TSG

TSG

New four lane, six lane, eight lane highways have changed the nature of travel. Chennai to Bangalore is all I know which houses an A2B in between and multiple toll plazas. The villages on the road pass by in a blurr as tiny unwanted dots on the way. My grandfather lived in one such village on the Trichy Madurai highway. Viralur Agraharm. Just another nondescript village with a few houses nearby and where power cuts are the norm. Another village where commonsfolk converse about the Thiruvizha (village fest), an illegal liaison in a neighbouring street and the latest scheme by the government.

Mr. T S Gopalakrishnan (TSG as he liked being called!) was a government school teacher who worked in a number of schools in the locality. Perfectly run-of-the-mill till now. Till you know his father from a Pudukkottai agraharam was a lorry driver. And his wife worked as a teacher in various schools, sometime as far as tens of kilometres. Surely, agraharam maamis were supposed to be grinding batter for the morning dosaai and making the best kaapi in the village.

My grandfather, TSG was a perfectly unreasonable man for most part. And believed in doing things which he was not supposed to be doing. Like driving two wheelers immediately after surgeries, opening small scale industries near home! The upside of him opening the small scale industry was I used to meet all the unmarried girls in the town who came to work here. I was only 8 then.

After having lived a full life till 80, he passed away last year. And I went to his home (or mine?) to clean the remaining things. And it was one of the most heart wrenching chores I’ve done in recent times. Every hook around the home carried a story. Like the new bathroom he built near home a couple of years ago because my cousin could not go till the end of street for defecation. Or the peacock feathers(maayil rakkai) that he must have collected from the backyard for me because I will be home for summers. For the best part of their retired lives, my grandparents spent the year waiting for us to come during the summer. Oh, and I used to complain about how boring days were in the village. How I wish I could have been a better child!

The things that people leave behind also allows us a peek into their lives. The choice of the marriage invitations that he thought he should save in the cupboard or the rather “useless” notes of his son that I had to painfully discard was such a poignant experience.

Some losses are painful. Some others continue to be so.

About the house, it now looks like this. The lamp remains, but the light is off.