My Story

There is a famous Frank Sinatra song that always reminds me of my grandfathers. It starts :

And now, the end is here

And so I face the final curtain

My friend, I'll say it clear

I'll state my case, of which I'm certain

I've lived a life that's full

I travelled each and every highway

And more, much more than this, I did it My way….

I think that Sumant Dada really did live his life his way, and in many ways taught Vaidehi and me to do the same …

My early memories to Dada are all about him spoiling me and Vaidehi silly, and us taking very full advantage of it. From lunch fed to us for as long as we wanted with rotali’s cut into tiny pieces to make the meals more interesting for us, to many many trips Hanging Gardens by a route that we wanted, with snacks that we wanted and doing exactly what we wanted! With Dada, we always got our way - we got extra sugar in whichever form we wanted and all in all were the first priority, which made things very fun for us as kids.

As I started going to school, Dada started including little lessons for me – that were more his way. On trips to Hanging Gardens and other weekend and holiday trips, I would was taught and then tested on the names of the flowers and trees that were his passion. There would be competitions to see who remembered names better and faster, illegal flower picking was rampant, so that we could more closely examine the flowers, and commit the colours, petals and leaves to memory – it made the walks and hikes more fun for me, and I am sure for him too. Even now, when I see the more commonly tested flowers like “Cosmos” and “Dahlia” – the names automatically pop into my head – just as I was taught by Dada.

There were some academic lessons thrown into all the fun as well – Dada had a mission to teach me my multiplication tables, in singsong Guajarati, just as they “were meant to be learnt”. Night after night, we would sit and repeat the tables, from 1X1 to 12X12, repeating extra for mistakes made! Dada was convinced this would help my maths skills for life, but dedicated as he was to his mission, this was one that ultimately failed - It is just the singsong tune that stuck!

As I grew up, the lessons I learnt from Dada became less direct, and more exemplar. Dada would read to a blind man to help him study – and this often happened in our kitchen, so we could not help but be exposed to reader and the student – and learn from it. Year after year, in school holidays dada would set us all off a family hiking-travelling adventure in the Himalayas –the travel bug bit us and stuck too – to not just to travel, but to do it in a way that was most fun for you!  If you were going to travel, see the world your way! Even as dada lost his eye sight and age caught up with him, his passion for nature, music and travel was so much a part of his life and ours – if it was something that Dada felt a passion for, it was done his way… and that is really the way, isn’t it?