Hear! Hear!
For a lot of us, one lifetime is more than enough for bumping into a few souls who will compel you to believe in the genuine niceness of being. I’ve been lucky enough to meet some of them in my relatively short score of summers. One of them has to be my Doddappa, my mom’s elder sister’s husband.
My earliest memory of him goes back to the days when I was barely 2. Funny as it may sound, I remember his voice and not his face; me standing on a wooden bench toeing up to peek out of the window, with him saying in his typical style to get down. This was his house in Kemmannu. He still lives at the same place today although the roof has gotten higher and walls, wider. Simply put, not much has changed as far as he is concerned.
He was always caring, had trouble hearing, is genuinely fond of people and culture, would help a stranger without missing a beat. Despite having a pair of ears that proved to be an obstacle, he continues to be the heart of conversations. His remarkable physical trait being his palm curved over his right ear in the direction of the speech. He just wants to engage — with everybody under the sky. There is no big or small or high or low or rich or poor for him. His desire to connect is uncategorizable in today’s era of self-consciousness.
During my wedding, he apparently spoke to almost everybody whom he didn’t know earlier—evidently from my wife’s side. Wondering what he said? A simple namaskara followed by how they are and how things are. People might have laughed behind his back but he doesn’t care. Being a short person with a goofy smile doesn’t stop him from stretching his personality out in to the world. He listens hard but he makes it up by paying doubly attention to what you’re saying. I find this conversion of barrier in to a bridge amazing. I personally can’t do it. I avoid people as much as I avoid chatting.
Maybe Doddappa’s curiosity is rooted in his disability, something he has no control over. Some of us are born with defective eyesight, he was born with a defective earshot. What is worth celebrating is his decision to not let it bog him down as a person. If he gets on a bus, chances are he’ll talk to at least 4–5 people before getting down at his stop. Why don’t we? Because we are conditioned to allow a modern phenomenon called privacy to others. He, on the other hand, doesn’t feel the need to accept silence for the heck of it. The awesome bit about his chatty trail is I’ve never seen anyone shun him. Conversely, you’ll witness him excavate smile on the strangers’ face.
Back when I was studying in the second grade and my family was staying in a Bombay chawl, he visited us there. Within minutes, he was talking to our Tamil neighbours in their language. He later told us he can converse comfortably in 6 languages (Tulu, Kannada, Tamil, Marathi, Hindi and Telugu). If I am not mistaken, that must have been the first time my mind was blown. The second time being the evening I saw a lizard drop its poop on the floor. Turns out he would watch movies wherever he could, in whatever languages they were in, in whichever city he was. We are talking about a period wherein television was a luxury. Single screen theatres were more affordable.
I can go on and on about my Doddappa but let’s conclude on the repartee he is known for. On visiting him after earning my diploma in electronics & telecommunications, he asked me to fix his slow whirring fan. I told him they didn’t teach me that at the polytechnic. To which, he replied, in Tulu of course, “They can’t teach you everything.”
A line, I suppose, is impossible to forget.
