Zestful Appa!

Today would have been my father’s 78th birthday! What better way to end the BlogchatterA2Z blogging challenge than with a birthday remembrance of my dear father!

It has been 1 1/2 years since my father passed away in October of 2020. While some wounds seemed to have healed some haven’t. The behavior of various people and the suffering that he had to undergo the last 2 months of his life through no fault of his own somehow never leaves my memory. But rather talk about his suffering, I thought of writing about his witty and vivacious personality on his birthday! 🙂

Born in a humble Tamil family with 5 siblings, he had a simple life before he mastered English and stormed into SBI. He retired as DGM of SBI and was well known for his banking skills. He is also known for his gregarious personality, witty remarks, an absolute visionary, planner, out-of-the box thinker and being an eternal optimist. He was also a very caring father, husband, brother, son, cousin, friend and more. There cannot be one person who would have forgotten the conversation they had with him.

Witty:

My father always appreciated good food. He will never criticize bad food but had a knack of tasting the best food and appreciating it. He loved sweets and loved Bengali sweets. He knew exactly, what each city was famous for. If we were in Hyderabad – he knew it was Pulla Reddy that we had to go to. He knew Kerala was known for cooking with red rice and in Kolkata – they use mustard oil to cook their food.

Whether it was sambhar, rasam, gravy he loved to taste any and all good food. He did not favor non-vegetarian food over vegetarian food but he did prefer it slightly more.

Chicken was one of his favorite foods(and remember, my mother is a pure, pure vegetarian who doesn’t even eat egg)

Once as we were discussing chicken, mutton and more we remarked

“You know appa would eat an entire chicken when he was young?”

As we were astounded by the fact and wondering how somebody could eat an entire chicken, he quietly quipped

“In those days, chicken was small. They were not so plumpy as now!! 🙂 🙂 athunalla ma enale sappudu mudinchutu.. :)” (translation: “That is why I could eat it”)

We all started laughing at his wittiness and quick comeback – well that was my father – sharp, witty and quick to come back with a funny thought! 🙂

Caring:

There are many instances of caring that come instantaneously to my mind when I think of my father.

As I was struggling with my college days, he was quick to come and see me from Chennai to Coimbatore to boost me morally. We would stay in the bank guest house and have a good time! 🙂 We would go for movies, eat good food and have a delightful time!! 🙂

In all the four years that I stayed in the hostel, he was always there to drop me at the Chennai Central station and always ready to pick me up when I returned for my vacation. The train would arrive promptly at 6: 00 in the morning at Chennai Central and he would be there right on time! There was not one day that he would be late to pick me up.

His favorite route was the beach road in Chennai and we would diligently take only that path to reach home. Even today, as I travel on beach road in Chennai, I remember his talks and musings on various topics along that road.

Visionary:

He knew computers were going to rock the world. This was his thought in the 1980’s in India. Both of us daughters studied computers and my mother also adapted pretty quickly too( He shied away from it though! :)) But his vision became true and computers, Internet and social media are ruling our world now.

My college education at PSG College of Technology was only 200 Rs/semester. He would always say that my education was the cheapest in the entire world and I would never understand what he said or meant(but I knew he was saying something perfectly right 🙂 :)) But I did understand the whole significance of those words just a few years later when I left for the US(college education in the US is a distant dream for many – thanks be to the extremely high cost of tuition)

He would talk to everybody and could always see the big picture rather than be looking at the smaller facts.

Planner:

He had a vision for his daughters and what they should study. They had to study computers – no questions asked! 🙂 How did he come to that conclusion? Well, he did his own research and talked to a lot of people and learnt that computers indeed was the way to go(Computers is what our kids are studying too! :))

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He spoke to a lot of people and learnt that life abroad was different from India as well. He was positive that both of his daughters will settle abroad – so he got suitcases for us even when when we were in high school or early college life!! 🙂 (of course, he was disappointed that neither of us settled abroad finally! :))

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He was a great motivator and always encouraged us to dream big. He would buy a lot of books and encouraged us to read. In the books that he got for us he will write a nice autograph – that always said “To my darling daughter, Jayanthi – for studying abroad” or “To my darling daughter Nithya – for studying at Harvard Business school”!! (you know how that would feel for a child…. an instant energy boost!! :))

Out-of-box thinking style:

Anytime, we would go to him with our problems(we always took them there!! :)) – he would hear it and walk away. But at the back of his mind, he was wondering how to solve it. I always remember him lying down, looking at the TV and thinking innovative solutions for our problems.

“Why don’t you try this? Why don’t you try that?”

was his constant thought and we would also learn to think in different ways.

Even as his Parkinsons disease was raging and he was having difficulty walking, his constant thought was – if his footwear could be changed – he would be able to walk better. He tried numerous footwear and never stopped trying. Doctors might not agree but who can say what will work and what will not work for a patient? I loved the fact, that he could think of novel ways to solve his problem – well, that was my appa – smart and different! 🙂

With his guidance, these are some things that I have learnt(though there are plenty more):

1. Think beyond the current time
2. Plan ahead
3. Think of different ways to solve a problem
4. Taste good and yummy foods! 🙂
5. Never dwell on any topic for a long time
6. Never give up
7. And always try

Happy birthday, appa! I hope you are always happy and safe with God! Miss you today and always!

I’m participating in #BlogchatterA2Z by Blogchatter