My first recollections of Thatha...

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.