Laughing faces do not mean that there is absence of sorrow ! It just means they have the ability to deal with it !!! Nothing epitomised this more than my Nanaji !!
I just can't seem to forget the calm voice in which he'd utter his magic words "koi khaas baat nahi hai " that would instantly put to rest all the waves of turbulence that would be hitherto tormenting your existence till the point you finally decided to share the same with him.
The reassuring impact would be all the more profound for someone who knew him closely, for someone who had either seen / heard (like me) how the man who had refused to say "Quits" to life in his 63 years but somehow had always managed to muster the strength to move ahead with unbridled enthusiasm......
He'd strike up instant solutions to all your problems.....
A school-days incident strikes me instantly:
Way back in the year 1999, freshly enrolled into a Class 9 Accountancy course, the school rules didn't permit usage of the calculator. Wondering how to cross-check my answers,especially when one had to sum up a long list of numbers. I went up to him with perplexed looks on my face.He simply smiled and said "All that you need to i) do is add up the digits in the long list of numbers and ii) find the remainder on dividing by 9. If this matches with the remainder obtained on dividing the answer by 9, be rest assured that the casting is correct !!!!!!". I was dumb-struck by the sheer mathematical excellence. This was some rule of Vedic Mathematics coming from a person who had very little formal education. "Wow..Nanaji...u are great " was the instant reply ........his little trick helped me score a 99 in Accountancy that exam and I was on Cloud Nine. When I showed him my report card, he said it was time for celebration. "Bhutta khilayega kya?" he asked ..."Dekhna kacha daana hona chahiye" .....little things in life brought him so much joy !!!
Everything about him had a particular style ...from his attire to his walking style ...from the literature he read to his social circle!!!
On each occasion in our family, be it a birthday or an anniversary, we'd line up to take his blessings by turn.......he'd take out his bundle of crisp Rs 100 notes and hand each of us one .....we still have them preserved with us ....no one dares spend them !!! I may add that so concerned was he about everyone that he'd hand over Mom 3 notes for Didz, Jiju and Reet, my niece also ...to be given without default the next time he came !!!
He truly was the value strategist of our family , who's vision steered the execution of our lives !!
He was equally receptive to our jokes. With age , as one' wisdom increases, he gets balder ........but the few remaining hair-strands were Nanaji's prized possession !!! While we giggle away in our hearts of hearts, we'd urge him that it was high time he went for a haircut :) He'd respond with his usual smile .."Haan ...naai ke jaana hai ..time nahi mil raha"
He himself would share jokes of his youth days with us !! Once he had gone to a customer in Burtolla Street to collect his payment and the customer asked him to wait and continuously kept looking at the sky. Exasperated beyond a point , at 6 pm , Nanaji asked him ..."aasmaan mein se tapkega kya paisa ? payment hai toh de nahi toh jai raam ji ki " ..He burst into laughter when the customer politely replied " Sahaab , baarish nahi aane pe fatka laga rakha hai. Bas 15 minutes nahi aayi toh Rs 10,000 kamayenge ..ussi se aapko payment denge " !!!
Once I had suddenly developed a fancy for an experiment to burn a piece of paper by focusing the sun's rays with a convex glass !!! I had just shared this aspiration of mine with him when I went to nanibaadi......To my utter surprise, the next day , he came himself to hand me over my cherished toy......God knows where he had sourced it from as I had been desperately searching tinsel town since days for this. This was just once such incident ...each and every demand of ours , if overturned at Mom/Dad's level would be fulfilled by him !! he'd especially turn our "lender of the last resort " when we had run out of our pocket money for the month .....
The moment someone didn't visit him for a few days , a call would instantly come up ....."kya hua , kisi cheez mein uljha hua hai kya ?" and you'd rush off to meet him !!!
And suddenly post Diwali-09, the turn of events eventually snatched him from us in a time span of less than six months.
We lost him !!
Lost to the corrupt hospital, to the insensitive doctors
But eventually I'd say we lost him to destiny !!!
Probably the Almighty needed him more than us !!!
Tomorrow (16.09.10) would be the first time when I'd not be able to touch Nanaji's feet for blessings on my birthday ...and it would be painful, really painful !!
Why can't we get all the people together in the world that we really like and then just stay together? I guess that wouldn't work. Someone would leave. Someone always leaves. Then we would have to say good-bye. I hate good-byes.
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