Happy Father's day Appa. You are remembered, and you are loved. I scroll through people's posts, their messages about their fathers - the qualities they've learnt from them, the aspects of their fathers' personalities they most admire, and I think of you - not just today, but often.
I run - I look out and up at the blue sky, until now mostly grey all day. Two rocket trails side by side, their plumes dispersing to the stillness. It is humid, swampy, muggy, Madras humid. The grass is still wet from rain and dew, the earth beneath damp. I run my fingers through it, feeling the grass, dispersing little droplets of mannvaasanai.
I heard a story about you today that I'd never heard before. That you took a chance on a young doctor - that you gave her an opportunity where she though she would never have one. Where you said to her that her experience or lack thereof was less important than her original ideas and passion. She remembers that you gave her that chance. That you told her where she could be better, that you pushed her to be better. It is only recently that the enormity of what you achieved has begun to hit me. I'd always admired them of course - but it is really only now that I am beginning to see that you really, truly created yourself from the ground up. You imagined yourself, you imagined what you wanted from life, you dreamt a dream and you built that dream. I continue to learn from you, and I'm truly grateful for that. That is a gift you continue to give me.
I always think to myself what you would be like today - a man of 71. My father; probably grey and perhaps a step slower. Probably still bowling off-breaks with flappy chappals and reading the morning's Hindu with your coffee. Still that single handed backhanded down the line with the perfect lithe swivel. I imagine you to be curious, as am I - curious to read, and curious to learn. Curious to go to new places and experience new things still. Maybe an extrapolation, but I believe it suits you. Affectionate and loving, but maybe just a tad reserved and aloof. Then again, perhaps I'm describing myself. Old but unbowed. "Old cricketers never die, they just get run out". Your mug, remember? A little irreverent, witty and odd in your own way. Wise, gentle and kind.
Maybe a little like this gent, on his beloved Colorado river, except you'd be feathering an old race boat across the Kodaikanal Lake's still morning waters, koels chirping, rowing laughing waters to Indian in a stretch, shrouded in the mist.
THE IMPORTANT PLACES. from gnarly bay on Vimeo.
I run - I look out and up at the blue sky, until now mostly grey all day. Two rocket trails side by side, their plumes dispersing to the stillness. It is humid, swampy, muggy, Madras humid. The grass is still wet from rain and dew, the earth beneath damp. I run my fingers through it, feeling the grass, dispersing little droplets of mannvaasanai.
I heard a story about you today that I'd never heard before. That you took a chance on a young doctor - that you gave her an opportunity where she though she would never have one. Where you said to her that her experience or lack thereof was less important than her original ideas and passion. She remembers that you gave her that chance. That you told her where she could be better, that you pushed her to be better. It is only recently that the enormity of what you achieved has begun to hit me. I'd always admired them of course - but it is really only now that I am beginning to see that you really, truly created yourself from the ground up. You imagined yourself, you imagined what you wanted from life, you dreamt a dream and you built that dream. I continue to learn from you, and I'm truly grateful for that. That is a gift you continue to give me.
I always think to myself what you would be like today - a man of 71. My father; probably grey and perhaps a step slower. Probably still bowling off-breaks with flappy chappals and reading the morning's Hindu with your coffee. Still that single handed backhanded down the line with the perfect lithe swivel. I imagine you to be curious, as am I - curious to read, and curious to learn. Curious to go to new places and experience new things still. Maybe an extrapolation, but I believe it suits you. Affectionate and loving, but maybe just a tad reserved and aloof. Then again, perhaps I'm describing myself. Old but unbowed. "Old cricketers never die, they just get run out". Your mug, remember? A little irreverent, witty and odd in your own way. Wise, gentle and kind.
Maybe a little like this gent, on his beloved Colorado river, except you'd be feathering an old race boat across the Kodaikanal Lake's still morning waters, koels chirping, rowing laughing waters to Indian in a stretch, shrouded in the mist.
THE IMPORTANT PLACES. from gnarly bay on Vimeo.
