TRIBUTE TO A BROTHER

TRIBUTE TO A BROTHER

My brother passed away this evening at 6.30 pm  at his residence in Mumbai. He was eighty-six years old and that’s a ripe old age for anyone to pass away. But whatever the age, a loss is a loss and leaves a vacuum in the lives of people he has left behind. I know that the grief will slowly dissipate and only the remembrances of the man he was, will remain etched in our memory.

For me personally, he represented the quintessential diehard believer in the traditional values and remained a down to earth human at heart. Many a time our views never converged, but that did not take away the love and affection we had for each other. His upbringing under the tutelage of my grandfather in that small village of Gopalasamudram instilled in him values which he carried forward throughout his life. In a sense when I look back, maybe this is what sustained him: an unbounded devotion to the Guru and God. In the process, he never lost his sense of humor, sometimes tinged with sarcasm, but never intended to hurt anyone. His anecdotes on his younger days and the pranks they played in the village would keep us regaled.

He was sixteen years elder to me and the first time I looked up to him as a guardian was when I sat next to him while the ceremonies after my father’s death were being performed. I was thirteen and he was twenty-nine and already the father of a son aged six. Throughout I looked at him as if he had replaced my father and that brought solace and lessened the grief that had engulfed me then. Here was support that would help take me forward.

I still remember the heroics he was capable of, like slapping and getting into fight with a person who was trying to tease my sister when she was on her way to college. He did earn some notoriety, and my father used to brush away the complaints that he would receive, for he knew his son better. Maybe he would have done much better in college if not for these extracurricular activities. But he made up for it in the years to come and became extremely successful in his career after completing is CA. Married at the young age of twenty-one, my sister-in-law who was five years younger to him became the pillar that stood behind him throughout their sixty-five years of married life.

Even after the passage of so many years he would still repeat all his exploits as a young boy in the village and the different characters who formed a part of his canvas and he would laugh. I would laugh along with him, though I had heard many of them earlier. I did not mind, for they served to lighten the drab ups and downs of everyday life. It happened last December again when I went to spend a few days with him in Mumbai. It was evident that he was becoming weaker by the day, but the twinkle in his eyes had stayed intact. Even then life was to him to be lived, and what better way than to smile away the burden of aging. He was a TV serials buff and watched all the Tamil ones, not because he became totally involved in the proceedings, but as he said there was nothing better to do. He would have the remote in his hand and keep on switching from one channel to the other watching four of them at a time.

A resident of Chembur for the last sixty years, he was well known and respected. He was a regular at the temples, especially the Sringeri Mutt temple. For him the Acharyas of the Sringeri Peetam were the spiritual gurus and his devotion to them was total. Though sometimes he used to get carried away with his views on religion and spirituality, which I found at divergence with my own views, we did not fight. But in the end, I would bow down to his exhortations not because of any acceptance of his views, but because he was totally convinced and happy in his beliefs. More importantly, it was my respect for him and I never forgot he had been my guardian after my father’s death.

It was sometime in 1993 0r 94, that he had bypass surgery. He recovered and was the better for it. Few years ago, he told me that he had stopped having all his medicines and told the doctor that he did not want any further probing of his health condition. He was eighty then. But over the years, I could sense a slow withdrawal from participating in the activities around him. The last time in December 2019 when I was with him he told me “You see I grew up under thatha (Grandfather) and I feel I am becoming more like him. He had also withdrawn from all mundane things. I learned a lot from him. Or take father, he was also someone who was not swayed by the lures of material comforts. Both of them did not live long but passed away in the presence of God and a peaceful death without suffering. I want to go that way and I think I will”

My father died while listening to the Ramayana in a temple. He just collapsed. My grandfather never got up after prostrating himself in front of the Puja shelf as was his wont before leaving for the river to have a bath in the Tambhirabharani river. Both died in the presence of their God. In a sense, my brother had a similar ending. After listening to the Vishnu Sahasranamam, and finishing his evening prayers he slumped down on the couch. What a way to go! Another point of coincidence is that 7^th May is the Chitra Pournima or Buddha Poornima day, a day when my mother breathed her last.

He leaves behind a son and two daughters, all of whom have done extremely well in their life. But the saddest part is except for the daughter at Mumbai, none of his other children since they are in the United States will not make it. Even I his closest relation apart from my sister who is also in Mumbai cannot make it to the funeral. This is what makes it so sad. Normal times, I am sure that the entire Chembur would have turned out on his last journey. There is an old Tamil song from the film Paadha Kannigai a verse from which I am quoting below.

Veedu varai uravu

Veedhi varai manaivi

Kaadu varai pillai

Kadaisi varai yaro

The English translation is – relationships are till the house, the wife accompanies you till the end of the street, the son comes till the cremation ground, who comes till the end?

Powerful lyrics. But in these times of the Pandemic lockdown, dear ones are kept away from. No one comes, you go alone.

As I sit here writing all this, few drops of tears roll down my cheeks and that is all I can do. The rest I carry with me as images of another era that has just passed us by.