Achan
The word with all its profound meanings and feelings ...The most important person in your life, forever. It was always to please you that we did things in a certain way, your approval was/ is so important, your disapprovals always hurt. Your attitudes, views and ways of life have helped mould ours. Being your pet has been our blessing. Your love and care has enveloped the whole family like a protective blanket.
Now, the person-very individualistic, funny in his own most inimitable way, entertaining, engaging, radical, sensitive...His jokes are like family heirlooms.
There is a saying by Sreenarayana Guru, a radical reformist of Kerala, "oru jathi, oru matham, oru daivam manushyanu" meaning "one caste, one religion, one god for man" i.e there is no difference between men based on caste, creed etc. This by Achan is "oru jaathi, oru matham, oru daivam, oru manushyanu" meaning "one caste, one religion, one god for one man". He is most definitely a cynic.
By his own admission, he said goodbye to temples and rituals when he was in school itself. He strongly believes in being good by default; without the baggage of religious beliefs and dictums.
True, he didn't always know which class his kids were currently studying or what exactly were our official names and data of birth etc. Amma being a teacher, he didn't really need to -)). Once, Amma having exam duty, asked Achan to drop sister to school. Her admission to the convent was hard-won by Amma. Achan took her to the bus-stop; couldn't get any bus and simply took her to the local, Malayalam medium government school and enrolled her there!!! Yeah, I know, unbelievable.
In school, being weak in Maths, he had the imagination/audacity to go and meet chacko mash (Maths' teacher-Mr.Chacko) at his village privately with presents like tobacco.
He did not get good marks in Maths in 'sixth' (probably class-X) but got good marks in English. So wanted to join for English in intermediate (Probably Class-XI). But 'forces that be' decided that Math is going to keep him tight and was forced to take Maths and first group. On getting targetted, he went and met the sir privately begged not to humiliate by asking questions in class. So that was the end of his studies.
In school days, for throwing stone during student agitation, he was chargesheeted with few others and had to go to court at Ranni many days for case and hearing etc. The attraction there was a bhagavan/bhagavathi hotel with good food. He had few teachers who where his booze buddies, too.
After many adventures like 'kappalandi kachodam and manaloottu' [peanut business, sand mining]
etc, he joined police. The training was tough. Was punished for
in-subordination, on being kicked while doing punishment parade, he jumped up and slapped the commandant and absconded from police. Then he joined KSRTC and kind of got settled. During those years, he was either going for duty - so sleeping or coming from duty - so sleeping.
But the imagination never stopped. Mini magic slate, firewood business, contractor at vidura, real estate, leela enterprises, cement business, car/bike sales etc are a few of the variety entertainment programmes that we enjoyed. Amma still has to be vigilant -))
Let's celebrate happy father's day
