My Athai and Athimber: The Padmanabhans BY Dr. Daya Balu

I remember Athimber(D.Padmanabhan), in his later years in India, Chandrika,

Bangalore with their dog, Nushka and his days with Sidhharth and Saroja.

He was very religious and was asking me to recite

a Hanuman manthra. Nandini and myself went with

Athai and Athimber once on a to a trip of Belur, Halabed

and Shravanabelgola for a week. Nushka accompanied us

also. This might have been during my Dec vacation in

1965 or so. Athai was always very hospitable and used to

have 2 cooks in Bangalore and made very elaborate meals,

one salad, one green vegetable, Keerai and one fried vegetable

for the afternoon lunch. For snacks there was always something.

In the night they had a North Indian cook to cook subji and chappathi.

Athimber was very independent and used to stay in the

Cosmopolitan Club during his visits to Chennai.

Even when he visited Buffalo, he told me he never

wanted to impose on anyone and stayed in the motel near by.

Siddharth and Athai stayed with us. He was a man with

high principles and set high moral standards and hence

found it hard to deal with Indian bureaucratic governments.

Athai, though may not have had a lot of formal education

in her youth, played a great role as his highly intellectual

wife. Though she was a vegetarian and was conservative

in her habits, took the challenges of the old ICS system well

and adjusted to his habits and played the part of a supportive wife.

She made a lot of friends easily and was outgoing and very

courageous. She was not afraid of anything. Since she was

very fluent in Hindi, used to take us to Hindi movies where

she would be our interpreter. We did not have sub titles then.

She was highly religious and when I used to share my problems

with her in U.S., used to ask me to read Sundarakandam in

Sanskrit etc. Even while staying mostly at home, she kept herself

very well informed about a lot of events in the Indian community

both here and in India. It is amazing how she kept in touch

with so many people until her very last.

She was a very good cook and improvised a lot of easy

recipes for me which I still have.

Saroja Siddharth: My memories of my Father in Law

We went back to India after 5 yrs in the U.S. Veena was a 6 months old baby & a Royal welcome awaited us at Madras airport. I really got stage-Fright peeping out of the plane's window to see a throng of people-Mylaporeans, Thachaikaddans, & Kothambodians-a boisterous crowd gathered there to give us the hearty welcome.There stood a silent man with piercing eyes under glasses.That was Papa

We were put up in the upstairs room in Chandrika.Papa had residual hemiplegia & a stiff gait.But he climbed the 20 steps upstairs to see his 1st grandchild Veena.He wanted to play with her & do Baby talk.He'll do it several times every day.

On that first evening he told me about the misunderstanding in the family that prevented my mother-in-law seeing her parents for 15 years.He felt that was not right & he wanted me to know about this.He was a straight forward man & his views were clear.

He had a lot of humor & could laugh at some absurdties.We watched Woody Allen's Movie-'Take the Money & Run'. Parents usually like to boast about the great achievments of their children .In this movie Woody is a loser & has many misadventures His parents wore disguises like false nose,goggles to narrate all these.This is a really funny scene & papa went on laughing with tears rolling down his cheeks. He had a great sense of humor and was full of jokes

I have seen him watching 3 Stooges, Planet of the Apes , MASH, Monty Python with Amrita, Ajay, Veena & Meera. He used to seriously discuss with the children the plot etc.

Papa was the only remaining son for his parents after they lost their another son & daughter in their teen years.He was amazed at the closeness & affection my dad shared with his 6 brothers. He had great affection for my side of the family. After my 5 months in India I wanted to fly back to Canada via Moscow by Aerofloat. Papa was a Nehruvian & Socialist in heart & had great admiration for Russia in the 50's But when it came to fly by Aerofloat it could be done,especially with me carrying Veena in that plane.He said Aerofloat was nothing but a cardboard crate with an Engine.There went my dreams of seeing Moscow,Kremilin & Lenin's Tomb.Those were the wishes of people in India in the 60's. Papa's great love was eating different types of food. He used to tell me how to make Dum Aloo, Rogan Josh using a lot of Ghee.Such Hi cholesterol meals took a toll on his arteries & he had his 1st stoke at 39 yrs.

I've heard from others that Papa had an intellectual arrogance & some abrasiveness in his talk.But the Papa I knew was affectinate caring & funny.He disliked large company.He opened up in small groups when you can see the intellectual depth, arguements & views. If I had more time in those days I could have learnt a lot from him.

My Grandfather and Me: Meera Siddharth

I think that Grandpa was the biggest influence in my early life, and much of that influence has shaped me into the person I am today.

My earliest memories are from visiting and living with him in India. Due to his physical limitations, he wasn’t the kind of grandpa who could run around and play. Instead, he regaled us with the fascinating stories from his life. Stories about Cambridge, travelling through Europe, working as an ICS officer, as a judge, was well as stories from Indian history, Sivaji and Asoka. Grandpa not only had wonderful stories, but he was such a great storyteller, telling everything with such detail and humor.

Some of my favorite Grandpa stories are: the French woman and the false teeth, meeting George Bernard Shaw twice, getting lost in Budapest, travelling in Spain during the Civil War, tiger hunting in the village in north India.

When Grandma and Grandpa moved in with us in Long Island, we then truly became friends. Grandpa was the only adult in my childhood who treated me as an individual person, not as a child. We had great conversations. His intellectual curiosity rubbed off on me. He taught me a love of books and learning. I still have two of the books that he gave me after talking to me about different projects I had in school: Mathematics for the Million (a book about the basic concepts of math), and Fate of the Earth, by Jonathan Schell, a book about nuclear arms. When I look at these books now, I note that one was published in 1944 and the other in 1982, the year Grandpa died. This just shows how he kept his curiosity and interest until the very end.

One of my clearest memories of Grandpa is the feeling I would get when I could hear him walking in another part of the house. You could always hear Grandpa coming because of his walk with his cane. He had a distinctive walk since his stroke had left him paralyzed in one leg. I remember always getting such an affectionate feeling when I heard that sound. And I would often go see what he was up to when I heard him.

I also just loved hanging out with Grandpa and laughing. I remember him laughing so hard he was in tears watching “Take the Money and Run” by Woody Allen. And we would watch the “Rocky and Bullwinkle” show together on Saturday mornings. Despite his lofty intellectualism, Grandpa could always appreciate goofy and silly humor. That’s one of the things that I loved about him the most.

This brings me to Grandpa’s last day, which was 27 years ago, but still brings tears to my eyes. It was a Saturday night, and I was going to babysit across the street. My mother said to me “Grandpa’s not feeling well tonight. Why don’t you sit and talk a little before you go”. So I went and sat with him, and we, as always had a great conversation, great stories. He talked about Cambridge a lot that night.

I went to baby sit, but when I came home, I was told that Grandpa was taken to the hospital. Dad called home and said that he was up and talking, and bossing the nurses around. I went to bed thinking “Grandpa is back to normal, he’s going to be alright”.

The next morning Uma Aunty woke me up to tell me that he had passed. It was such a shock. I wasn’t ready for it. For years after that, just thinking about him made me cry. I still miss him so much.

Grandpa had an incredible life. From very humble beginnings he achieved great things. His sheer brilliance set him apart from people. He was a special man and I feel so lucky to have known and loved him

In Loving Memory: T.A.Pathanjali

In Loving Memory, by T.A.Pathanjali

My memories about my cousin, Sri. D.Padmanabhan and his wife Smt Kalpakam, are as fresh as anything else as that happened, in my childhood and youth.

Sri.Padmanabhan was a most a brilliant person. Born and brought up from a very orthodox simple middle class family possessing such a versatile knowledge on any subject (when no exposures like TV/Computor were available) was amazing. I was a zero when I landed as an orphan at his house. I spent 7 years in their Chennai home "Chandrika". This is the golden era in my life. When I left their house I realized that the very association with TKD(DP’s father) and DP and the entire family had provided me with an education and made me an independent person who could fend for himself, for the rest of his life.

Sri. Padmanabhan was master in all subjects. He would be down to the earth when we approached him for any type of help - academic or financial. He was very kind hearted. He showed the same affection and kindness to me or the gardener's children or his own children. His affection towards his relatives was over whelming.

A most obedient child of his parents. He never spoke anything objectionable before his parents when he himself was over 50 years. He used discuss politics or any subject as a friend with his father, late Prof.Duraiswamy Aiyyar . They might not agree on many issues, but it did not show in their relationship.

Donating money and nominating me for taking up construction of Siva temple in Tachakkadu village and allocating his ancestral village house for religious purposes are the finest examples of his philanthropic mind set.

In Tachakkadu village when he went to dispose off his agricultural lands, he never wanted to take away the livelihood of the cultivator who cultivated his lands. He made over a portion of land or full land to the cultivator. free of cost when he had decided to sell all his agricultural lands. Not a single family of Village has forgotten his kindness. This is one of the reason, the villagers are spontaneously supporting the primary health centre sponsored by the children of such a great person.

What ever I am today (orphaned at the age of 9 and brought up completely as one of his sons in his house) shows how your parents helped the needy people. Above all I enjoyed same rights and privileges as his children. My regrets are that your parents are not alive to see me what I have achieved today.

Memories of a Daughter in Law by Uma Ashok

Papa Grandpa (as Ajay &Amrita called him),had a great sense of humor,no airs about him,fond of children and dogs.He was a very intelligent but very simple man.He was very fond of dogs,in 1963 there was Vikram,Vijay &the famous Nushka. Chandrika(I do not know if you had been to this house)had a big backyard,where the dogs chased the pigs out..Papa would sit in the verandah,and direct them,it was fun to watch.We would go for walks in the evening.Later on,in Bangalore, they had a dog "bozo"named after the clown in michigan TVprograms,that Ajay watched as a toddler.I heard tales of dogs he had prior to 1963 too.He loved his grandchildren,and talked to them at their level.
In september 1982,he came to spend the weekend (friday evening)before he died ,with us in Deer Park..I did not know it then,..but we were sitting &talking late into the night.I had to go to work on Saturday morning,but I did not mind.He was talking about many interesting topics.

A Tribute to a Father: Padmanabhan Siddharth

Papa as we called him was born to doraiswamier and yogambal in April 1909 . As was the tradition in India, yogambal was going to her village for the delivery of the baby . However on the way a boy was born in a village called PORTO NOVO. In those days there were no cars or buses in India. The rich went by horse driven carriage and the poor either walked or traveled by carts pulled by bullocks . The speed of these bullock carts were slower than walking. so yogambal was going from her husbands home in Thachakadu to her mothers house in Bhuvanagiri, a distance of about 10 miles . On the way she had labor pains and was helped by some women in the village. Doraiswamy's father was the village priest in Thachakadu and he died when doraiswamy was two years old. Doraisamy my grandfather/ was brought up by his mother, He was brilliant in his studies, got a scholarship to go to college ,studied economics and finally became a head of Dept Economics , University of Madras and Principal, Coimbatore Government College. He was a prominent economist in those days , adviser to various agencies of the Govt.. He had three children, padmanabhan being the eldest , then a daughter and a son who died in their teens.

Papa studied chemistry in college and was the recipient of the Thompson Prize in English and his name can be seen on the board of Prize Winners in Presidency College, Madras. He later went to England to study chemistry with an idea of getting a ph.d. and follow his fathers footsteps, as professor of chemistry.Those days, there were a few Indians, who had gone abroad and married English girls, so in most Brahmin families the young boys were were forced to marry before they went to England . Papa married kalpakam (mummy) and left for England. He attended Oxford but decided to leave and write the Indian Civil Service examination, in London and passed At that time ICS consisted of mainly `Englishmen but they also took some Indians who were in the top of the class. The courses offered for the ICS were mainly in liberal Arts like history and philosophy and not science subjects. So he had to read unfamiliar subjects and did very well in the examination.

His father was very much against papa joining the service as he would have liked him to become a teacher like himself. Papa however decided to join the service. The ICS was an elite service in India who were highly paid , lived `extremely well, had a lot of power and prestige. They were the surrogates of the British who were ruling India. Papa,s first son was born in 1934 but unfortunately died a year later of diphtheria I was born in 1936 in fairly affluent family. Since I remember we lived in a big house with several bedrooms, 2 kitchens, one vegetarian and another for cooking meat. My mother was a vegetarian, brought up in a very conventional orthodox family and followed the conventions till the end of her life.

There were a retinue of servant's :cook, gardeners, etc and a person in uniform called 'peon' who was just there and did nothing. Anglo Indian nannies were preferred as children would learn English which was necessary to succeed in British India.As the peon was paid by the Government it was verboten to make him do anything unless it was government work so he just sat there. I still remember my father losing his temper if we asked the peon to do anything. The peon usually played with us kicking the ball.

My father was brought up in a poor , a conventional family but had changed his ways after 4 years in England. He had become an agnostic, smoker, started eating meat. he was also an . energetic ., confident , horse back riding.dynamic person who played Tennis and bridge everyday, drank moderately and even bought a horse for riding everyday. He bought a pony for us so that we get the skills of riding. sometimes my mother would wear breeches and join us.

Summers were very hot in the plains, temperatures reaching 100 degrees. The high Government Officials all went to the Himalayan foothills to towns about 7000 ft above sea level where weather was still cold. these were really woody places and I particularly liked it because I had Friends from other places in India who were kids of officers and we met every year..

We used to walk in trails and there was always a natural spring you could drink cold water which I bought a house in berkshire hills to remind me of those days. It reminds me of Nainital and Mussorie.I was placed in summer school where the teachers were English, 50% of students were English, sons and daughters of British living in India. In early 1940s there were no hopes of independence and the most important subject in school was English. we were encouraged to read the literature. I was placed in a boarding school at age 7 and my letters would be returned to me after corrections by my grandfather .

As far as Independence movement was concerned papa was ambivalent sometimes wondered if the uneducated leaders of the independent movement could run the country. Then something happened. A close friend of his , an ICS colleague Hundi Vishnu Kamath got arrested for sedition. He was a collector of Nagpur and openly supported congress party that was peacefully trying to get independence. HV Kamath was then sent Agra Jail after his conviction where we lived . papa was the judge in Agra. I still remember going to the jail with my mother as she used to take food for HV Kamath. Soon he was released and came to live with us for a while. From then onwards he supported Gandhi.He defied the bigwigs in the British hierarchy and refused to sentence people who were arrested for protesting British rule. The independence was expected at that time and no action was taken against papa..

At age 36 .padmanabhan became law secretary in U.P. At about this time .my grandfather duraiswamier was putting pressure on papa to get a transfer to Madras State as he(Duraiswami) felt that he was getting old and they will need someone to look after them in old age .papa being the only son , as per tradition, it was his duty to take care of his parents. None of us wanted to go to Madras. My father's Boss G.B.Pant who was the chief Minister offered him the job of High Court judge to entice him to stay but papa refused.

We all came back to Madras and it took some time to adjust especially as we the three boys did not speak Tamil. Living in Tamil Nadu was different. The style had to change. Madras was a intolerant place. Caste was more important . people were intolerant, anti Hindi, anti North, separate Tamil Nadu, anti Brahmin etc.We had not seen such hatreds in the north.. papa was posted as collector of Madras. papa was extremely unhappy on the executive side . He could not fight the corruption. He decided to get a law degree so that he could practice if Govt service became intolerant. One of his problems was that he not accommodating even if it was advantageous to keep quiet. It had adverse effects in his life. To a certain extent I have had the same problem in my life when it is advantageous to shut up sometimes I do not... He could take the English bar examination directly without going to college so he took leave for six months and sailed to England. There he joined Lincoln's Inn , took up a flat and studied. He received the Langdon Gold Medal which very few Indians had received before him. One of them was a famous freedom fighter Vallabhai Patel.

He was living with a German Jewish family and the evening they threw a party for papa. During the party he fell ill and was taken to Hammersmith Hospital. He was treated by a famous neurologist Sir McDonald Critchley for hemiparesis. My mother rushed to England by Air to bring him back. He fully recovered and Sir McDonald's diagnosis was a spasm rather than a clot in the artery. He returned to Madras and was posted as collector of Vishakhapatnam. Again we had a huge big house in Waltair. That stay was marked by frequent trips to chintapalli forest trying to shoot tigers a favorite pastime of his since his stay in U.P. I used to travel with him, to places like , almora terigarhwal, pilibhit etc. At chintapalli near vizag I was old enough to bring food to the table so my job was to go in the forest and shoot wild fowl, ducks or sometimes a deer and at night we would sit around the fire and eat grilled duck or sometimes venison. These were happy days.

He was then transferred to Madras as Secretary to Public Works Department. Then bad days started. His superiors were extremely corrupt and he could not keep quiet. Instead of just letting it go he brooded over it. One incident I distinctly remember. There was a utility company called Madras Electricity System or MES. It was a private British company that provided electricity to Madras. They knew their days were numbered. They also knew that they cannot be pushed out. So the Secretary PWD and Chief Engineer (electricity) were asked to agree on an amount satisfactory for both sides where the company could be sold to Madras Govt.. However through political interference the terms were declared to be too low and the compensation was increased, by several millions. The assumption was that politicians had been paid off. Papa had a big argument with his boss that he was wasting Govt. money but had to accept the boss's decision. There were other pinpricks as Ministers going on tour making the lower ranked officers to pay for the expenses like food for the family and other friends and collecting the expenses from govt and refusing to pay the bills. He would go to the ministers and insist on payment as the clerks could not afford to pay for the whole entourage. He did not have these problems on the judicial side and the officers were usually honest during British rule.

So Papa decided to resign. He said that he would live on the proportionate pension and would practice law that now he had the law degree- Barrister at Law.

He resigned and started his practice . It was good the first year but he felt the ethics in the profession was wanting He then was looking for a job in Delhi and was asked to become a deputy Director of Council and Scientific Research. There were several laboratories all over India run by the council. His friend Dr. SS. Bhatnagar died ,the Director soon after and papa had to deal with his immediate boss Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad, who had been a freedom fighter. By this time AZAD had become an opium addict and did not attend office so the President of CSIR Pandit Nehru asked papa to deal with him directly. He came in close contact with Pandit Nehru. This was short lived as he had another stroke . He was flown back to Madras. This time it took nearly six months of intense physical therapy before he could walk with a hemiplegic gait After his hemiplegia he was depressed and felt helpless. I would credit mummy for bringing him back with her own way of encouragement. He became religious after this illness and started reading books in Sanskrit a language he had learned in school. He did not have any belief in rituals and the unfortunate aspects of religions like caste system etc. He had mainly an intellectual interest and faith in reading the vedas commentaries etc..

Papa loved eating especially punjabi and kashmiri meat dishes cooked with Ghee. His favorite dishes were murg masallam, Rogan Josh and kashmiri Kofta. His food habits could be blamed for his illness.With my grandparents in the house we were restricted to vegetarian food. He however use take us outside to restaurants where we ate with gusto. This was a secret with us. I was in medical school that time.

I decided to go to America higher training as because of the caste system in Tamil Nadu I felt I had no future in Tamil Nadu. BBC has estimated in a show called 'vanishing tribe' that 80% of brahmins have left Tamil Nadu and because of intermarriage the caste is disappearing. However the pogroms are still continuing and the only Brahmins who are left in Tamil Nadu are rich as because of corruption they can buy their way and those who are poor who have no place to go, are destined to suffer ,because they are denied admission in colleges and access to jobs.

I went to America, got married with Saroja in Washington D.C. and visited my parents every three years. They also visited us a couple of times. He liked America as once he told me that when he goes out for a walk in the neighborhood people wish him and sometimes stop to talk with him. This would never happen in Britain. Later he had a heart attack and a fracture hip. a classmate of mine operated on him Madras. Also due the tremendous inflation his pension was not worth what it used to. So my brother and I decided to bring him over to U.S. He lived with us for three years before he died of a massive heart attack at University Hospital, Stonybrook where I was working. I am glad he stayed with us as I see his influence on values and education in my children and nephews and nieces.

I can assess the values I have inherited from him. An absolute Fidelity to ethics and honesty that sometimes has,had an adverse effect on my position, a contempt of people who have an arrogance of wealth especially when it is inherited . A respect for people with knowledge and tolerance.

Memoirs of C.S.Venkatakrishnan(Gingee) on D.Padmanabhan

D. Padmanabhan by C.S.Venkatakrishnan(Gingee)

I have been told that I saw Sri Padmanabhan many times when I was very young in New Delhi. He was an avid bridge player and often played with my grandfather and father. I have no memory of it. However, I will never forget my later intraction with him. I was in Chappaqua for a few days in 1982 when I had just come to the US for studies and talked quite a lot with him. This was a few weeks before he passed away. He walked slowly, and his hand shook, but his mind was sharp as ever and there was a permanent twinkle in his eye, magnified by his glasses.

The most immediate impression of his, Sri Padmanabhan, was his scholarship. He would talk knowledgeably on every subject and speak in very simple terms --- even a know-it-all teenager was in awe. After he finished his puja, he often watched on TV a radical mullah rage about the "enemies of Islam". I thought it quite comical but Sri Padmanabhan was utterly earnest. He gave me a lecture on religious fundamentalism that would be regarded as prophetic today. Sri Padmanabhan distinguished between the innate goodness of all religions and the sameness of their adherents (some are good, some are bad), on the one hand, and the excesses of religious fundamentalists on the other. He would not at all have been surpised at what is happening in Afghanistan and Pakistan today. The greatness of Sri Padmanabhan's scholarship was that it was effortless and had no affectation. By watching him you would never have guessed that he had had impressive academic achievement and held high Government office. Most importantly, you could see the keen joy he felt in his family --- from the open affection for his grandchildren and children (and children-in-law) to his incessant verbal jousting with Kalpakam Mami, which was no less a show of love.

My father often told me of a trip he made to various temple towns in Tamil Nadu in the late 1960's with Sri Padmanabhan and Kalpakam Mami, and his face glowed at the memory of their companionship. That then is a measure of any man --- the fondness with which he is remembered, and how many of those good qualities ("gunam" in Tamil) have so obviously been passed to his descendents. By that measure, Sri Padmanabhan was peerless and his centenary will give us the appropriate time to savor his memory.

Memories of Ganga Sivakumar

I consider myself very fortunate to have known your father, Mr.D.Padmanabhan. I always felt very close to him. I never felt as an outsider when I was with him. He had a way of making you feel very special, the way he included me in all the happenings of the family. Suchi had a very special bond with him too. He had a lot of information to share, personal as well as general. As they say, there is a woman behind every successful man & in his case it was true. Your mother was a great lady too. I wish I had had more time with him. He was a man of principles & stood by them. I am glad that I had the opportunity to spend some time with him.
Ganga Sivakumar

In Memorium by Amrita Ashok- Grand daughter

Grandpa was a great man- extremely intelligent and accomplished, yet humble. I have his Certificate of Standing that my uncle gave me, at my graduation. I keep it next to my law degree in my office. Many of my colleagues have asked about it, and I am proud to tell them that my grandfather was one of the few Indian barristers... yet what I remember most about him is his kindness and loving nature. And that he was an incurable romantic who loved to read. I was only 11 when he died, but I remember that he spent his last night at my house. I am proud to be his grandaughter.
Amrita Ashok

My Father and I : P.Girdhar Gopal

My father's name was D.Padmanabhan. So my name per the Tamil custom is Padmanabhan Girdhar Gopal. It would have been Iyer, but my father dropped it as he was born, when the anti Brahmin sentiment was at its then zenith in Madras Presidency as it was called. And, the name
Iyer blared the fact that the owner of the name was a Brahmin. So for two generations, that of my father and mine, we did not have a family name. I have given my last name to my children. My father attended Presidency College in Madras and got a Chemistry Honors degree there and then went on to Jesus College, Oxford to join the Honors School of Chemistry and take the MA in Chemistry. While at Jesus, he decided to take the ICS examination in London, and so after a year at the college, he dropped out, without asking permission to do so from his father who was financing his studies at Oxford, As soon as he dropped out he moved to London, to digs(which was the English expression then used for a flat or a room) with a landlady and read for the ICS. This caused a lot of consternation with his folks at home in Madras, because he had dropped a sure thing at Oxford to take the examination that would be considered a lottery based upon the percentage of success especially amongst the Indian candidates. But the results showed that he had passed the ICS and had been assigned to the United Provinces(UP then and now). He went on to Kings College , Cambridge for his ICS training and returned to India as a Joint Magistrate at Rae Barelli.

He was a District Judge of Sitapur District when I was born and for the first few years of my life I was moved next to Bulandshahr and then to Agra and finally to Lucknow where my father became Law Secretary and Legal Remembrancer of the UP. This was a phase of my life that I mostly spent with firstly being taken care by an Anglo Indian nanny and then by servants. Though my parents spoke Tamil with each other, they spoke to us(my two brothers and myself) in Hindi as that is the language that we had learnt largely from the servants.

My father was an incurable romantic with a great interest in history. My romance with India began with him sitting with me and telling me stories about the great events in India. So before I could read, I was sitting on my father's lap and listening to his stories. Most of them were about India, Just a sample : He told me the possibly apocryphal story from the epic poem Prithviraj Raj Raso written posthumously(after Prithviraj's death and Chand Bardai passing by the latter's son)of Chand Bardai the court poet of Prithviraj following his master Prithviraj to the capital of Ghori after the second battle of Tarain(1192) and directing the blind Prithviraj(blinded by Ghori) ,in a couplet, to shoot the Sultan dead. This was when I was probably five to six years old.He also read excerpts from Kincaid's Grand Rebel, the little jewel of a biography of Shivaji. Also, from Carlyle on the French Revolution and Gibbon on the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. This early introduction gave me a love for history that I have had to this day.

As my father's first love was always books and he had books in profusion strewn all over the house, I started reading seriously at the age of ten or eleven. It is said, that the only way chidren read is by example: If they see their parent read, they follow suit. Thanks to my father, I devoured books between the ages of eleven to possibly twenty one. I started with simple books, but went to to a wide range of books, including probably at sixteen the massive volume of Havelock Ellis', " The Psychology of Sex", great writers in French, English, Russian and American fiction like the short story masters, Maupassant, O'Henry and Poe ,a great deal of Dumas and Zola, of Walter Scott and Dickens and of course, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Gogol. Unfortunately because of the time and place I did not get a chance of reading Indian fiction. But at my father's direction, I did read some novels of Premchand and some English translations of Bankim Chandra and Tagore and also the writings of RK Narayan.Though my father started off reading science himself, he could not pass on to me any great reverence for science except for the inductive scientific method of collecting data and then arriving at a conclusion, that I have applied to a number of non scientefic pursuits which I owe entirely to my father. However, as I could write and my vocabulary was above average, I never bothered to learn grammar in the rigorous fashion, that I think is needed to impart the language to others.

Further, I have lived and worked in three continents, I can say with a great deal of certainty that I never had a problem in either written or oral communication either socially or professionally. I would attribute this ability more to what I learnt outside college,in large part from my father.

In addition to giving me an avenue for intellectual advancement, the greater gift my father gave me was to impart to me a moral compass that I have been ever so grateful for. They say that the only way you are imparted values is not on the basis of what you are told but what you see happen in day to day life. Even though my father held high office I have never once seen him take advantage of his position. As I have mentioned elsewhere, my father made it a point to refuse even small favors from people. He used to say that officials should not only be honest, but should be seen to be honest: thus I remember, the peons running after people to return baskets of fruits or boxes of sweets. When we went to the movies, we never bought the highest priced tickets, because my father wanted people to know that he had bought. This feeling that somebody(my compass) is watching over my actions has stayed with me all my life. And when he was forced to take early retirement, the only money he had in the world was his Provident Fund and his ICS pension.

My father fell ill on a trip to England that he took to complete his Barrister's degree from Lincoln's Inn when he was 40 years old. The convocation held by the Inns of Court, where where he had also received the Bar's Langdon Medal , for Hindu and Mohammadan Law, from Lord Goddard, the then Lord Chief Justice of England. The next morning after the convocation, my father was wheeled into the hospital paralyzed. Though he recovered enough to go back to work, he got an attack again when he was forty six, which then put paid to his career.

My father recovered again, but not enough to work. So I took full advantage of having him as a relatively young man ,the time he spent with me in my formative years in College.

He lived for over 26 years after his strokes and died at a relatively young old age of seventy three. A few years before his death, he fell and broke his hip. My brother,Siddharth went for the operation and after he recovered, I went and brought my parents to live with my brother and mysef. Though my mother adjusted to living in the US my father never did, but we were glad to have both of them with us.


I try to think what made him so special:

He taught be independent and adventurous.
He taught me to think for myself
He taught me that honesty was not the best policy it was the only policy.
He taught me that knowledge was available to be had and if you obtained it
you could compete with anyone
Most importantly, he taught me, I was as good as any other person
Not better, but as good.
He also let me do things for myself at a young age, for example, I got my pilot's license at the age of seventeen and he allowed me to travel all over India alone, when I was in my early to middle teens.
He allowed me to marry for love and did not insist on an Indian parent's privilege of choosing a bride for me. This was relatively unusual four and a half decades ago. His example and advice gave me the self confidence to tackle problems, the world over and manage people of varied backgrounds and capabilities.

For all these and more I will forever be in his debt, but for God's sake, he was my Father!