Saying goodbye to Lt. Col. I S Sundaram (Retd.)
My dearest Doddappa, you are leaving today. You are 99. Didn't you want to score a century like your favourite cricketeer, Gavaskar? Remember, you used to come riding on your aqua-coloured Lambretta (with its diagonally placed stepney) to pick Anna up and go watch the test matches at Chinnaswamy stadium. You didn't take me along since I wasn't old enough to understand the late-cuts and the LBWs.
You sent me back my letters and post cards I wrote you, with red ink all over, pointing out at all the errors. I know you were the favourite student of your English teacher at St.Joseph's because you scored the highest marks in the subject even with other European kids in your class. You always believed in sharing knowledge. Even after you retired you decided to keep yourself busy and teach trigonometry and calculus to college students - those subjects scared me. You used to prepare for classes even before the students turned up and no wonder The Hindu ran a feature on you.
Doddappa, when you were at your Chord Rd house in Bangalore we spoke in Kannada with each other. And even when we met at Coimbatore we still conversed in Kannada - your Kannada was so good (with a bit of Tamil accent)! You called me Kullappa - the short one!
Your Coimbatore house - 50, South End Road - is filled with memories of my vacations. I used to stay in the room on the terracotta-tiled terrace, where Appa and Amma lived for a bit as newly-weds. The almond tree and Doddamma's large kitchen garden was my playground. It took me two days to muster courage and ask for your huge Pentax binoculars that you had from your days in the army. Once I told you about my interest in bird-watching you didn't bat an eyelid and let me have it. It was one of the happiest days of my life - I still have the fellow with me, albeit with a little fungus over it.
You were always an army man - clean shaven every single day even after decades of quitting your brigade. You never had a paunch. You were tall - in every sense of the word. It was only fitting that we gave you nice shave with an electric shaver and Akka tells me that you ran your fingers over your face in appreciation. You must have said to yourself, 'Now, am ready to go.'
Doddappa, you've left a little bit of yourself in all of us. Through Anna's poetry, through my writing (with some errors, of course), and more importantly, through the unshakable need to live a life guided by truth and kindness that all your children have imbibed from you.
Goodbye, Doddappa.
