At the start of the new year, we had the opportunity to visit Gegebapa’s house in Berhampur again after what seemed many many years. One of the most uncanny things about visiting old haunts is how your spatial memory at times struggles to place both things that are similar yet different. Was the distance between our house and where I used to go to tuition so small, yet Gegabapa still had to protect me from street dogs ? Did we really all fit in that verandah to play cricket and still run ? However, what jogs the memory the most is how the smallest of missing pieces draw out that sense of yearning of past mornings. Standing near the inner staircase of our house this was towards what used to be his study room where very meticulously he had his reading lamp, pile of newspapers and bottle of green ink. It led me to remember those early days of 2002 almost 20 years back when he used to sit and work there and I used to attend multi subject tuitions in the house nearby before I could start formal schooling back in India.
There are many memories of our elders that we appreciate only when we are older and have both the experience and grey hairs to show for it. One of these things that I fondly remember today is Gegebapa’s innate curiosity for the world around him and its working. These days it is fashionable to call this the zeal for lifelong learning or keeping oneself relevant, but being aware for the sake of fulfilling conversations and building generational bridges is underrated. Gegebapa had his own way of doing this, whether it was getting me to explain to him what I learned from the newspapers to explaining how to operate the desktop computer.
Only when I was older did I learn from Bapa how his sense of curiosity had led him to complete his law degree well into middle age and drawing horoscope charts wasn’t something he had been doing forever ! This was surprising for me when I remembered that for all the years that I had interacted with him those were his two main post retirement careers for which he was sought out!
It’s hard for us to project into the future and even harder for us to realize how our careers will evolve but his endearing legacy has to be his ability to realize that the world is a constantly evolving place and to be stagnant in your knowledge of it is a crime. So as we complete another orbit around the sun, let us all promise to keep our inner flame of curiosity well fed and disseminate our acquired wisdom for the benefit of all.
The Lucid Monk 