By Rajkamal Rao
May 1, 2021
It is not often that we are inspired by somebody that we know. There are numerous public figures on television and in history that have played a part in influencing us. But someone close to you, a relative, a friend in such a role?
It is heartbreaking that yesterday, I lost one of my uncles to Covid. He was 88 years old and lived an extraordinary life, full of vigor and ambition. He was the quintessential athlete and played badminton, among other racket sports, for at least 70 years. To his last day, he always cared about how he looked, and in this sense, he acted as someone from the British royal family. Secretly, I'm sure he wished he was a Royal.
So why do I feel bad when someone who has lived life to his fullest potential passes? Isn't that what we are all supposed to do ultimately? Pass on? Exactly how many more years would I have wished for him to live this way?
I feel terrible because I no longer have him as an icon [full credit to my cousin Shashi who correctly glorified him with the term "icon."] And that there will never be an individual like him who helped shape who I became.
My first real experience with him was during the dry days following the Indian emergency, 1975 to 1977. I was a teenager, and everything around us was steeped in either autocracy or good old Socialism. My uncle and I never engaged in a conversation about politics. But watching him, I began to experience what capitalism was all about.
He was ambitious. Resigning from a junior-level position at a multinational engineering company, he launched a small business to import machinery and tools to serve the Indian industry. The exciting thing was that he was not trained as an engineer. The running joke in the family was that he could not even fix a kink using the simplest of devices at home. Yet, he could speak the language of engineers, discussing machine tolerances, advanced metallurgy, extrusion, and computer numerically controlled equipment, as though he was a designated expert.
I remember his very first business trip to then West Germany. We had all gone to the small airport in Bangalore to see him off. We watched him, immaculately dressed for the flight, walk across the tarmac and make his way up the steps of the Indian Airlines Airbus to Bombay, en route to a Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt. Germany was his first-ever international destination, which he visited dozens of times during his illustrious business career. Although he often stayed in the USA because of family and traveled to many other countries, including Russia, Germany remained his first love.
Standing in the gallery that day as a 16-year old, I wondered if I ever would walk in his steps, both literally and figuratively. Walking down airport tarmacs was a privilege reserved only for the accomplished.
Back in 1978, we eagerly awaited his return from Europe. For me, it was not in anticipation of any trinkets or candy that he might have brought for us youth. I wanted to hear his experiences firsthand.
And my uncle readily obliged. Always measured in his words, he described his trip with anecdotes that have to this day stuck.
India at the time was a bureaucratic boondoggle, where public officials were known to be unfriendly to, well, members of the public. In one of his most memorable stories, he told those of us who had gathered around his sitting room in his palatial Ranoji Rao Road home that when he presented his passport on arrival at Frankfurt airport, the immigration official's demeanor was dour as befits every such official worldwide. But after stamping his travel documents, the official smiled at him and said, "Happy Birthday, Mr. Seetharam; Welcome to Germany!"
And there was this other story when he boarded a train from Frankfurt to Hanover. He revealed his nervousness about traveling by himself on a German train, unable to read signs in time to alight from the train. [He never formally learned German but could manage basic conversation.] His associate smiled and asked to examine his timetable. "Your train arrives in Hanover at 11:53 AM. Just look at your watch, and get down at whatever station the train pulls into at 11:53. You will be in Hanover!"
For a young person looking west every day to escape the worst days of the Indian License Raj, these stories helped plant a virus that spread throughout my body. I was infected with the western bug. I began to learn German but spent more time in the Max Mueller Bhavan Bibliothek (library), glossing over the pages of Der Spiegel and ADAC Motorwelt, salivating over automobile ads.
The next few years were hell for me. I desperately wanted to seek the greener pastures of the west, but my family's means were too meager to pay for my graduate education. Earning an assistantship at an American graduate school was a prerequisite if I could realize my dream. These awards were hard to come by - and there were numerous impediments at the U.S. Consulate's office in Madras, where visa rejections in 1985 were rampant.
In 1986, as I awaited hearing from various U.S. universities about my applications to attend graduate school, my uncle visited us in Bangalore. After the usual pleasantries, he handed me an envelope and asked me to open it. Nervous, I pulled the single sheet of foolscap paper and unfolded it. It was from Deutsche Gardner Denver GmbH, an industrial powerhouse, with an internship offer in Germany for three months. My uncle had convinced DGD that I was worthy of this position without an application or an interview.
I was elated. If America turned me down, I knew that I could enter Germany. That walk on the tarmac was no longer impossible. And while I never needed to accept the DGD internship, on Sep 14, 1986, I followed in his footsteps by boarding a flight to Bombay en route to the USA to begin graduate school. My uncle's travel agent booked me on Lufthansa. I have been in America ever since.
Alone among elders in our family, he was an avid reader of American westerns and British authors. A member of the Bowring Institute, he would bring home novels by Louis L'amour, Max Brand, Alistair Maclean, Frederick Forsyth, and James Hadley Chase. I became an avid reader of British writers mainly because of him, a passion I nurse to this day.
Over the years, distance separated him and me from communicating as frequently as when I was young. But we continued to stay in touch. I would occasionally send him my opinion pieces that appeared in the Hindu. He would always respond, encouraging me to write more. He almost seemed like he was a fan of my writing.
He probably would have liked this piece the most. I regret that I never once told him what an extraordinary influence he had been to me. The way he was going on with life, I could never think of him as past tense, not even when my father died, although both were about the same age. He was near-indestructible, but mighty Covid spares no one. Not even my uncle.
So, Doddappa, I would ordinarily have wished you a fond Auf Wiedersehen (see you again) like I did all these years. It is with profound regret that I am forced to wish you a letzte Verabschiedung - final farewell.
May 1, 2021
 |
| Mr. Seetharam Raichur, 1932 - 2021 |
It is not often that we are inspired by somebody that we know. There are numerous public figures on television and in history that have played a part in influencing us. But someone close to you, a relative, a friend in such a role?
It is heartbreaking that yesterday, I lost one of my uncles to Covid. He was 88 years old and lived an extraordinary life, full of vigor and ambition. He was the quintessential athlete and played badminton, among other racket sports, for at least 70 years. To his last day, he always cared about how he looked, and in this sense, he acted as someone from the British royal family. Secretly, I'm sure he wished he was a Royal.
So why do I feel bad when someone who has lived life to his fullest potential passes? Isn't that what we are all supposed to do ultimately? Pass on? Exactly how many more years would I have wished for him to live this way?
I feel terrible because I no longer have him as an icon [full credit to my cousin Shashi who correctly glorified him with the term "icon."] And that there will never be an individual like him who helped shape who I became.
My first real experience with him was during the dry days following the Indian emergency, 1975 to 1977. I was a teenager, and everything around us was steeped in either autocracy or good old Socialism. My uncle and I never engaged in a conversation about politics. But watching him, I began to experience what capitalism was all about.
He was ambitious. Resigning from a junior-level position at a multinational engineering company, he launched a small business to import machinery and tools to serve the Indian industry. The exciting thing was that he was not trained as an engineer. The running joke in the family was that he could not even fix a kink using the simplest of devices at home. Yet, he could speak the language of engineers, discussing machine tolerances, advanced metallurgy, extrusion, and computer numerically controlled equipment, as though he was a designated expert.
I remember his very first business trip to then West Germany. We had all gone to the small airport in Bangalore to see him off. We watched him, immaculately dressed for the flight, walk across the tarmac and make his way up the steps of the Indian Airlines Airbus to Bombay, en route to a Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt. Germany was his first-ever international destination, which he visited dozens of times during his illustrious business career. Although he often stayed in the USA because of family and traveled to many other countries, including Russia, Germany remained his first love.
Standing in the gallery that day as a 16-year old, I wondered if I ever would walk in his steps, both literally and figuratively. Walking down airport tarmacs was a privilege reserved only for the accomplished.
Back in 1978, we eagerly awaited his return from Europe. For me, it was not in anticipation of any trinkets or candy that he might have brought for us youth. I wanted to hear his experiences firsthand.
And my uncle readily obliged. Always measured in his words, he described his trip with anecdotes that have to this day stuck.
India at the time was a bureaucratic boondoggle, where public officials were known to be unfriendly to, well, members of the public. In one of his most memorable stories, he told those of us who had gathered around his sitting room in his palatial Ranoji Rao Road home that when he presented his passport on arrival at Frankfurt airport, the immigration official's demeanor was dour as befits every such official worldwide. But after stamping his travel documents, the official smiled at him and said, "Happy Birthday, Mr. Seetharam; Welcome to Germany!"
And there was this other story when he boarded a train from Frankfurt to Hanover. He revealed his nervousness about traveling by himself on a German train, unable to read signs in time to alight from the train. [He never formally learned German but could manage basic conversation.] His associate smiled and asked to examine his timetable. "Your train arrives in Hanover at 11:53 AM. Just look at your watch, and get down at whatever station the train pulls into at 11:53. You will be in Hanover!"
For a young person looking west every day to escape the worst days of the Indian License Raj, these stories helped plant a virus that spread throughout my body. I was infected with the western bug. I began to learn German but spent more time in the Max Mueller Bhavan Bibliothek (library), glossing over the pages of Der Spiegel and ADAC Motorwelt, salivating over automobile ads.
The next few years were hell for me. I desperately wanted to seek the greener pastures of the west, but my family's means were too meager to pay for my graduate education. Earning an assistantship at an American graduate school was a prerequisite if I could realize my dream. These awards were hard to come by - and there were numerous impediments at the U.S. Consulate's office in Madras, where visa rejections in 1985 were rampant.
In 1986, as I awaited hearing from various U.S. universities about my applications to attend graduate school, my uncle visited us in Bangalore. After the usual pleasantries, he handed me an envelope and asked me to open it. Nervous, I pulled the single sheet of foolscap paper and unfolded it. It was from Deutsche Gardner Denver GmbH, an industrial powerhouse, with an internship offer in Germany for three months. My uncle had convinced DGD that I was worthy of this position without an application or an interview.
I was elated. If America turned me down, I knew that I could enter Germany. That walk on the tarmac was no longer impossible. And while I never needed to accept the DGD internship, on Sep 14, 1986, I followed in his footsteps by boarding a flight to Bombay en route to the USA to begin graduate school. My uncle's travel agent booked me on Lufthansa. I have been in America ever since.
Alone among elders in our family, he was an avid reader of American westerns and British authors. A member of the Bowring Institute, he would bring home novels by Louis L'amour, Max Brand, Alistair Maclean, Frederick Forsyth, and James Hadley Chase. I became an avid reader of British writers mainly because of him, a passion I nurse to this day.
Over the years, distance separated him and me from communicating as frequently as when I was young. But we continued to stay in touch. I would occasionally send him my opinion pieces that appeared in the Hindu. He would always respond, encouraging me to write more. He almost seemed like he was a fan of my writing.
He probably would have liked this piece the most. I regret that I never once told him what an extraordinary influence he had been to me. The way he was going on with life, I could never think of him as past tense, not even when my father died, although both were about the same age. He was near-indestructible, but mighty Covid spares no one. Not even my uncle.
So, Doddappa, I would ordinarily have wished you a fond Auf Wiedersehen (see you again) like I did all these years. It is with profound regret that I am forced to wish you a letzte Verabschiedung - final farewell.
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