Remembering my Father

I have very vivid recollection of the time I spent with my late father who passed away some 50 years ago.  It has been a very long time, but I can still remember some of those wonderful moments, I have had with my dear father.

As I remember him, I believe my dad’s greatest virtue was his kindness and goodness of heart. He was a perfect example of what we call a kind and gentle human being. All those who knew him outside of the family thought him to be a thorough gentleman.  A very rare breed, indeed.  In those days, I had heard many tales from my friends and school mates the way their fathers used to treat them at home.  The fathers those days then, were generally very strict and taciturn, having very little patience when dealing with young boys. On the other hand, I take great pride in saying that my father treated me like an adult, as if I were on his equal footing. He never remonstrated me even during those trying times when I knew I was in the wrong and had tested his patience to the maximum. There was a lesson to be learnt from each of his actions. He even shared the details of his salary, home budget and expenditure with me though I was hardly 10-11 years old. When I was 15 years old, I became a sort of accountant to him. He made me realize the value of being thrift with family budget. Once my father had asked me to manage the family expenses for one entire month independently before handing over his entire salary for the month. This was his way of showing me the ropes, I think.  I did this for a month and I couldn’t do any better on monthly savings and expenditure than he could. I gave up and told him that I cannot manage any better than him.  This exercise was a lesson to me to understand the nuances of managing the family finances with limited income of those days. My dad was a great democrat at heart.

The thing I clearly remember about my dad was his suave good looks and his handsome countenance. He was always well dressed, looking impeccable in his sartorial extravagance. I could still visualise him in his suit and tie, immaculately dressed ready to leave for his office in the mornings, waiting for his office van/car, as early as 6.40 AM daily. Even when he was very sick and he knew his end was near, his dress sense never left him. When he was admitted to the hospital following a heart attack, before leaving for the hospital he had to get nicely dressed as if he were attending some important event.

His other passion was his extreme fondness for food. Food was more like a mission with him. His eating habits were unique. He had this habit of polishing off his food plate clean after every meal, not a single morsel of food was to be found left on his plate once the meal was over. As an explanation to this habit, we were told that food grains were very precious and scarce commodity those days as rationing of food grains were in vogue. I think the wars of 1965 and 1971 had left an indelible impression on people’s minds and taught them a valuable lesson not to waste any food. India was a food deficient country then; the green revolution was still years away. There was shortage of food grains in India and I still remember wheat used to be imported from USA. Whatever the reason, the lesson we were taught was that food was never to be wasted.

My dad loved eating Masala Dosas in local Restaurants. Masala Dosa was his all-time favourite snack. Restaurants were far and few then unlike today’s Bangalore where you have food joints at every nook and corner. But some of the South Bangalore’s old Restaurants like Vidhyarthi Bhavan, Mavalli Tiffin Room, Udupi Krishna Bhavan in Balepet, Hotel Dwaraka, New Modern Hotel, Janatha Hotel, have survived to this day. There was this Restaurant by name Gajendra Vilas in Chamarajpet, 4th Main Road which was an all-time favourite with our family of uncles and aunts. It has been closed for some years now. I used to accompany him to all these restaurants whenever he felt like relishing on his favourite snack. I was looking forward to this lovely treat which had become a sort of weekly ritual with us.  Doctors had advised my father to shun oily and sweet foods as he was a diabetic. Apart from diabetes, he had developed many other accompanying health complications like Hypertension, Kidney malfunction, heart problems, etc. Despite all these health concerns and doctor’s advice, my dad had this insatiable urge to fulfil his passion, which was food. He wasn’t keen to take up on the doctor’s advice seriously. He used to say that he would eat tasty foods to his heart content and die early rather than go without and live long.

His another abiding passion was playing Cricket and watching Hollywood movies. I was told that in his younger days (that was before I was born), he had this habit of watching Hollywood movies on a weekly basis. I remember my mother telling me that he was never home on Sundays during his younger days. He was always to be found in Cricket grounds or in some movie theatre. His chief raison d'être was playing Cricket and watching movies. His interest in later years turned to umpiring for Cricket matches rather than playing the game himself. However, due to his deteriorating health, all activities ceased gradually. I remember watching some of the hit movies of the time with him. I remember a few of them. Airport, Hatari, Fear is the key, Where Eagles Dare, Patton.

My dad loved to recant and regale us with stories from the great Indian epics, Mahabharata and Ramayana to my younger sister and I.  Whatever little knowledge I have of these great Indian epics is solely due to my dad’s story-telling efforts. During the summer evenings, post dinner, when the weather used to get hot inside the house, we used to sit out on mats under the open evening skies inside the compound walls of our home. My dad would engage us with stories from the great Indian epics; stories of the great Hindu saints and sages in great detail. There were so many interesting and unforgettable stories we had heard from him during those summer evenings. It was a delight listening to him in his wonderful sonorous voice.  This recanting of stories by my father had become a ritual of sorts in our extended family circle. When my cousin brothers and sisters visited our home during school vacations, they used to participate with us  enthusiastically enjoying the stories from my dad. More the merrier, we all enjoyed the session of my father’s story-telling efforts and had food served under the open skies by my mother on few occasions.

My dad was well loved and respected by his siblings. Being the eldest, he had as many as eight siblings; apart from three step sisters and a step brother. He was instrumental in keeping his family intact following his father’s death and his entire extended family was struggling to get two square meals a day. He never spoke about the struggles he had gone through.  His mantra was to live in the present and never brood over the past.  The past was over and done with.  There were many trials and tribulations he had undergone; many of which we never knew until after his death. Very much later in life, I heard from my uncles and aunts, about the struggles and pain my dad had to endure in his short span of life.

How I wish my dad had lived much longer to enjoy the good fortunes life had to bestow upon us in later years. Alas, this was never meant to be. But I have always felt his gentle presence alongside me, in so many of my endeavours. My grandma (my father’s mother) who lived on to a ripe old age had this to say about him. The huge cache of good deeds accumulated by my father had been bestowed on to his children in the form of God’s kind gifts and largesse.  Be that as it may, life has been very kind to me so far.

There is this saying from the local language which roughly translated says, ‘Good men are snatched away early in their prime as Gods love them too much and cannot stay without them’. This quote appeared to be so apt in my father’s case as I have not come across a gentler and wonderful human being in my life! He passed away quite early in his life but he has left us with many everlasting delightful memories of our time spent with him.  My utmost regret was that we did not have a proper photograph of my father to remember him by.  His memories are, however, etched in my mind and I can still remember him clear as a day and the sublime person that he was!

My tryst with Yoga

Yoga, in recent years, has reached the centre stage and has become one of the most popular and sought after, powerful routines across the World.  In recent times, it has come to the notice of human kind that Yoga is not only a superior form of exercise but also extremely beneficial to the mental health and happiness of people across the spectrum, irrespective of age / race / colour / faith.  Across the World today, people are practising the different forms/combinations of Yoga postures/asanas/mudras, which is, especially true with Western cultures.  

There was a time when Yoga was quite not as popular, as it is today.  I had my first initiation  into Yoga in the early eighties when I had just completed my studies and freshly got into employment.  I had a colleague in my work place,  who introduced me to Yoga.  During the times I am talking about, Yoga was not very well advertised.  The classes then, were run in the empty corridors of an ill-lit, impoverished Temple.  The Temple premises was a bit decrepit as there were not many patrons to fund the infrastructure improvements of the Temple which was situated in the environs of Thyagarajanagar area of Bangalore.  It suited us very well.  The corridors were fairly free in the evenings for conducting our Yoga activities.  Our Yoga Guru was a young man in his late twenties. The young Guru taught us some powerful Yoga asanas in a very cavalier manner, perhaps it appeared so, because our bodies were young and supple, and we could easily perform some of the difficult asanas.  We were all very enthusiastic about the exercise part of it and not so much about the technicalities or the correctness part of the asanas. Without much ado, we were able to learn some basic Yoga postures.  A few months into the Yoga routine, we had to discontinue the classes for want of a basic place to train.  You see, the Temple that we were practicing Yoga, had started its own renovation work and we were asked to stop our activities. We lacked the necessary dedication and devotion to find an alternative place for continuing the Yoga classes. So, my initial tryst with Yoga came to an abrupt end.   Looking back, I think, we just did not have the necessary perseverance and diligence for continuing with the craft.

I suppose, life has a way of providing us with second chances to experience the spiritual side of things which we may have lost out in our quest to acquire material things. Well, to put things into perspective, may be, one has to go through life experiences the hard way to learn the basic lessons of getting to be happy and following good personal life habits.

Fast forward to nearly five decades into the future. My tryst with Yoga somehow got reconnected again by one of those unforeseen events.

It all happened so very suddenly that I had no inkling of what was to come.  One fine morning, my body movements became numb and I had to be urgently shifted to a hospital for immediate treatment.  I was advised immediate surgery of my lumbar region. The surgery lasted a few hours, but the damage done post surgery was quite a long drawn process.  I was confined to the bed for a week and was advised to move around with the help of an attendant and a 'walker'.  There was the additional treatment advised to seek the help of a physiotherapist to hasten the recovery process.  The physio treatment was quite painful during the first few days but after a couple of months, I was ready to move on.  You see, I was diagnosed with an unusual condition characterized by the inability to lift the front part of the foot, aptly called "foot drop".  The front of the foot literally dropped on its own volition from the attached leg.  The nerves connecting my foot were damaged and they had to regenerate on their own; this can be a long drawn process; further complicating the issue was my age and the debilitating diabetic condition.  All in all, a long drawn recovery process.  This brings me to the topic on hand.  The Yoga therapy.

During my physiotherapy phase, I was finding the therapist totally ineffective and was looking for an alternative therapy; when it was suggested to me to try out Yoga therapy.  This is when it all began.  I was indeed very lucky to come across an incredible Yoga Guru.  I was initially hesitant and even reluctant to put myself through the Yoga routine as I had a typical notion that Yoga was just meant for ascetics or mystics! Not at all meant for me, a 66 year old patient with post surgical and other health complications.  I agreed to go through the therapy for the first few days, more out of curiosity and my wife's insistence rather than as any serious form of exercise that would improve my condition.  My initial experience turned out to be rather encouraging and I was increasingly getting bested by the routine as the days progressed. The Teacher made a vain attempt to teach me some of the Yoga prayers with even some home work to comply.   As can be expected, I was finding it difficult to even pronounce the tongue-twisting  sanskrit words in the beginning. The Yoga teacher struggled hard with me on my initial recovery stages by training me at my home on the specific exercises designed to strengthen my back (specifically the Lumbar region) and legs/feet. 

The Guru I am talking about was a very warm and kind individual, who had a great sense of humour to go with it.   She taught me the essence of all the varied forms of Yoga postures and mudras with a serious intent to repair my peculiar condition.  I really liked the way she helped me work hard with her easy demeanour and charming methods.  It looked simple when she showed us the complicated asanas but when as a matter of fact, it was difficult to replicate them on our own.  I can still recall her words "Hari sir, your face looks pinched as if you are drunk on castor oil, try doing the same asana with a pleasant face".  Truth be told, I am still trying hard to keep a pleasant face when twisting my arms and limbs in a rather complicated intertwined position!  I don't know how she does the complex Yoga asanas with composed graceful and svelte movements like a gazelle, combined with a happy and pleasant face to go with it.   I would rather gleefully watch her do them effortlessly rather than trying them do on my own!  In a lighter vein, it is rather that the young boys and girls of the Yoga class think that she is an Angel of sorts!  I would second that notion whole-heartedly as she has performed some miracles with the way she has made me try some really complicated Yoga poses using her enormous talents.  When I started attending her classes, I found to my dismay that I was the only male around; all other attendees were ladies of different ages. I felt embarrassed the first day but very soon I was made to feel welcome, more like a member of the family and even joked around as 'Krishna Paramatma'.  I feel overwhelmed and proud that I am able to walk on my own, without the aid of a walking stick or any other form of support now; which is largely due to the unstinted efforts of the Yoga teacher who worked very hard with me to enable me to regain my strength in my lower back region and my legs/feet.  

I bow my head in humility to this extraordinary person who has been my teacher and Guru in my second tryst with this wonderful Yoga routine.  

Let me end this narrative with a quote from the greatest of all, the Yoga Guru, the sage Patanjali himself:

When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all of your thoughts break their bonds. Your mind transcends limitations; your consciousness expands in every direction; and you find yourself in a new, great and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive and you discover yourself to be a greater person than you ever dreamed yourself to be.