A tribute to my grandad

As I mentioned in my blog earlier, the film 'Coco' had a huge impact on me as a person. There is one aspect of the movie that really stayed with me and my mom when I watched it again with her. It is the concept of how a person even after he is dead, is kept alive by his descendants passing his memories and stories to future generations. With that inspiration in mind, I write this post as my way of keeping my grandfather's memory who passed away less than 2 months ago alive.

One of the wisest persons I have come across - my friend Akhila once told me that the world runs on stories. Stories that inspire, fill one with awe and move one's soul. And that stories can move people in a way that facts and number never can. So instead of describing my grandpa, I will tell a couple of short stories about my granddad who I called Appacha.

Sometime around late 2000's my grandparents realized that their telecom operator was taking advantage of the fact they were senior citizens and low tech/low info users and was almost every other day forcibly injecting add on unnecessary services like caller tune etc. where money was being deducted from their pre paid balance on a daily basis. Appacha was quite furious about this but being of an older generation, I'm not sure whether he tried to resolve it by calling and blasting customer care. So he fought the only way he knew how. He shot an angry letter to the telecom minister of that time who was also a Malayali where he lambasted the telecom operator of being full of  'cheats' and 'thieves'. Quite remarkably, the minister actually replied to the letter and actually directed the telecom operator to not only refund the money that they had deducted for the add on services that my grandparents had never asked for but also apologize to Appacha which they did!

This story illustrates what I admired and loved about my grandfather. In my family of predominantly  'thinkers' from where I have inherited most of my characteristics from , he was refreshingly a 'doer' within the boundaries that his circumstances allowed him. He was a physically active national level basket ball player who received an award from the President of India at that time - S Radhakrishnan. Even in his 70's I remember him playing with his football and cycling on his bike when we would visit him during our summer vacations. He was a linguist - he formally learnt Spanish and then taught himself Italian, Portuguese, French and Latin and used these skills to supplement his income by doing translation of scientific docs after his work hours at his government job. He managed to carve out of his own world of happiness after he retired where he absolutely loved gardening, cooking non veg food, going for long walks and reading voraciously. I feel a pang of regret remembering the times I was most uncooperative when he tried to teach me Spanish or cooking or get me into gardening. We had our serious generational differences of opinion that caused some friction sometimes but at the end of the day, he doted on me and always had my back. I specifically remember an instance where I was walking with Appacha to our local market when in college. The area where we were staying had a lot of monkeys in it. Suddenly there were a couple of ferocious looking monkeys that broke from the troop and made their way towards me menacingly. I started screaming. Appacha with his big 6 foot frame came in front of me and covered me entirely. The monkeys tried to attack him going as far as to bite his leg. Thankfully he managed to drive the monkeys away with a big rock and the monkeys only managed to bite his pant sleeve so he did not have to get a tetanus shot. 

When someone you have known since the day you were born and has had such an influential role in your life leaves you, it is like the ground shifts beneath you. I wish I had consciously tried to imbibe his good qualities more when he was around and I was growing up. Now after his passing, I want to be more like him in terms of doing more and thinking less. And make my own happiness instead of wasting precious time lamenting that the world is not handing it to me in a platter.  

Thanks for everything, Appacha. I will never ever ever ever forget you. 

View regarding the polarizing 2020 political climate

A few years ago, a friend of mine who was scouting for an apartment to live in the US had shown me a couple of ads where the last line of the ad was "Trump voters/supporters may please excuse". At that time, I found this amusing and I was kind of comforted and relieved about the fact that no matter how polarized things got in our country, it would never lead to or at least never lead me to mindlessly cut contact or discriminate against or judge people based on them holding different political beliefs than I do and vice versa. 

My political belief is pretty clear. I believe that embracing diversity strengthens a country. Case in point the United States of America which is a land of immigrants from all across the world has been the most prosperous and powerful country in the world since decades. I am proud of India that we at least in principle through our constitution have made a conscious decision to not treat minorities the way our neighboring countries treat their minorities. We as Indians from all walks life have celebrated and paid respect to our diversity by for example revering prominent Hindu cricketers or Muslim entertainers or Parsi businessmen or Christian educational institutions. 

A rude, sobering wake up call the last 6 years was to realize that far far more people than I thought not only do not subscribe to but for whatever reasons (one of the biggest being minority appeasement politics) actually resent this line of thinking. But the truth is that it is almost impossible to hate up close. Which means that when we actually know a fellow co worker or family member or friend or batch mate etc. on a personal level we appreciate, a lot of times like them as human beings and respect that they are a product of their experiences and socio-economic up bringing and we most of the times have the maturity to not hold their political beliefs against them. Which is what makes social media so insidious. The impersonal contact facilitated by social media and gutter politics is a fertile ground for spreading hatred. So is the solution withdrawing from social media and not get into futile arguments where nobody is going to change their mind?

In fact a lot of my well wishers have implored me to shut up about politics (in a nice way) on social media. To be honest it is good for the peace of mind. But what when it gets too much? What is happening in our country has gone way beyond arguing the merits and demerits of a law that has been passed and the protest that have followed it. We are so polarized that we as a society can't even come to an agreement that it is absolutely intolerable for a mob armed with knives, acid and rods  to grievously injure students while moving freely and with impunity on campus or for the police to fire tear gas shells inside the library of another prestigious educational institution. So the government expects us to believe that it will protect persecuted minorities from neighboring countries while it can't safeguard its own students? Accountability in a democracy means that  the people have the right to demand answers to uncomfortable questions from the government no matter how powerful the mandate. At some point, silence becomes complicity. At a time where the economy is in doldrums, NE & Kashmir are burning , campuses are in mayhem, our international reputation in is the dust, it is astounding to me that the govts priority appears to further enhancing the climate of division and intimidation. The only conclusion in this complicated situation that I can come to is that as adults, we have to find a fine balance between making our voice be heard and not spreading polarization and division and most foolish of all, not jeopardize relationships. There is this talk about 'new age' skills that our generation needs to incorporate in order to survive in this modern world. I would definitely put the ability to separate people's politics from the person that they are and their relationship with us on top of the list.