The rise and rise of the eRamamurti - The amazing adventures of a Tamil Brahmin-Part II

You have doubtless read my little piece titled ‘the amazing adventures of a Tamil Brahmin’, based on the real life adventures of Appa, my father-in-law. In case you are one of the unfortunate few who have not, I strongly suggest you desist from revealing this in public. Instead you can quickly read through it here http://ramgvallath.blogspot.in/2010/01/amazing-adventures-of-tamil-brahmin-aka.html and hold your head up proudly.

The ones who did read the original piece must have been wondering whether after a glorious start, Appa fizzled out into obscurity, since no further updates of his adventures were shared. If so, they are gravely mistaken. Appa has moved from strength to strength, delivering more than the initial promise. I can see that you are upset that I have not kept you, my faithful reader, posted on the progress. It is just that after those initial years when Appa was taking roots in my life, I got rather busy with corporate life, bringing up two brats, contracting an auto immune disorder, writing books, stem cell transplant etc. and have not had time to chronicle the continued adventures of Mr. Ramamurti – ie. Appa.

But I think now it is time to release a refresher capsule.

If you recall, I had described Appa as a meek and god-fearing sort of chap whose most aggressive behavior was cancelling Economic Times on weekends behind my back. But he soon surprised me with his audacity and risk taking ability when he deigned to try out Appam, a totally Malayali dish for breakfast. This coming from a man who has eaten only rice and rasam for lunch every day for over twenty years! That moment, I realized there was more to Appa than meets the eye. I pulled out the competency framework I had used to evaluate Appa, and against the attribute ‘Risk taking ability’, where I had written ‘are you kidding?’ I wrote ‘needs further observation’.

And observe him I did, closely- without the man ever feeling that he was under constant scrutiny. But my scrutiny was woefully inadequate. Appa surprised me again. Five years into my marriage, one evening he proudly announced to Jayu and I that he had just got his four wheeler license. I ogled at the man, stunned. He was sixty seven at that time and used to wince every time I accelerated the car to above forty kilometer per hour! This same man had enrolled himself secretly in a driving school, learned how to drive and had actually got himself a driving license. He did this so that he could drive little Ananya to school, he confided to us. I whipped out the competency framework and scratched out the ‘needs further observation’. I changed it to ‘Oh My God!’ (OMG was not invented in those days).

Appa continued relentlessly to surprise me. Somewhere in the mid of the last decade, he adopted the cell phone. The primary use was to call me every time I was to go on any tour directly from office to ask me ‘You have left office no, RamG?’ ‘Have you taken your wallet and laptop?’ ‘What about the ticket?’ and ‘Have you checked in RamG?’ or he would call home whenever he was travelling to ask ‘Have the children left for school?’ ‘Has the gas been switched off?’ ‘Children are OK, no?’ and ‘How is your cold, RamG?’

He quickly migrated up to the next level of tech-saviness and started sending SMSs. We started receiving messages such as ‘boarded. All well’ and ‘will reach in one hour. Latha can keep rasam’ etc.

Ramamurti made the successful transformation to eRamamurti when he asked Jayu to create an email ID for him. I was amazed at his willingness to keep conquering new technologies. I had to smile indulgently when he started bombarding us with mail forwards of jokes which had been doing the rounds for years and which he must have come across for the first time now in his e-enabled avatar.

But eRamamurti would not stop there. He pestered Advay to open a Facebook account for him and jumped to the cutting edge of social media. By now, I had stopped being surprised by anything Appa did. I guess it is just this sense of openness to adapt and change which made him accept me wholeheartedly as his son-in-law, in spite of our huge differences. The same ability to adapt which made him accept the fact that the kids and I have non-veg at home. The same adaptability which  has made him totally comfortable with his Tamil and Malayalam TV programs and his bhajan-chanting in his room while he lets us lead our drastically different lifestyle.   

The only trouble was that with eRamamurti now dabbling around with a Blackberry, an iPod, a laptop and a desktop, every once in a while he would run into a tech problem which would stump him. The kids, occupied with their own stuff, would not solve his problems immediately. Then he would come to me, humbly requesting me in his own self-deprecating way to help him out whenever I had a moment to spare.

I have laid down one rule for myself- Appa’s slightest need would take priority over anything else I am doing. I have also told the kids the same thing. Since he is the last person to impose himself on others, he comes to us for help only when he has absolutely no other option, and that too after hesitating many times. As the eldest member of the house, he should know that his slightest wish is our command.

If he holds on to the current trajectory, I am sure that he will be editing videos and mixing music soon. I am waiting for the day when one fine morning, he will greet me with a high five and ‘Yo, sup dude!’ 

'The Amazing Adventures of a Tamil Brahmin' aka 'How to tame a tame father in law’

"So Jayashri’s visit to Bombay is f***ed ?" He asked me, eyes twinkling.

I stared at the man open mouthed!! The versatile four letter word so blithely flowing out of the 60 year old, supposedly god fearing Tamil Brahmin’s lips stunned me. Hey, this guy is cool, I thought to myself and gave him a chummy smile, almost as if to say, “hey you old coot, did not know you were one of us”!!
Again he said “So thanks to the strike in her factory, Jayashri’s trip to Bombay seems to have gone Phut”

Ah! I realized with a tinge of disappointment that he had actually said Phut (means Kaput) and not really the word of words.

This was my first interaction with Mr. V. Ramamurti, my would be father in law. My wife and I met each other in XLRI, where she was one year junior to me. Subsequently, she also ended up at Titan watches, where we had our respective first jobs (she vehemently denies that she chased me and came to Titan – Ha). We fell in love and wanted to get married. The only catch was that she was from a Tamil Brahmin (Iyer) family and I was from a Malayali Menon family. Since Jayu’s mom had passed away when she was quite young, quite a bit of her upbringing was done by her grandmother, who also ran their household – in a very traditional manner.
So when Jayu upped and told her dad that she wanted to marry a Malayali, he even refused to acknowledge it.

It took a fair amount of work from her sister to convince her dad that I was rather higher in the evolutionary pegging order than a pathetic worm. The fact that I could down 12 pegs of rum a day without blinking an eyelid and smoke enough cigarettes to make a substantial contribution to global warming were facts that were wisely hidden from him at that time. So one fateful day, I reached Mumbai to make first contact. With a heart full of apprehension and hope I waited in Shubha’s (Jayu’s sister) house for the prospective father in law, V.Ramamurti to descend. And his first words as he descended were what I described in the beginning.

Even though it turned out that he did not use my type of words, over the next couple of days, I came to the conclusion that he was a decent sort of bloke. Quite amiable and sweet, though he did take me thru a bit of history (namely of his own childhood thru to adulthood days), by the end of two days we were on decidedly chummy terms. But my restlessness kept growing, since after 48 hours, the gentleman never once mentioned the holy alliance between his daughter and myself. I felt a bit deflated, much as how Musharaf did when after being invited by Clinton to discuss a $1Billion aid, at the end of the visit he discovered that all he and Bill had discussed were Pakistani women, Cigars, terrorists, Kababs and what not.

But I was made of strong stuff. In the last 5 minutes before I was to eject from the house, I took courage in my hands and with a prayer in my heart, I told him – “Uncle, I am sorry if I have hurt you in anyway by falling in love with your daughter.” Impressive stuff, you must admit. And it finally penetrated the armor. VR got quite emotional and I could see that I was now well on the way to winning the trophy.

And trophy I did win in Feb 1995. From the wedding onwards, our cultures were a study in contrast. The wedding was in Malayali style, in a temple. The visiting Tam Brahm clan, which had braced themselves for the usual ‘2 nights of smoke and lack of sleep, which causes headaches’ kind of wedding felt like the rug was pulled from under their feet when having been herded into the temple, after the first blink, they discovered that RamG and Jayu were now man and wife. Cheated, I say!!

Appa (from that day, that is what I called Jayu’s dad) had sent 50K to my dad to organize the wedding. He had carried another similar sum in a leather bag, clutched to his bosom for the past 48 hours. The sum, he was sure may not be enough to cover the overall cost. He could not believe his ears when my dad returned some money from the original 50K itself stating that the total expense was below 50K. All said and done, the flag of RamG was now generally flying high in Appa’s eyes.

Appa made a formal entry into our home after our first baby – Ananya – was born. It was a huge relief for us, since it meant an overall supervision of things at home. A supervisory role which Appa took to with gusto!! A bit too much of gusto at times!!

The incident, which was to be referred to ever since as the ‘Economic Times Crisis’ happened around 6 years after our marriage. We had just shifted to Coimbatore. I discovered Hindu Businessline there and wanted to order this daily, along with the Hindu and Eco Times. Appa vehemently protested. Or so I heard, since Mappilai Maryadai (the respect due to a son in law) prevented him from disagreeing with me directly and all such conversations were routed thru the medium of Jayu!! His point was that Hindu Businessline and ET covered the same stuff and so why order both. I put my foot down. I pointed out to my wife that I was the master of the house. I made sure that she personally briefed the paperwallah on our daily requirements. Matters went well for 3 days. Then I realized that the ET was missing from the daily bouquet of papers.

An intense investigation was instituted at home. And I couldn’t believe the findings!! Appa, the god fearing Brahmin, the man who was so courteous and sweet had got up at 5AM (which anyway he does) and instructed the paperwallah to stop ET. I was speechless. This complete underhand deal left me baffled. Of course, I could not express my displeasure to him directly, except by giving him dirty looks behind his back and muttering – “where is the ET?” in a marked manner within his earshot. Jayu, of course was a chingari. She took it up very strongly with Appa and finally we restored the ET. Except on Saturdays and Sundays – where Appa still had his way. He believed that at Rs.5, this edition was a waste. So we finally entered into a truce – ET stayed, but not the weekend edition. Peace reigned throughout the household again. All was well.

Apart from these few incursions across the LOC, Appa was generally the personification of sweetness, piousness and love. I am yet to see a more wonderful human being in my life. His sweet nature also ensures that most of the young women that we knew clustered around him. (This of course was also a very positive development as far as I was concerned)

When I shifted to Coimbatore and Jayu gave up her job after Advay, our son was born, Appa was very worried if we could still afford the quality of rice we were used to. Since he ran the household, cheaper rice became the norm. It took us quite sometime and a promotion to convince him that we were not actually below the poverty line.
This is the quintessential Appa – he worries about everything. He worries that we might miss our flight every time we go on tour. He worries about our work. He worries about the kids… If he has a train to catch, he would be at the platform 2 hours early.

But the huge contradiction is the incredible courage he displayed when his wife was suffering from MND at a young age. I believe he never ever gave up hope or stopped trying. He took care of her every need, spending hours by her bedside in her last days. After she passed away, he continued displaying the same courage – bringing up two girls, trying to ensure they never felt the absence of their mother, pushing them academically, till one got into the civil services and one got into XLRI. Today, he is a proud father, happy at their achievements.

Over the last few years, he has adjusted so well to me and my Malayali ways. (He refers to all Malayalis as Malayali gentlemen, almost as if it is an oxymoron.) He does not even mind that we cook chicken at home. My son, in a mad sense of humor once went and told him – “Tata, I am a Brahmin”. Thrilled, Appa asked him why he felt that. The answer came promptly “ Because I eat chicken!”

Over time, he realized that his son in law was rather attached to the occasional binges. He however turned a blind eye. Except on one occasion, when a lot of my friends had come visiting and we were partying late into the night. Having run out of Tequila, we decided to have shots of Triplesec. In about half an hour, I was completely sozzled. The nearest bed in sight was next to Appa and I decided to sleep it off. Unfortunately, as soon as my head hit the pillow, it seemed to be caught in a tornado, and I had a terrible urge to throw up. I got out of bed, only to find out that my legs seemed to have lost all coordination. I gamely crawled on all fours to the bathroom and back. Poor Appa was awake all the while, watching the antics in horror. But his heart melted when having laid down next to him, I kept muttering, “I am sorry Appa.” “Even in his dire straits, he only thinks of me” – he proudly told my wife later.

The most touching moment in our relationship happened when I had a job in Gurgaon and we had to shift from Hyderabad to Gurgaon. Appa had many friends in Hyderabad and I knew he would miss the place terribly. I asked Appa whether he would mind moving. He looked at me and said “ When I was young, I wanted to bring my old dad from Tanjore to Mumbai. I asked him whether he would feel out of pkace in Mumbai. He turned to me and told me – where Ram is there, that is Ayodhya. Similarly, for me, where Ram is there, that is Ayodhya”. I was deeply touched.

He has become such an essential ingredient to daily life, that I miss him so much when he is away. Even his micromanaging ways- my wife jokingly asks me whether Appa has been acting too Uppity every once in a while – has now become an entertainment. When a person loves you unconditionally, how do these small things matter? Every moment he is at home, I feel enveloped in his love and tenderness.

Kudos to Ramamurti – the Tamil Brahmin who was born in an ultra orthodox family in an Agraharam in deep Tamil Nadu, who has had the courage to modify his traditional beliefs and who has been able to accept, love and wholeheartedly embrace a son in law like me.