A 36 years long career comes to an end...

Today, 30th November 2017 is the last working day of Tukubhai. The last day of his career as a bureaucrat and the beginning of his new phase of life. It's a somber day and a day to rejoice too.

The memory of he marrying into our family in 1985 is still so fresh. So many years has just flashed by before we realized. Reminiscing our various trip to remote districts of Karnataka, the birth of Niki and Tiku, their growing up with us, we experiencing our semi-parenthood, our learning of the ways of the Government, bureaucracy, it's oddities and it's benevolence.....It is all flashing by now like a time-lapse video today. It all happened so fast. Niki and Tiku have grown up and are on their own, and Tuku Bhai's role as a bureaucrat is on its last day but Leena continues to grow more beautiful and refuses to age.

Somethings don't change and Tukubhai didn't change.

He didn't forget his humble and difficult growing up. Instead of he, forgetting it as a bad dream and as a past to be buried, he lived it. Never ever he detached his present from identifying with his past. His past was his very own and he lived with it with the full view of the world. A life of simplicity, natural detachment from power and from the struggle for material gains; he continues to be a benchmark and a moral beacon for all of us. He exemplified how one's present power and position need not affect one's core self and your own set of moral and ethical values.

Tukubhai and Leena, you have made Baba and Maa and everyone of us proud. Sending you Godspeed from all of us.

A letter from a dead father to his about to be married son

Dear Son,

I am writing to you from heaven as I am not there in person to speak to you. I know you are going to be married to the girl you have chosen for yourself in a few more days and you are here in town to make the arrangements for it. The tasks are daunting even if your friends and cousins are helping you with them.

I think now I must tell you certain truths involving marriage.

You are not the first one to get married in our family. Your father did and his father did it also. In fact, you are here because they did it.

Marriage is not what you think it’s now. It is not a series of travel to destinations and eating out in fine dining restaurants and taking selfies and posting them on Facebook. It’s a bouquet of hard work involving adjustments, tolerating, suffering, and finally accepting your situations privately. Some people fail to adjust and accept and then separate, causing pain to the families involved. Approach this phase of life with a lot of maturity and caution, not happiness. The journey is tough. You better manage it somehow or it can destroy you.

Marriage function as a social event is a way of declaring to society that two people have their families' consent to be husband and wife and can raise a family. We inform our relatives and families and invite them to come and witness the event. We, in turn, treat them with food and give them gifts for their appearance. All to ensure that they don’t turn back and say that it's illegitimate. In fact, the best way to go about it is a civil marriage which is more binding and legal. But it lacks the fun and gaiety of the brand of marriage which you are planning for yourself.

Coming to the event part, you and your about-to-be bride have meticulously planned the series of events and partly financed the arrangements. Her parents and your mother had to agree to your plans because on such matters parents don’t have much say these days.

I know it's wrong to disappoint you now, but it may be a major milestone in your life and you are wide-eyed about it in anticipation but the people around you have seen it all and don't care much. Don’t expect them to be overly happy when you show them your marriage album and videos. You might be feeling like a prince in that Manyavar Achkan, but they would be thinking you are in a fancy dress competition. Don’t think that all the people and cars behind your procession are a part of your Barat, many could be helplessly stuck in the jam and gnashing their teeth and cursing you. The strobe lights and the deafening noise from the boom boxes may be helping your drunk cousins and friends to get wilder and dance away but it’s causing pain to the people living on the side of the road when they are about to sleep.

Son, these few days will pass quickly and realities will bite you soon. Better get grounded from now and take it easy and not waste so much of money and effort on a thing that has been happening for generations.

Good luck and my blessings.