A brief peep into my appa experience!

“Appa how long does this fridge repair take to finish?” I would ask every 15 minutes as a 6 year old growing impatient. With his dexterous hands, he would forever open gadgets and rip them apart at home whether or not they required attention. If you watch him a little longer, then you will be given a detailed account of all the science behind how a refrigerator or an exhaust fan or a geyser or a  bread toaster works. Sigh!  All I watched was, the passion for mechanics that glowed in his eyes as he tirelessly explained. My brother normally mysteriously escaped these sessions !

No one at home could be upset about anything. They were 'fixed'  with his articulate words. He had a tone and voice that was certainly a balm and sometimes one wondered where all that wisdom came. Very often there is only a stream of questions to think about. At the end of it one is probably driven to think that the problem didn’t exist in the first place. Now wait did I see the peepal tree and the halo! May be I did!  I can’t remember as I was drowned in the magic of words that were vapid but bore into the problems and straightened it from the root like ripping the aircon to the last screw.

‘Change’ has never been a comfortable concept to cope with though in my post 30, I am learning the ropes better. It was a bright Saturday evening in Madurai when appa came in with his new pair of glasses for long sightedness. They had gold rim and probably made appa look handsome as ever. The mother, the wife and the son were utterly thrilled and they crowded around the mirror behind him to reassure him as he adjusted his glasses. After a long drawn session of exchanges he turned around and asked me pointedly what I thought of his glasses. My language skills must have been pretty bad or my reflection was bad. Either way I just said ,”Its different and I don’t like that”. In spite of the serious language issues there he smiled a knowing smile. We often grow up knowing and accepting people we love for what they have been and the change even if it was ephemeral did upset an internal balance.

Growing up under his strict disciplining was not easy. We have had the most fierce fights. Logic used to help a bit with him and if u had a point you just had to establish your point with enough reason. Why Cho should not have said what he did in the interview, why the Hindu should always be read first by him at home(this never had an explanation if I can remember though it came up for arguments an umpteen times!), why the Congress is the best party, why I MUST wear a bindi at all times of the day, why everyone should be up by 5:30 am at home, about the local municipality who didn’t do much about the drainage system in our locality, about woman’s liberation and the reservation bill and why I mustn’t stop him anywhere in the city to take a lift back home! Well for those of you who didn’t know my dad our fights and their reasons will tell you enough about him and me. Well all this with an amazing sense of humor was not a bad reason to pick up an argument with him just for the sake of it. And so I always did and today I’m glad I did for all the spirits it brought alive in me. Ah before I forget I was strictly banned from climbing the neighbor’s tree and the argument we had actually had the neighbors come home to say that it was perfectly alright that I climbed their  trees. That’s the decibal levels at home you see!

Deepavali had him sport a white dhothi and a white shirt as early as 3:30am. The entire household except me fell in line with this requirement.  Well there are a couple of things the daughters of every household would most definitely be proud of. It was a special concession and a great feeling –not so much the late bath! It was like getting past layers of government procedures in a government office because you have bribed people enough already!

As I recall a minuscule of what I shared with him, I realize there will always be a huge part of him in me forever. No matter how many years I live, like all daughters will look back and recap those priceless moments with their dads, I always stop to think what he might have said today about the Wikileaks, or what he might have thought of a handphone or the idea of people bungy jumping. Its in these moments that we pay tribute to our parents and may be that’s why people say that they live among us!!