The man who was...

A great man died this day- a brilliant mathematician, a witty conversationalist and a loving grandfather.

My first memory of him is rather blurry. I was three years old at that time, and as far as I knew, he was a magician. Or at least, that’s what he said. He would entertain us (a gang of six young cousins who thought they ruled the world), pulling an endless string of silk scarves out of his pocket, turning his ‘wand’ into a bunch of gaudy paper flowers, and making eggs disappear into thin air. Needless to say, we loved ‘magic thatha’. He was our hero, a treasure we could boast of.

I didn’t learn till much later that magic thatha, who’d been a highly respected and proficient mathematician, suffered from schizophrenia. He’d been in Hyderabad during the Telangana riots; the echoing sounds of gunshots and the sight of mangled bodies everywhere left a scar so deep, his once brilliant mind was crippled, and he was sadly robbed of his sanity.

The disease reduced the once stately and dignified old man into something of a clown. He would dress in lurid shirts with large and bright flowery prints plastered all over, polka-dotted elastic braces holding up his trousers. He always wore a large straw hat with a peacock feather stuck in it, always wore a pair of large sunglasses with a hideous yellow-and-black checkered platic frame, always carried his ‘wand’ with him.

In spite of his eccentric appearance, or perhaps because of it, it was impossible not to love him. He would turn up at our house, hug me warmly and ask, “yaar sollu maa (Tell me, who am I)?” I’d intone, “Sheshu thatha”. “Very good!”, he’d beam, “Pappi kud maa…”. I’d oblige, planting a kiss on his leathery, clean shaven cheek. In return, I’d be richly rewarded with all my favourite chocolates.

He often spoke of Ronald Reagan, who, he claimed, was one of his closest friends. He said Reagan depended on him whenever it came to decision making. For a few months, his sentences all began with “As I was saying to Reagan…” or “Reagan thinks…” or “When I was out riding with Ron (!!!)…”, and so on.

The next time I saw him, he said he was a representative of India at the UN. He was feared by all, and had earned himself the title, ‘The Atom Bomb of India’. He was the one who created Esperanto, and he was working hard to abolish English itself.

Time rolled on. His mind grew feebler and stranger. His visits were unique, each one special. He’d still ask, “Yaar sollu maa?”, and then ask for a pappi. I still received chocolates in return for that one little kiss. The ritual remained the same, the hat and the glasses remained unchanged. But otherwise, it was like having a new grandpa every few months.

He was a doctor, a bureaucrat, a nuclear scientist… The list was endless. I began to see more sense behind the question he asked me every time. Who WAS he? I barely knew him!

Schizophrenia took away the coherence of his thoughts and removed him from reality. He could no longer relate things or events. But what remained untouched was his zest for life, his sense of humour and his loving heart.

His health began to fail; he was no longer able to visit us. I’d write him letters… Letters I didn’t know he loved so much as to preserve them, carefully filed. The day came when he had to be admitted to a hospital. I went to see him there, but he didn’t recognize me any more than I did him. I wondered who he was now… an architect? A professor? A politician? I stared, and all I could see was the wonderful grandfather who had somehow managed to teach me more than one would believe possible, in a way that I can’t describe.

My magic thatha was gone. I gave him one last pappi. Only this time, there were no chocolates.