I was only nine years old when my grandfather died. But memories have little to do with the length of association, and more to do with the impact of that association. And my grandfather was nothing if not a man who left a strong impact on people who came into association with him.
He was not a man who would waste too much time on idle chitchat. How could he, when he had to make a success of himself at three different vocations? A successful industrialist, a well-regarded bookseller and publisher, and a prosperous farmer, he sure knew how to make the most of his time.
From what I remember, he would begin his day with a stint at the family’s paddy fields, even before his breakfast. After about three hours in the fields, it would be time to switch over to the bookseller role, and devote a few hours to the running of Graduate Stores. After lunch, it would be time to slip on his industrialist’s hat, and supervise the operations at Assam Chemical Works. And when the factory workers had left, it would be time to have a go at the vegetable gardens that occupied a full third of the family’s massive farmhouse in Jorhat, Assam.
He apparently lived this same gruelling routine for a full fifty years of his life, as his children and grandchildren can vouch for. I myself am his youngest grandchild, so I never saw him till he was almost seventy five, but even at that age, his energy level kind of drained all those around him.
And he had that much stamina even after he had been a heavy smoker all his life. Speaking of which, I remember how he would change his smoking gear with the same felicity as he would his professional hat. In the fields, he would smoke only bidis; in the book shop, only filter cigarettes; in the factory, only hand-rolled cigarettes, and in that solitary half hour after dinner when he would actually do nothing at all, he relaxed with a hookah. Till the day I, his youngest grandchild, maybe too tired that day to carry his hookah to him, actually asked him why he smoked such an obnoxiously smelly thing, and he just gave it up on that very day, never to touch it again.
Oh did I mention that with all that daily activity, he also found time to raise seven children and twenty-seven grandchildren? Of course he had great help from his wife, my grandmother, whose job it was to run the dairy farm, the chicken farm, the duck farm, and the small handloom unit she had.
They made a great team, those two, and after grandma died of a liver problem in early 1984, he apparently chose not to outlive her by more than a year, and actually died suddenly one day in October 1984, for no conceivable medical reason.
It’s twenty five years since they went, and all our lives are infinitely the poorer for that. Yet richer too, for his descendents – now numbering almost seventy – are enriched by the inspiration of his life. Every single day…
