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This year, 2014, happens to be the Birth Centenary Year of my Father, Sri G. Radhakrishnaiah.
Talking of centenary celebrations, there was only one I attended...in Hyderabad. Despite my well-known claustrophobia, I sat down for all of 3 hours with intermittent escapades for tea and air.
My eldest B-i-L, the IAS officer, and his five brothers and two sisters and their families, spread all over the world, gathered at various places in India like Bhubaneshwar, Hyderabad, and Chennai, to celebrate their father's birth centenary five years ago. The gentleman, Padmasri Dr. G. V. Chalam has a wiki page which you can Google. He was a man of versatile achievements: freedom fighter (jailed in the Vellore jail for 14 months), a prolific writer, an eminent scientist, and a social reformer. He was awarded Padmasri for heralding the Green Revolution in the 1960s.
Talking of Padma awardees, I came to know recently that they can't use these awards as titles, like I did above...there was this news item recently when a Padma awardee was rebuked (to put it mildly) by the AP High Court for using his Padma as a title to his name in the credits of a movie he produced or directed or whatever:
"The award does not amount to a title and cannot be used as a suffix or
prefix to the winner's name on letterheads, invitation cards, posters
and books among others," Mr Reddy told reporters.
Alice would have duly protested: "What use is an award if it can't be used as a title?"
Anyway, the function I attended had Padmabhushan Y. V. Reddy, IAS, ex-Governor of the RBI as its Chief Guest...these IAS babus do stick together, you know.
And it had music recitals, classical as well as modern, speechifying, and a wonderful folk act, Burra Katha, which is a dying art in these swirling days of ETV and Maa TV.
In Bhubaneswar, with whose Rice Research Institute Padmasri G. V. Chalam had a long association, there was a function of unveiling his statue too, I am told.
In Chennai, there was a function in which the release of India Postage Stamps and First Day Covers in his honor was held...unfortunately the minister who was invited to preside over the ribbon-cutting couldn't quite make it...he happened to be jail-bound.
All these various dos must have made a big hole in the family treasury...nothing less than a million rupees (or is it dollars?)
Well, I can't afford even a million cents.
Moreover my Father didn't have a title like Padmasri to 'suffix or prefix' to his name...he was just a Sri.
But he is held in high esteem even now by his students who are in their 80s. My other B-i-L, Dr LVKM, wrote the other day:
...Dr C R Reddy is also aged and his sight has diminished a lot due to
glaucoma and he does not see patients now. He has so much of regard for
your dad...
Father was a great teacher of English and Science and a much-adored and feared HM of his time. He was a strict disciplinarian. He was very human though, with all human failings like wielding the cane on his only son.
So I can't afford to celebrate his Birth Centenary Year with stamp-releases, statues, and Burra Kathas...or even Hari Kathas for that matter.
But I guess I have honored him in my own squirrel-way by posting more than 1600 blogs, in half of which he appears with all his human traits...and some of these blogs are READ, you know!
This squirrel thing was a story told me by Father during his after-dinner story-telling sessions before he suddenly went: gurrrr...
Apparently Lord Raam was benignly watching his monkey-troops building the (controversial) Raam Sethu, carrying huge boulders from afar and dumping them in the sea. And a tiny squirrel was watching the construction of this magnificent sea-bridge and wanted to do his mite to help in the war-effort. So he rolled himself in the sand and ran into the shallows of the sea where he wiggled his back and dumped the few grains of sand sticking to it into the sea...repeatedly.
And Raam was so pleased with the tiny creature that he lifted the cute thing on to his palm and caressed his (squirrel's) back with his three fingers. And Raam's imprint of love stays to this day on each squirrel's back in the shape of three gray-brown streaks.
Ishani is just now sitting behind my back and drawing smileys on my banian with her crayon set...I have to ask her to see if there are any gray-brown streaks on my back too...
Anyway, one Sunday when I was 10 and playing at home in Muthukur, a gent arrived with a huge bag of books and sat down with Father for an hour and left after giving Father three books for keeps as gifts.
I was always curious about books (other than those I was compelled to read for my exams). And after the gent left, I looked into the three books and found that they were Science Textbooks for high school students. And all the three different books had Father's name as their author:
By
G. Radhakrishnaiah
Head Master
S.I.I.B.H.School
Muthukur
Nellore District
I was simply stunned to discover that Father was an AUTHOR!!!
And collared him about it:
"Did you write all these 3 books?"
"No"
"Then who wrote them?"
"I don't know...must be a young temporary teacher of some school"
"Then why didn't he put his name as author?"
"He wanted the money, not the fame...and in my case it is the other way round...Ha! Ha! Ha! These books sell only if a HM's name is used as their author"
"Did you read these books?"
"No"
"Are you going to teach from them?"
"No"
"Are you going to prescribe them to our class?"
"No...never...you will understand when you grow up"
...Yea, I do...now...better late than never...
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