Parameswaran

“Life is bogus!” cried my elderly neighbour who just had his leg amputated owing to a diabetic foot, just the day my father died. His remark shook me up deeply at its unembellished truth and leaving me open mouthed, staring at him. He had also lost all his savings in a bust co-operative bank and was barely eking out his own rations. Yet I marvelled at his wide smile and a grin that betrayed his bad and severally missing teeth each time i knocked his door with trepidation. He would have crawled on the unrepaired floor dragging himself across the room, barely reaching the door latch. “Cheenu there you” are he would beam in his thin underpants and bare chest, plentifully covered by his sacred thread. “Come come, you must have coffee with me” and he would instruct his patient wife who would have been reciting the thousand names of Lalitha to prepare some coffee as i protested guiltily wondering whether i was drinking up the little milk he bought. With the small cup of coffee were also some biscuits or ‘Kozhukottai’ with ‘Moru Kozhumbu’ that i would eat sparingly as he eagerly urged me on.

He would have been about 84 years old suffering from severe diabetes. He was a handsome man in his youth with a huge frame looking like MGR or any other Tamil film hero of his age.  He had been a clerk and an officer at some obscure firm. But like the other Tamil Palaghat Brahmins in the building who i sometimes in exasperation bundled as the “Tamil Manram” had peculiar traits and shared their parsimony if not miserliness. Yet i think he was more broad minded than them all though it was still sufficient to cause us all much discomfort as we haggled with fish sellers across their doors. Unlike his other compatriots one of who famously did not attend his eldest son’s wedding in the next building as he married a “Parsi” (which was to them a variation of “Muslim”) he embraced his Telugu non Brahmin son in law, a Naidu who would even eat “Non Vegetarian!!!” He even graciously accepted (as the other fellow Brahmins frowned) his daughter adopting a tiny dark daughter from a home as they had no children of their own. He was also the Tamil Mandram’s official priest for he alone amongst them could utter the Sanskrit verses which would invoke their ancestors each New Moon Amavasya day (once a lunar month) as they repaired to his home early morning bare-chested with their proud “moonji” or sacred thread and white mundu around their thighs and offer their rice cakes and water pronouncing Tarpanam, Tarpanam Tarpanam! My mother though generous with them scoffed at their often hypocritical and exclusive notions of purity and they in their turn despised her calling her “Nasrani” within her earshot which in Palaghat Malayalam means Syrian Christian, a term of abuse for them.  She disdained them for their notions of purity began and ended in their kitchen which was scrupulously clean while the rest of their homes sank in disrepair with unpainted rooms unkempt with cobwebs and loose plaster precariously hanging overhead and walls adorned with large and ancient pictures of Guruvayoorappan and Ayyapan, Satya Sai Baba, Vekatachalapathi and Lakshmi. Yet the homes had a lingering fragrance of agarbattis lit and oil lamps burnt twice a day and some strains of a Carnatic classical kriti if not some loud Sun or Surya TV soap and a pervading sense of a decayed temple. He was considered the most liberal among the Manram gang which was not saying anything but meant considerable consternation to all. He was a connoisseur of Carnatic music and loved the Tyagaraja kirti "Pakala Nilabadi" in raga Kaharharapriya.  

He would tell me tales of miracles of saints and holy places he visited. He told me of strange tales of Poondi Swami of Polur who became a tiger each night and was seen only by siddhas and who smoked ceaselessly with no smoke exhaled; of Tiruvannamalai and Arunachala, Ramana Maharshi and other tales that were strange and oddly fascinating. My mother would tell me if he was struggling with his limp and unable to cross the road and sometimes i would run down to help him over. He would descend from his second floor apartment twice a day and go and sit at a roadside shrine chatting with passersby and sneak up to the corner tea stall and drink a cup of sugary tea which was prohibited by his diabetes. He would know the interest rates of each bank like a calendar schedule and keep shifting his meagre savings even if the bank offered a fraction of a percent more. He would not heed our advise not to park his money in co-operative banks despite his huge losses he had survived through at the South Indian Co-Operative bank. He would longingly speak of the sambar at Amba Bhavan, or the coffee at Mysore Concerns, or coconut chutney at Ram Ashray or Sadya at Mani’s Lunch Home restaurant which were his favourite haunts when he was younger and sometimes my mother would tell me to get something for the old man when we went there.

I would trouble him only with submitting my society maintenance and took care to give them six months in advance to avoid his agonising scrutiny. For he was given to such punctilious accounts that he would remain troubled even if digits the right side of the decimal did not tally. Once he called me triumphantly early morning telling me that he managed to reconcile some Rs 25 that was eluding him. To him any figure above a thousand rupees was a huge amount and would insist on withdrawing Rs 300 for petty cash and accounting for the same much to our exasperation. Given his seemingly penurious condition we would persuade him to shift out of the flat and give it out on rent which would generate a surplus of he went to a rented flat in the distant suburbs where his daughter lived. He would dismiss off the suggestion as he hated the idea of parting with his beloved flat that ensconced him like a womb; besides he would trust no man on the planet. Any attempt to help would be viewed with disdain and deep suspicion about hidden motives. To help him tide his crisis he was offered the task of writing the society’s accounts and paid a miserable Rs 2000 per month which he would ask each year be raised by Rs 200 much to the annoyance of his other senior citizen Palghat Brahmin friends who felt he did little to deserve.

To get any repairs done in the building was like scaling the Great Wall of China with just your wits. He would insist on getting quotes and monitor closely each rupee spent. As a secretary of my housing society he once last year made me hold a general body meeting simply to ratify the spending of Rs 5,000 just to put up two or three fixtures and cabling for tube lights behind and in front of the building to compensate for the absence of a security guard which he would argue we can’t afford. He was afraid at the “Big” people in the building who had bought the flats some years ago and drove bigger cars and at their noisy demands for better security, money being no constraint. He would confide conspiratorially that these people were hell bent on increasing expenses thereby pressuring him to part with the little money he had. He disliked the way the security and cleaners would get their raises in wages and would join them in requesting a hike in his accounts writing charges as we sat aghast as he equated himself with them. The Tamil Manram gentry once colluded to demand a redistribution of accumulated interest on the society’s fixed deposits to help some of them tide their liquidity problems (they being too proud to ask their children and children being too supercilious to care) and got a resolution passed much to the amusement of the rest of the members as it did not amount to more than Rs 25,000 pa. They would stall any considerable repairs to the 50 year old building and only a notice from the Municipal authorities and an ignorant structural engineer who thankfully scared them to believe that the building was imminently in danger of collapsing made them open their purses.

As secretary after i had all the major external columns of the building reinforced and internal beams and columns and water proofing of terrace done by personal supervision and at a hugely discounted rate of Rs 50,000 per head, he told me that he was happy the building was now safe and repaired (which was saying a lot). When he was told that we still had a surplus of Rs 2 lakh after repairs he was overjoyed and wanted me to have dosais that his wife freshly prepared. But the repairs had taxed me to the limit as i kept sulking at the amount of time it consumed and the conflicts it engendered that i stopped following up on him and his health. I now feel ashamed to confess how i yelled at him for all the extra effort he sometimes caused. For soon after the repairs were concluded he took ill and had a high fever which did not subside for a week. His daughter decided that she could not keep visiting him from her distant suburb with his tiny granddaughter in tow and wished to put up his house on rent and take a less expensive flat next to her own. When i saw him he was heartbroken at leaving a place that was like a mother’s lap in security and love. He as usual asked me to deposit my 6 month advance maintenance in the bank and return the counterfoil to him carefully, beaming that i had no outstanding. Alas within a week a tenant came and he was bundled out to a distant suburb where his health deteriorated and the hospital asked that he be taken home as he cried each night in pain. I paid him a visit there and he seemed all tubed up at different parts of his emaciated frame he smiled faintly and tried to speak. We wished him well leaving his wife and daughter to tend to him, knowing that his maker would soon arrive as also hosts of ancestors who had enjoyed his rice cake offerings on each New Moon day all his life.

Today the Committee has no idea how much it spends and rounds off the accounts in large amounts, writing off sums that he would have thought criminal to balance the books. I can still see him smiling broadly, forgiving my trespasses each time i was exasperated. I just submitted my resignation as secretary to the society. An entire generation of frugality and ascetic parsimony and probably purity was cremated the day he died.