Quite Frankly: A tribute to my dad

My dad was a non-conformist. So, it’s befitting that I write this tribute a day after Father’s Day. He might be smiling down on me for that.

Aptly nicknamed Frank by close friends and family, my father was just that—honest and direct, blunt perhaps to a fault, and hence at loggerheads with the world ever so often, but always holding stiff on his righteous principles.

Frankly, the outspoken citizen

I recall a time when we got a random visit from a middle-aged man one evening in our tiny apartment in Mumbai, India. I was possibly 8 or 10 years old at the time. Athiti devo bhava or guest is God in the Indian culture, so after offering him some hot chai and cookies, the stranger warned my dad that he was making a dastardly mistake by allowing his brilliant oldest son to leave a flourishing bank job in India to pursue a PhD in the United States. Instead, he should get him married soon—it turned out he was there to propose an alliance of his daughter for my brother. My dad dragged his thin and tall frame off his favorite straight-backed chair, pointedly looked down at our guest—who paused his tea cup mid air in surprise—and asked him to leave the house, pointing to the front door of our ground floor apartment. Please do not to teach me how to raise my kids, thank you, and if I ever need your advice, I’ll be sure ask you. If you’d like, you can continue talking with my wife and my daughter, gesturing vaguely to our stunned faces (Yikes!).

With those words, Nanna walked out of the living room, dragging his thin frame dressed in his characteristic nightly white dhoti and a white jubba, and his tall body topped with striking white hair and the white mustache of his profile making him look like an apparition disappearing mysteriously into the dark interiors of our 600 square foot apartment. Mom and I stared at each other aghast.

Nanna, an award-winning badminton player, receiving an award from an American colleague at Esso (now BP Solar). My dad strongly encouraged me to travel (and that I do!) and study in the United States, but also warned me against settling in what he called cutthroat capitalistic societies.

Frankly, the joker and philosopher

“I am in the because, Papai!” he’d joke ever so often, drawing a grudging smile from me. He was referring to the convoluted English sentences that the endearing Mrs. Menon from the first-floor apartment above us was prone to whipping up ever so often, in a desperate attempt to fit into Mumbai’s cosmopolitan quasi-Western lifestyle after leaving her native Kerala. I’d often have a grumpy tight-lipped face in the morning till my mom served me her winning frothy filter coffee with exactly the right dash of milk. Sometimes he’d try, “Looks like pearls might pour out of our daughter’s mouth if she opens it and speaks this early in the morning.” I’d grudgingly show some white. Often, white handmade paper airplanes darted across the room and got stuck in my ear—it was an attempt to be silly, something I so miss as an adult. Once I start though, I sadly can’t stop. Nanna even came out of the bathroom one day with his head wrapped in a towel, turban style, saying, “Papai, your father is now a Sadarji!” (a Sikh gentleman). Silly joke, dad.

“Cut off connections!” he’d say, indicating that one should just stop talking to those who cause you grief in life. After decades, I find that advice spot on, although I struggle sometimes between the spiritual approach of accepting everything and everyone as a matter of fact and moving on, versus just associating with folks who are like minded. Dad was not particularly religious or spiritual, though ever so often, he’d tell my mom, who tried to make up for him and all of us combined, dear soul, “Break a coconut for me at the temple, won’t you Lalitha?” “Wear some jeans yaar and why always this bindi on your forehead and Indian clothes?” he’d say, but he’d always compliment me when I dressed up traditionally. As an adult, I am so grateful that he let me and all his kids be, and never forced us to follow rules in what was back then a traditional orthodox society.

Nanna always said, “The one thing I don’t want my kids to say when they grow up is, I did not get to do this because of that stupid old father of mine!” We won’t and we can’t ever do that since he stuck to his word. Kudos to him!

However, the two pieces of advice that truly stuck—and which I even carefully jotted down diligently during my high school years in my leather bound maroon diary (I was always somewhat of a nerd, but a late blooming nerd) as he dictated them to me one very early morning when I was up studying for some exams, were: “Always speak the truth and be honest, and don’t stretch the truth too far, Papai.” The former was easy enough, the latter took some time to cultivate. I guess you don’t rub the truth in someone’s face even if it is true. And sometimes, silence is better than words. Not sure I have that sort of grace, yet.

Dad (leftmost) was always dressed in all white (far left) till around the age of 45 or 50 when my mom convinced him to wear light colored shirts. Eventually, he even wore lightly checkered shirts, although his pockets got stained due to storing raw betel nuts he’d constantly chew on, ever since he gave up smoking rather dramatically overnight, in his early forties.

Frankly, a writer above a tax consultant

Nanna was the first writer I encountered in life, although by trade he was a sales tax consultant who poured over sheets after sheets of numbers—paper sheets, I mean, in the pre-EXCEL and pre-computer days. He was an avid letter writer—he wrote elegantly, in ALL CAPS at that, with his favorite Parker fountain pen. He wrote regularly to relatives in the blue inland letters available at the time—these were pre cell phone or even regular phone days. He also wrote meticulously detailed letters to local newspapers complaining about the wrongdoings of citizens—either the wrong route taken by bus #1 or bus #43 on the way to his work in South Mumbai or the wrongdoings of a bus conductor who was rude to an old fellow passenger. My mom threw a fit once when he was summoned as a witness in a civic case, fearing retaliation from local goons.

He also taught me to write letters for school compositions. From him, I learned how to date a letter, be respectful in tone, and write with precision. Ever so often, he’d throw in a life learning as he helped me with my homework in the early hours of the morning, like, “Always respect age, wisdom, and authority.” No problem with the first two, the third is questionable, sometimes. Sorry, Nanna!

The funniest thing he ever wrote to me though was via a letter, of course in ALL CAPS, when I left India to pursue graduate studies in the United States: “The moods of your mother continue on, just like the vagaries of the weather in Bombay.” Mom, who he was married to for 35+ years before he passed, bore the brunt of some of his jokes sportingly. Like the time he said I could travel abroad to study at the ripe old marriageable age of 23 years (by Indian standards) to which my mom responded, “You’ll give me a heart attack with these decisions of yours” and dad promptly responded, “Papai, news flash, your mom actually has a heart!” We had a good laugh at that.

The most powerful punch he delivered was when he warned me not to leave my graduate studies in the United States to return back home—I was home sick after my first semester at school in Florida, not to mention a whopping 15 lbs heavier, thanks to Taco Bell and French fries, and wanted to return to India. He wrote, “Prabhalas don’t chicken out, ever.”

I haven’t, ever, in the worst of times, and I owe that to my dad.

Till we meet again.

Meaningfully yours always,

YOUR PAPAI (translated, little baby)