge in hypocrisy. Probably that's because I am blessed with a brain and a heart!