Nostalgia, En Passant...

I was remembering Thatha (my Grandfather) a lot yesterday. The trigger was this biopic on the Chess great Bobby Fischer- the movie is called Pawn Sacrifice.

Thatha took great interest in Chess (among so many other things) and taught me the game when I was 3-4 years old.

Long years back when we were still staying in Valanchery (a village in Malabar) and then in Thiruvananthapuram, Thatha and I would regularly engage with each other in the ritual of analysing the chess games which The Hindu (these days that newspaper has become rotten and is more The Anti-Hindu) would publish through the week on the sports page whenever any match of significance was on.

He would, with great excitement, quiz me on what I thought was the turning point of each of those games. On those very rare occasions when I would get the answer right, he would have a look of pride on his face. He would even say, "Good" on such occasions.

Those moments still give me goosebumps.

There would also be these puzzles on closing the game in three moves. As I grew in age through those years, I started getting the answers right more often and slowly started losing interest in our ritual.

By the time I was in my teens, he would still seek to continue our ritual, and I would find excuses to evade the ritual. I never was rude to him or showed disrespect, but my typical response was "apram paakkalaamae" (a rough translation would be, we can do this later). That "later" became very rare in the later years- maybe once a quarter or once every six months.

Every time Thatha would come back to Delhi from the south after the winters, I would resolve to take that time out for what was once our favourite time together. I would live up to the resolution for the first week of his stay in Delhi and then I would look for ways to evade it.

And then the winter would set in and he would go back to the south.

And when the winter would get over, my resolution would be alive again.

Over the years we did discuss chess once in a while. His interest in the game and our discussion was as alive as it was when I was a kid. He would still say "Good" when he thought I said something intelligent.

He still took great pride in the fact that he was witness to that match when Vishy Anand was crowned a Grandmaster in Coimbatore (I think my brother and he were both witness to that match).

He still had the same great affection for his pocket chessboard which Periappa, his most favourite nephew, has gifted him from Europe. I remember the spark in his eye when he would open that chessboard. It was always reserved for special occasions and he carried the set with him wherever he traveled. Perhaps the only other worldly asset I saw him being so careful about was the set of (Panchayatana) Puja deities that has been handed over to the head of the family from one generation to another since God-only-knows-when.

Many a times after he passed away, I have experienced that feeling of not having done justice as a grandson. Today, as I write this, that feeling is stronger than ever before.

I remember his excitement when there was a rematch between Fischer and Spassky in 1992. I think the Nehruvian in him wanted the Soviet Spassky to win.

He spoke with great passion about the mutual respect between Spassky and Fischer.

Yesterday while watching the movie, that scene played out on screen- of Spassky applauding Fischer on stage after the 6th game in the famous 1972 match. That was perhaps the best moment of the movie- well directed with superlative performances by both the actors- Toby Maguire playing Fischer and Liev Schreiber playing Spassky .

That moment is also perhaps when I missed Thatha the most in these 13 years. I think he would have loved the movie.

When we were driving back after the movie yesterday, the way R was holding my hands made it apparent to me that my emotions had overwhelmed me.

Afterglow:

I took out that pocket chess board of his today- it has been long locked inside a pouch for many many years. The 32 pieces took their positions on the board and breathed fresh air... perhaps for the first time since Thatha traveled on...

The game stands adjourned for now.
  

Lunchbox...

No, this blog entry has nothing to do with that beautiful movie with the same title.

This weekend, R & I were  dining in one of my favourite restaurants in Vasant Vihar that serves amazing North Indian food. I was visiting this place after almost 4 years. R was obviously eating here for the first time.

Along with the main course, the folks at the restaurant also kept in front of us two varieties of pickles. The pickle connoisseur that I think I am, I picked up one of chillies from the hari mirch pickle.

It was perhaps the best pickle I had had in years- more importantly, the taste actually took me back a few years; a couple of decades to be precise.

I was new in Delhi and had no friends and was just about getting acquainted with my new classmates in the school. Two of them, in particular, were becoming close. One of them, a South Indian like me and the other, a Delhiite. The peculiar bit about the latter one was that he did not laugh at my accent while speaking in Hindi. He did not ridicule me by calling me Angrez  like my other classmates did. We traveled by the same bus together ( I was staying in Janakpuri those days and so was he). He would get aboard the bus two stops after mine. His being there was reassuring. I had somebody to speak with and he would go out of his way to ensure that I was comfortable, or at the very least, less uncomfortable. Those days, I was a butt of jokes in the bus as well as in the class for my Hindi, rather, the non-Hindi. I remember the sense of solitude that I would feel each time he would get off the bus on our way back from school.

As the months went by, we became close- in the bus, in the classroom and over lunch. Those days as a kid who had just become a teenager, I was terribly bored with South Indian food- a far cry from these days when I find most South Indian food irresistible. It was most convenient for my friend and me to exchange our lunch boxes. He loved the Idli-Dosas and I loved the Paratha-Subzi and the Achaar (Pickle). The green chilly pickle that he would bring was most special- the tastiest I had and have ever had.

Over the next 3 years, our friendship grew stronger. We had a nice time even during our class X board exams. He had hinted he may take up Biology in class XI and I was clear about my proclivity to study Commerce (that I ended up studying Science without Biology is a different story).

As we moved into new sections in class XI, I started engaging myself with new friends as well. My days of being a joke were long since gone and I was as "local" as anybody else. These were also new lunch partners. Some of them refused to believe I was a "Madrasi" after listening to my Hindi.

As I was enjoying my comfort with Delhi, the time I spent with this old friend of mine reduced drastically. The other South Indian friend (his name is Gautam- one of the closest friends I have- there are some references to him in my previous blogs) that I have mentioned above was perhaps the only one who kept regularly in touch with him. We would still meet during lunch time once in a while  and we also had that occasional exchange of lunch boxes.

I met him last sometime during the board exams of class XII. He was as pleasant as ever and his presence always brought a sense of "reassuredness" into my being. I do not remember my last conversation with him.

A few months into college, I came to know he had gone to study Medicine/ Dentistry somewhere in Uttar Pradesh.

The next thing I heard about him a few months later was of his death. Gautam had called to tell me this. We knew that he had a heart problem since he was a child, never perhaps knew that it was this serious. Gautam and I had visited his house and spent some time with his Grandmum. I remember the cycle ride back- Gautam and me doubling on the cycle- we did not speak a word to each other on the way back.

I realised I was choking when I had finished that chilly on my plate in the restaurant.

I guess nostalgia has a habit of striking me when I least expect it. A smell, a name, a song, and now even a piece of chilly pickle.  I was feeling small that it took a piece of chilly pickle to remind me of one of my dearest friends.

This one is to you Manas, my friend.