Father walked whole month for son who wouldn’t walk 50 meters

8 September was our 22nd wedding anniversary. But the day before, 7 September, was my dad’s 21st death anniversary.

It is a strange arrangement of dates – one day I am remembering the man who raised me till I got married, and the next day I am celebrating the woman who has been raising me since then. No wonder my dad and my wife adored each other. It is unfortunate that they got to enjoy each other’s company for only a year.

Every year, when 7 September comes around, I am reminded of a time when I was an asshole.

Intrigued? Continue reading…it is a two-part story.

—X—X—

My parents hated eating out.

In fact, even when we were travelling and found ourselves stranded outdoors at odd hours, they would stretch themselves, reach home, cook and only then eat.

As children, my two sisters and I hated this.

We could be returning home at 10 p.m., hungry enough to eat poverty out of our lives, but my parents would still say, “Let us reach home. We can quickly make some rice and rasam.”

Both my mother and father saw nothing wrong with this.

“Why eat outside when you can have home-cooked food?” my father would ask.

My mother had a more historical explanation.

“In our ancestral home many outsiders used to eat daily. I don’t want to sit in somebody else’s place and eat like a stranger.”

“But Amma, we are paying them,” I would argue. “They aren’t giving us food because we can’t afford it.”

My arguments never reached their intended conclusions.

By 1995, I was attending college and had started meeting richer kids.

Until then, everybody around us had been as poor as we were, so there was no ambition. When everyone around you has only two good shirts, you don’t aspire for a third shirt – as simple as that.

But college opened up a new world.

I started hearing stories about how my friends visited restaurants with their families on Sundays.

“Santosh and his family went to Pandian Hotel for a buffet lunch,” I told my mother one day.

“Isn’t a buffet where you go and pick up your own food?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“How distasteful.”

“Why is it distasteful?”

“Imagine what kind of host wouldn’t serve you food where you are sitting. It is as if they are saying, ‘There is your food. Go and get it yourself.’”

My father agreed.

“I would never set foot inside such a place,” he said, complementing my mother’s thoughts.

My sisters and I hated this behaviour of our parents.

On the advice of the elder of my two younger sisters, I decided to find out how much lunch at a restaurant would cost.

The first challenge was identifying the right person to ask. I needed somebody rich enough to know restaurant prices but kind enough not to judge me for not knowing them.

Nitish Popli was a classmate of mine while I was studying B.A. Economics at The American College in Madurai. He came from a well-to-do family, so I approached him.

“Nitish bhai, you go to restaurants on Sundays, don’t you?”

“Yes, indeed,” he replied, displaying very little interest in the conversation.

“So, how much does it cost per person?”

I closed my eyes after asking the question because I didn’t want to see his expression.

“Depends on which restaurant you go to.”

He was still not interested.

Since I didn’t know the names of any good restaurants, I decided to rely entirely on him.

“What is the starting range? And what is the maximum?”

“Let us take Saravana Bhavan for example. The unlimited thali costs ₹20. If you sit in the Family Room, which is air-conditioned, the same unlimited thali costs ₹25.”

Remember that this was 1995, and the impact of Dr Manmohan Singh’s liberalization policy had only started seeping into the economy.

The moment I reached home from college and my mother opened the door, I blurted out, “Amma, the unlimited thali at Saravana Bhavan costs only ₹20 in the non-AC section and ₹25 in the AC room.”

Our landline wasn’t working. Otherwise, I would have called her from an STD booth and broken the news earlier.

“What?” was my mother’s only response.

After I repeated the information several times, she said we would discuss the matter once my father returned.

My father came home around 8 pm, and I couldn’t contain myself.

But before I could speak, one of my sisters ran to open the door and shouted into his face, “The unlimited thali costs only ₹25 in the air-conditioned room at Saravana Bhavan!”

“I know,” my father said. “What about it?”

The ground slipped from beneath our feet. This meant that he had been withholding information from us.

For a few seconds, we suspected that he had secretly been visiting restaurants, and eating unlimited thalis without our knowledge. This was gross injustice.

Being the eldest child, I had to take control of the situation.

I called my two younger sisters – one was sixteen and the other thirteen – into a room for an emergency meeting.

After detailed discussions lasting approximately four minutes, we decided to launch a hunger strike.

Anna Hazare would later borrow my idea and use it to campaign for the Lokpal Bill.

Since I had appointed myself the spokesperson of the group, I made the announcement.

“We will not eat until you promise to take us to a restaurant.”

My parents continued with their routine as if nothing had happened. We had assumed they would surrender before the first dosa became cold….but our plan had backfired.

By 9 pm, we were hungry.

By 9:30 pm, my younger sister started asking whether drinking milk during hunger strikes was legit.

At 10 pm, our parents finally buckled.

They agreed to take us to Saravana Bhavan the following Sunday.

But before agreeing, they informed us that lunch would cost ₹125 for the five of us.

“That money is enough to buy cooking oil for an entire month,” my mother said.

“Or vegetables for fifteen days,” my father added.

Successful revolutionaries don’t worry about cooking oil and vegetables. We had won.

The next morning, I was raring to go to college.

The moment I saw Nitish Popli, I announced, “We are going to Saravana Bhavan for lunch this Sunday.”

He appeared even less interested than he had been during our previous conversation.

From that day onwards, the food at home stopped tasting good.

The same sambar we had eaten happily for years suddenly seemed ordinary. The rasam lacked ambition. Even chicken curry on Sunday couldn’t compete with the unlimited thali waiting for us.

My parents knew that we were excited but rarely spoke about the restaurant visit.

On Sunday, all three of us woke up at 6 am and by 8 am, we had bathed and put on our best clothes. My parents showed no signs of urgency.

At noon, my father made one last attempt to prevent the outing.

“Why don’t I buy one kilogram of chicken?” he suggested. “You can help me cook it, and we can have a hearty meal at home.”

My younger sister immediately replied, “But that’s what we do every Sunday.”

My father’s face fell and so did my mother’s….but we were in no mood to sympathise with them. We wanted to eat at Saravana Bhavan.

My father called an autorickshaw.

If only I had been accompanying them, we would have travelled by Pandian Bus Service. But because my sisters were coming along as well – and I always suspected that my father loved them more – he booked an autorickshaw.

All five of us squeezed into it. Since I was considered the most able-bodied member of the family, I was made to sit next to the driver.

My sisters and I have never been able to recreate the joy we experienced while walking into Saravana Bhavan that Sunday afternoon.

Over the three decades since then, I have eaten at some wonderful restaurants. I have sat in places where the waiter introduces himself, explains the origin of every ingredient and serves portions so small that that you have to eat ten plates to fill your stomach. But I have never experienced the happiness I felt while entering Saravana Bhavan that day.

Since I was walking ahead of everyone else, a waiter directed me towards a table in the non-AC section.

With great pride, I waved my hand and said, “We are going to the air-conditioned section.”

It remains one of the most powerful sentences I have uttered in my life.

It was quite a family affair. My parents, who had opposed eating out until then, also seemed to enjoy themselves.

After lunch, my father asked whether we wanted dessert. This was completely unexpected. We had already pushed the family’s finances from ₹20 to ₹25 per person by choosing air-conditioning. Dessert meant an additional ₹5 per person.

But revolutions must keep moving forward, so we ordered dessert.

We came home an excited lot. It was the best Sunday we had ever had. That is, if we exclude the Sunday when all five of us watched the only film we ever saw together in a theatre, the 3D movie Kutti Chathan.

Once we returned home, my parents went back into their shell.

“We have now eaten in a restaurant,” my mother announced.

“That’s all. This should not become a habit.”

I was sure my father agreed.

Later that evening, I overheard my parents discussing the expense.

The lunch had cost ₹125, the dessert was ₹25, autorickshaw driver’s meal was ₹20, and the autorickshaw fare had come to ₹50….so the entire outing had cost ₹220.

My mother sounded worried.

My father told her, “That’s okay. Don’t worry. We will manage.”

“Yes,” my mother replied. “I know we will.”

Being a teenager, I didn’t think much about that conversation.

As far as we were concerned, justice had prevailed and the outing had been successful.

—X—X—

On 7 September 2005 – almost a decade after this Saravana Bhawan incident – my father passed away due to cancer.

On my father’s fifth death anniversary, my mother wanted to offer special prayers at a beachside temple in Tiruchendur. I flew in to Madurai from Gurgaon, and then we took a 4-hour long bus journey to reach the temple.

After a bit of exploring we also found a priest willing to conduct the ritual.

The three of us had to walk around fifty metres barefoot on beach sand heated by the 11 am sun. It wasn’t a long distance, but I started complaining.

As I walked on the hot sand barefoot, I questioned my mother’s insistence that we perform the annual ritual for my father in Tiruchendur.

“Why couldn’t we just do this at our home?”

“Do these religious rituals even mean anything….they are so inconvenient.”

My mother initially looked at me in disbelief but soon her expression softened.

“Do you remember going on a hunger strike with your sisters when you were in college?” she asked.

“Oh, yes.”

“You wanted us to take you to Saravana Bhavan for lunch.”

“Oh, yes. Those were good times.”

“For you, yes,” she said. “They were good times.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your father had just retired, and we had also built our house. The construction had cost much more than we expected…we had to take a bank loan.”

“Oh. I didn’t know,” I said.

“That was our intention. We were really short of money at the time, but your father didn’t want you to know.”

“Oh.”

“I wanted him to tell you about the family’s financial situation. But he refused. He said it might affect your studies.”

“Oh.”

“And did you know that after taking all of you out for lunch, he didn’t use his scooter for an entire month so that he could save money on petrol?”

“Oh.”

“He walked to the market and back every day for a month. Sometimes he made the trip twice a day.”

“Shit.”

“Yes,” my mother said. “But he loved you very much. You can walk this small distance for him, can’t you?”

“Yes, Amma. I can.”

I stopped complaining. After walking the fifty metres on the hot sad, I sat down facing the sun for the prayers.

My mother noticed the tears in my eyes and used the corner of her saree to wipe them.

“Just some sand in my eyes,” I said. But my mother knew.

Mothers always know when their children are lying, even when those children are old enough to have children of their own.

As the priest chanted the mantras, I tried to remember the month after our visit to Saravana Bhavan.

Then it slowly came back to me. Yes, my father had stopped using his scooter for almost a month.

Whenever my mother asked him to buy something from the market, he walked. At the time, I had found it strange.

Once, after watching him return from the market carrying two heavy bags, I had muttered under my breath, “What a miser!”

For years, I had remembered that Sunday as the day my father finally spent ₹220 and took us to a restaurant. Only much later did I understand that it had cost him ₹220 and one month of walking.

For us, the lunch ended when the waiter cleared our plates. For my father, it ended a month later, when he could finally start using his Bajaj Chetak again.

Now I am a father myself…and I can only imagine all the distances he must have walked without telling us.