Goodbye, tata

Its true what they say about death and taxes. There's no running from either. But what they don't tell you, what they can't tell you, what you can only know is how much it sucks. Well, death, at least. For its sheer finality. Earlier this week, on Sunday morning my 80-something grandfather passed away. Regular readers of this blog may recall him I referred to him in this entry.

To me - not that the world revolves around me - but, this was the probably the first time I was left with a vague sensation of having undergone a thoracotomy without morphine or such. Remind me to send a memo to all those new-age and old-age gurus who preach peachy optimism of the "It will always get better" variey. "Ah, not true", I say. Just when you think it can't get worse, guess what - it can.

All the comforting thoughts in the world - at least it was a quick (and hopefully painless) death, he had lived a full life, he was surrounded by his family just the day before, etc. - do little to lessen that hollow feeling. It sucks, in a very deep and profound way.

Flash back to Saturday night, when it is Sunday morning in India, thanks to the magic of time zones. I sit down to dinner. Barely two chews later, my brother calls up. In an apparent euphemistic message, he says tata is in the ICU (tata translates to grandfather in Kannada. Said with soft "t"'s). As I dial my uncle's cellphone, I cling to a moment of self-created deluded naivete that was shattered by a "Naresha, sad news" greeting. What follows is an extended period of utter helplessness and pangs of nostalgia.

Back in days when life, as I knew it, was simple, my grandparents lived in a quaint little old town Mysore (Maisuru), about 3 hours from bustling Bangalore, which we called home. About a decade ago, they moved to Bangalore, to where most of his family lived. Before that though, almost every vacation from school meant a much-anticipated trip to the town of palaces, parks and grandparents. During our stay there, thanks to tata, we were assured of treats from Shyam Rao bakery (the taste of rusku still lingers on ... ) and evening trips to Cheluvamba park. And how we enjoyed exploring the zoo with him! Or the boys' outing to the railway museum, where we hopped on and off old, rusty trains under his watchful eyes; ogled at the maharani's luxurious coaches. And ended a perfect evening with sweet coconut water.

Not that it was all a party during those days. You see, he and I had very different ideas on how to spend the first part of the day during vacations. He believed in the get-up-early routine, whereas I was in love with the back of my eyelids. Every morning he used to read Kumara Vyasa's Bharata, not too quietly, I might add. Later in the day he would quote verses, explaining the literary beauty in that book. The geeks that we were, we loved it.

One of the things that I loved most was when the two us would go down to the bus stop in the morning and watch those red buses. Sitting there beside him, sometimes on his lap, reading the numbers on the bus, I was happy. As I was when he regaled us with tales of elephants -Drona, Balarama and the like- and Dasara.

He had a way with kids. A picture that many of us who knew him will carry in our mind's eye is him sitting on his favorite chair, one leg crossed over the other knee forming a square, where one of us grandkids or greatgrandkids gleefully gooed gibberish. And he sang lullabies (for the record, my favorite: eesha ninna charaNa bhajane) or talked to the baby in baby-speak in a way, only he could.

Religion and spirituality was a big part of his life. Apart from the usual festivals, an annual Gita chanting during the winter month saw several people at my grandparents'. A couple of years ago, he was briefly hospitalized and the doctors wanted to observe his condition for another day before discharging him. But he insisted on going home to perform the rituals on the anniversary of his mother's death.

Stubborn, he sure was! Ironically her's, my great-grandmother's that is, was the first death I remember. I was all of four, old enough to prefer long pants and shun shorts, when she passed away. That evening, a bunch of us squeezed into a taxi and headed down to Mysore. I saw him in the verandah. He bent down and said with a wistful melancholy, "nammamma hogbitlu kano" (roughly translated, "my mother's passed away").

One thing that mattered very dearly to him was people. He wanted them to remain close, to be connected. May be that is why he built bridges for a living, as an engineer in the public works department. Every time we spoke, in person or over the phone, he had a come-back-to-Bangalore message. And I am sure he said that before I boarded the plane after my previous visit. It has been a little over two years since. In the past two some days, I have tried to recall what he said last. I remember the blessings and the nice things he always said. But that snapshot in time of how exactly we parted, that eludes me. Its funny. When you meet someone, you don't think its going to be the last time you are going to see them. May be then we'd remember more clearly.

At the end of our vacation in Mysore, he'd accompany us to the bus station to see us off. Invariably, he'd shed a tear as he waved to us before the bus departed. Now, his bus has departed for the last time. I wasn't there to wave goodbye. Its my turn to shed a tear.