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These last two days I have been laid up with a bad case of cough and bronchial spasms (guess there's got to be a first time for anything :-() but the silver lining was that I was able to thumb through my nearly ten year old writing notebook. This was the notebook I had carried with me in 1995, to Madras when Thatha passed away. I remember having cried much before I got to Aparajita but recall a good deal of laughter mixed in with the crying once I was at Aparajita - that's a story for another day.
In my notebook, in an entry dated July 7, 1996, I read "Yesterday Raghu (from Kamaraj Avenue) asked me if I missed my Thatha and I had to say yes! Thatha's role in our lives, in my life was such a large one that even though we had spent the last sixteen years apart, he was never too far from my thoughts and my heart. Though some of my earliest recollections of Thatha seem to start only around age six I am sure digging around in the crevices of my mind will find earlier memories. Giri Chitti's wedding from 1968 I seem to recall as well as the Hindi riots and protests in 69? The Indo-Pak war of 1971 is only fragmented memories of of listening to the radio, blackouts and recalling the parents concern if Bareilly had been bombed." The entry in my notebook moved on to other topics, but reading this triggered thoughts of my first memories of Thatha.
Cumulus clouds - I remember it quite distinctly - I must have been a little over six years (or maybe nine which is over six) when I recall visiting Thatha one weekend morning. "Enna da, are you learning to read at school?" he asked me. I must have replied in the affirmative, when he asked me to go to his room, and get any one volume of the Encyclopaedia Britannica from his book shelf. Once I returned with the book, he commanded, "Open it to any page!" - "What is the first word you see? Read out aloud from it" - The word was clouds and the cumulus variety figured it in a big way. After I had read it for about ten minutes, he raised his hand, in that Caesarean way of his and said "Porum - enough!" - my mom who had been quietly watching thus far was happy I could tell and Thatha himself gave me one of his famous grins. This is one of my earliest memory of actually interacting with Thatha. From that weekend, for the next six or seven years I must have interacted with him nearly twice a month or more engaging in numerous debates, serious and silly which in many ways has shaped me to be who I am. I'd love to hear from all of you out there, what your earliest recollections of Thatha's were.
I had fully intended to post the pictures and happenings from the family get together for my parent's 50th wedding anniversary. However having to catch up on the chores and two birthday parties (one for a four year old grand-niece and the other for a forty four year old friend) and learning about unicameral and bicameral state governments in Civics did not allow me to do that. Instead, I figured having a mailing list and a conventional (news) group would be a good way to get all of us at the very least mailing to one another.
We now have an family mail group of our own - anparasuram@yahoogroups.com. If you send an email to this address, it will be sent to all the folks on our mailing list (presently five are signed on and fifteen more are awaited). Also you can catch up on the discussions at the Aparajita group home page. Send an email to anparasuram-subscribe@yahoogroups.com to become a member.
For those of you who wondered why the mail group or this blog was not called Aparajita, the name was already taken, so I used Thatha's name instead. If you are confused by all of the above, don't worry just join in wherever it makes sense and we will get you connected.
More than ten years after the launch of the first (and only) issue of Aparajita newsletter, the clan communique re-appears. The risk with such ventures always is that the start will be with a bang and with nary a whimper it may disappear in coming days/weeks. Well you can make sure that is not the case by participating not just in the blog, but getting the rest of the family linked - getting those stories, essays and rants you had always meant to share with the world published in here.
Be assured that I will be chasing down all the cousins to get them to contribute and make this a live forum. With many of the parents now being quite web and blog savvy I suspect we will see a good deal of them as well on line. All of this would not be possible without your active participation and evangelization - so let us sharpen those pencils, dust out those keyboards and get rolling.
While I wondered if we'd be better with a group on Yahoo! or Google, given their abilities to do database, photos etc., the urge to create a blog overcame such minor details. We may yet end up doing that but lets start here. I have taken the liberty of volunteering some of you as editors/posters and in turn you can invite others within the family - anyone can post comments without waiting to figure out how this thing works. See you on-line soon.
Cumulus clouds - I remember it quite distinctly - I must have been a little over six years (or maybe nine which is over six) when I recall visiting Thatha one weekend morning. "Enna da, are you learning to read at school?" he asked me. I must have replied in the affirmative, when he asked me to go to his room, and get any one volume of the Encyclopaedia Britannica from his book shelf. Once I returned with the book, he commanded, "Open it to any page!" - "What is the first word you see? Read out aloud from it" - The word was clouds and the cumulus variety figured it in a big way. After I had read it for about ten minutes, he raised his hand, in that Caesarean way of his and said "Porum - enough!" - my mom who had been quietly watching thus far was happy I could tell and Thatha himself gave me one of his famous grins. This is one of my earliest memory of actually interacting with Thatha. From that weekend, for the next six or seven years I must have interacted with him nearly twice a month or more engaging in numerous debates, serious and silly which in many ways has shaped me to be who I am. I'd love to hear from all of you out there, what your earliest recollections of Thatha's were.
