by Deepa Venkatraghvan
My grandfather, my mother’s father, was 92 when he died. He was a fascinating personality. A school drop-out, he had tremendous drive and passion for breaking the mold and making a worthy life. And he achieved a great deal in life. But for me, the best part was that I was able to talk to him about his life – up, close and personal. I was able to revel in his nostalgia.
After he retired from his business in the mid-nineties, my grandfather moved to our city, Pune, with my grandmother. Because my grandmother did not keep very well, we – my mother, my sister and I would often go and stay with my grandparents during weekends or vacations. Their home in Pune was in a new and upcoming suburb and back then, there really was nothing to do around there. No playgrounds, no malls, no entertainment. And to add to it, power outages were common and we would be left with more than a few hours of outages every day. That limited the amount of television that we could watch.
Initially, my sister and I bickered and argued with my mother. Did we have to go over so often? Did we have to stay over for that long? Couldn’t we just stay back and not go along? We were young, self-interested teenagers who didn’t really see any other view. My mother on her part, had no choice. She had no place to leave us and she had to be with her mother.
Soon my sister and I stopped bickering. It wasn’t doing us any good. With nothing better to do, we started chatting up with my grandfather. On the surface, he was austere and stern. He was disciplined and expected the same from us. We were generally not allowed in his space – physical space as well as emotional space. There was always a distance. But as we spent more and more time with him, we warmed up to him and he opened up and started telling us about his life. From his childhood, through his adolescence, youth and so on. His stories were riveting.
Born in a small village in Kerala, his sights were always set at something higher, something bigger. He told us about how he tried to run away from home and how he was found and brought back. He told us how he worked as a waiter at restaurants and spent nights sleeping at local temples. He worked as a cargo porter, a tradesman, a workman in a cycle shop. For my sister and me, this was jaw-dropping. Not in our wildest dreams would we have imagined our grandfather doing these tedious jobs. To us, he was a successful businessman who built a big house and owned a family car – a luxury in India in those days.
My mother told us an incident that quite summed up my grandfather’s life. One day, when she was about 10 years old, and by which time my grandfather had set up a fairly successful business in tire retreading, my mother saw him leave home as always, in his business suit. She insisted on going with him to see the factory and my grandfather gave her a joy ride on his bicycle. But once in the factory, my grandfather donned the blue, grease stained clothes of a workshop laborer and got to work. My mom said she cried at the sight. She thought her father wore a suit and sat in an office. She didn’t expect to see him on the shop floor. But my grandfather prided himself in his work. He wanted to set an example for his workers and lead from the front.
With all this information, I was able to put together a 3000-word essay on my grandfather’s life. I was able to document his nostalgia. Till date, that is my favorite piece of work and I go back to read it ever so often. Whenever I read this account of his nostalgic revelations, it gives me a new perspective on my maternal family’s character as it is today. It helps plot some parts of my character, my present.
My biggest regret – I did not do this with my grandparents on my father’s side. I did not ask them enough questions about their childhood and youth. I did not ask them how they lived their life. I know the bigger plot points of their life from some conversations, but I don’t know the details. I did not document their lives. And now it’s a tad late. My grandmother is not in the best of health and does not have the stamina to answer my questions. My grandfather can probably tell me stories but I am too far away and too involved in my own family to even imagine speaking to him at length. I feel like I have missed out on a big part of my family history. I feel like a part of that nostalgia is gone, forever.
But I still have my parents, my uncles, my aunts. I still hope that I can tap into their treasure and revel in their nostalgia, in my family’s history, and put together some more pieces of my present, before it’s too late.
Do write all the stories, very few have the ability to hear the story, capture the moment for others to enjoy in the same way. You write well.