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!