APPA'S EASY CHAIR

 Appa’s Easy Chair

"Let's sit quiet a bit, Toady!" said the Rat, throwing himself into an easy chair, while the Mole took another by the side of him and made some civil remark about Toad's delightful residence.

1908: Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows 

In the seventies, I remember my father lying in an easy chair in the nights, a bit tired. He used to tell me about some main events, trials in his life. I was a young medical student then, not always receptive however, like most adolescent sons!

Though mostly amusing, the discussions had been educative, instructive, advisory in nature. He was a traditional strict dad.

His main words were, “Always, put in the best effort.Be wise as a serpent, but harmless as a dove”

He himself was a self made man and had worked hard during life; he took on 4 jobs after his retirement, to put me through a medical college education and my sister through mathematical higher education.

More than 2 decades had passed since his demise. 

I was looking through the attic the other day. I found a carefully packed easy chair. It was my father’s. I had not seen an easy chair, leave alone his, for many years. 

Thanks to covid, one gets a new overview of life! 

I took it upon myself to look for a cloth for the easy chair. The cloth I found was too long.With considerable difficulty,I located a tailor to alter it to fit the chair. Sadly due to my own stupidity, I had z small part of the chair cracked up, while setting it up 😷.

The furniture shop opposite to my house, glued it and gave it back. With the remark, would I be interested in selling it to them, because it was made of wood that you hardly ever get nowadays. 

I had never paid any attention to the type of wood; then I remembered my father once saying that he had the easy chair done out of rose wood as it would last a long time!

Late last evening, I finally took the easy chair out into the garden for a trial and sat out for half hour. 

It was cool, after the rains during the day. The jasmine smell was strong in the air. My new vigour in gardening had helped to blossom all sorts of flowers. I sat in a partially lit area considering the recent rains and the puddles, along with two of my German Shepherd dogs. 

It was wonderful to sit in my father’s easy chair, 25 years after he had left. And I don’t know how long he had the chair. It was in the family as long as I could remember.

It was very relaxing 😍, well, at least till the mosquitoes arrived on the scene. I beat a hasty retreat into the house!

5 minutes later, there was a knock at the door. The watchman showed me what he found at the spot where I was sitting… a large scorpion! 😳

Apparently it was moving across the floor , when the GSDs partially bit it with violent tossing of their heads. He managed to pry the scorpion away from the dogs, but a bit too late!

My father’s words rang through my mind, “Be wise ( cautious)” . I am sure he meant it in a different context. But even in this situation, I had chosen the lit area for sitting out, as the sun had gone down. I was  acutely aware of the dogs, as they always pick out reptiles around earlier than humans, rain or no rain. 

Some might have attributed this to karma!

If I had been sitting out for a bit longer, I might have picked up the scorpion in ways more than one 😩. I could not  help but thank  the mosquitos silently, for persuading me to go indoors!

So it is good to be cautious even when totally relaxed in a traditional easy chair, covid or no covid!😊

NOSTALGIA

NOSTALGIA

Nostalgia is nothing but “A sentimental longing for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations”.

I was in Palayamkottai yesterday to speak at a surgical meeting. I had arrived early in the day so that I could visit the house where I spent 6 months in 1961 as a kid.

My father had been a government gazette officer being transferred from pillar to post. Wherever he went, we did too. Palayamkottai it was for 6 months. Though I was only in 3^rd standard many decades ago, my memories are afresh as though it was yesterday.

As I sauntered on the neighbourhood… from my old school with adjacent church..… to my rented home of the past, it was nostalgic to walk back the same route I frequented some 50 years ago.

The church has now become a cathedral…. The service was over when I reached. I still managed to meet the senior priest to say hello.

 The Massive Holy Trinity Cathedral         

                                                

View of the Alter

View of the pews from the Alter

The main roads have widened a lot. There hardly used to be any cars on the road, but now so much of motorized traffic even on Sundays. TST ( Thallu Sir, Thallu) and TVS (Thalla Vendam, Sir) buses have been replaced by all sorts of colorful, faster buses with louder horns and over flowing passengers.

I traced the short cut which my sister and I used to take and visited the chapel in Adaikalapuram- now called St John’s Church with a cemetery where we, with our neibourhood friends used to play hide and seek!... ‘Robbers and Police’… brown uniform with brown belt across the waist and across the chest, pistols, whistles and all!

Adaikalapuram Chapel with Cemetry on its right ( Not seen on this picture)

The old house where we lived for 6 months still remained the same with the unaltered houses on either side. The street as I used to remember was wide... but looks mighty narrow now! The street also had vivid memories of ‘Kutchi’  ice cream man with a push cart ringing his bell during the day. At nights a different vender used to come with a larger cart with ‘petromax light’ with snacks and ‘Panju mittai ‘(cotton candy).

The old house is still the same! ( 'Green green grass of home'- Tom Jones)

Vijayakumar (God alone knows where he lives now!) who lived at the end of the street just adjacent to a fast moving stream, used to be one of my regular playmates in the evenings and sometimes late nights. He was living with his grandparents who used to feed me lime juice whenever I visited them. Street hockey was very popular and once when his grandfather bought him new hockey stick, he got me one too! Such was the friendliness of the neighborhood.

View of the street for football, hockey and what not!

The stream at the end of the street was always full of clear water and more so after monsoon… a favorite jaunt for the young folks to cool off. My father was an avid swimmer and naturally wanted his son to be too. His attempts at making me one were however futile! Out of frustration, one morning he set it up with some bigger boys to catch me in the stream when he threw me in ….. I bitterly complained to my mother about the incident. My fever the next day helped a lot and she put her foot down as she did not want her offspring to be drowned! Like all good mothers’ her words prevailed and that was the end of my swimming! …… Sad to see that the stream has been replaced by gutter water and rubbish… ;even the steps leading down are covered with waste material.

Sterling stream ... now a sad site!

My father frequent left station on official camps and I used to open his typewriter and hammer away.My sister, like all good siblings used to sneak in on me! Once too many times I had been discovered and had my ears tweaked to dissuade me…. But when I grew up and went to medical college, same father was proud to give the very same to me for making my notes. My typed notes were stuck onto my Bailey and Love Surgical Book! (which I still cherish!)

Even the school held great memories too. History teacher wanted to make a point about a war. She made 2 of us boys get into a playful fight and I was supposed to win; but my classmate had other ideas and almost beat me up to a pulp in front of the class. I still remember the anxiety on her face when she separated him from above me!

While walking back from school, I used to eye a clock cake in a bakery in the show case…. It was always there. The bakery is still but not the clock cake!

As I look back, we had enough time to learn a lot besides academics like music, casual reading ( Perry mason, Alistair MacLean, P G Wodehouse among books, and Phantom, Mandrake the magician among comics were my favorites)... marbles, tops, foot ball on the streets, hockey, ‘pandey’ ( played with kids hopping over squares and stones), gilli dhanda, kite flying… times have changed a lot.I did not see a single kid on the street.. that too on a Sunday, unheard of in our times!

Christmas was a great time of cheer! There were so many carol rounds by churches, Sunday schools, youth groups, school groups….. always dropping in at our homes on cycles, small trucks with ….. Much singing, guitars, piano accordions, violins reciprocated with warm coffee, horlics, cakes, biscuits wherever you went! Where have they all gone?

I caught up with my friend Premkumar Joseph a leading eye surgeon who lives closeby. We shared some of the old times in his garden and a meal together.Old friends are like old wine... they get better with the passage of time!

With Dr Premkumar Joseph

I guess that kids of today still have a great time watching TV cartoons, playing computer games, social networking etc. But times have really changed. And as we also adapt to the changes rapidly, little do we realize how much has changed unless we visit our roots and relive our  earlier days . Trip to Palayamkottai helped me just to do that! 

Rewinding rapidly your life even for half a day will make you appreciate life better!