The oldest man in the neighborhood, and my neighbor from the opposite house, had passed away
yesterday at the age of 94. I hope you guys remember the reworked garden and
flowers from the house opposite us that I have posted here and here, and it was
the father of the son who takes care of it all. He's one of the oldest residents
in our area and a neighbor of over 40 years.
He's self-restrained, which he seems to be maintained from his service
as a wing commander in the Indian air force, continued this attitude throughout
his life! During his early retirement period, he had been quite active, and he
does all the garden work himself; and a member of a tennis club, he plays it
every day, and drove his fiat 1100/103 until he was able to drive.
They had a long driveway, and it
was fun then to see him reverse the car carefully, and what interested me was
the way the car’s door opens and closes. Unlike the regular car front doors, the
doors of fiat 103 were hinged to the center pillar, which is called suicide
door – a slang term for an automobile door hinged at its rear rather than the
front – perceived as being less safe.
I never remember seeing him
speaking or smiling to anybody outside his home or family. He always stays
inside the home, except working in the garden and going to a club to play
tennis when he was active. What I'm saying was about 15 years ago, before we
shifted home to another area. But what I hear from my uncle is that the senior
citizen used to comes to the yard every early morning and then bow to the sun with
few minutes of prayer and get back into the home immediately.
But I always wonder how he able
to stay inside the home all day. We shifted back to the same house in 2018, but
I'm not a morning person, so the time I come out, he would have gone to a day
nap. The last time I saw him was after the rework of the garden when his
daughter-in-law walked him up to the gate, along the driveway, to let him see
his garden back in its elegant shape and glowing in the newly installed lights.
He also insisted his
granddaughter drive a car and play tennis, which I heard that she still plays
tennis and keeps fit like her grandfather even after moved to the US years ago.
One day, I found it saw true when she was visiting her home two years back, she
was returning from somewhere, perhaps from a tennis court, as she carried a
racket in hand, and the way she paces in was obvious how the fit was she to fit
into a teen outfit.
She's a mother of two kids, and
she was back from the US two weeks before to visit her ill grandfather and
returned only last week, and he's no more within days of her departure. The
older man got married when her wife was 13 years old, and they moved to the
opposite house purchased by him using his retirement sum, which was told to my
aunt by his wife, who is age 84-85.
The family was relocated from
Palakkad, in Kerala, and perhaps because of this, they had no relatives here to
attend the funeral. Even their friends don't seem too close, or they haven't
attached to anybody – like how they isolated from the neighbors – or because of
the pandemic, they stood away, and the funeral took place with only a few
people that includes my uncle and cousin, who helped them to lift the body into
the hearse.
I think the funeral was handed
over to an agency, and they haven’t conducted many rituals, and only his son
accompanies the hearse, and my cousin went on his bike to support him. It seems
the reworked garden was one of the reasons to keep up the spirit of the older
man, and watching the bloomed flowers and green lawn would certainly put him in
a peaceful state of happiness. I believe he lived his life to the fullest, and
from what his wife told my aunt once was that she visited many countries and
have been around the world when he was in the air force, and perhaps because of
this, they decided to live idle and away from people to lead the remaining days
at peace. I hope he rested in peace.
No, he isn’t a covid casualty.
