A Favor in Return

In his recent speech at my younger son’s wedding, my elder son invoked my relationship with my late elder brother. He said: “My father had a beautiful tradition for many years. Every single day, he would call his brother just to say hello. No matter how busy life became, he always made time for that relationship.” My elder son then went on to recount a couple of wonderful examples of my sons’ childhood adventures. As entertaining as his entire speech was, what lingered with me was the profound connection I perceived between those childhood adventures and the person who had, in part, inspired our family’s traditions.

My brother with Dad in front of the iconic Taj
(circa Nov. 1966)

My brother died on Sept. 2, 2019, a little over a month short of his 67th birthday. By coincidence, my father too had died just six weeks short of his 70th. What makes that coincidence even more surreal to me is that their deaths were eerily similar. Neither had been confined to a hospital bed awaiting the inevitable; both were still living within the ordinary routines of life and were in relatively good health when death came suddenly, leaving almost no time for those around them—or perhaps even for them—to comprehend what was happening. My brother had simply retired to bed that night, and within two minutes, he had taken his last breath.

Like many older brothers, when we were little, it fell to my brother to teach my younger brother and me the backyard and indoor games of childhood. Most of the time, we were joined by other youngsters our age in that small village, and they too developed a special bond with my older brother. That bond grew even stronger after my younger brother died in an accident, not only for me but also for the friends who had become part of our circle. Once I reached middle school, my brother took on another role: teaching me science while my father continued to help me with the other subjects . His involvement in my education continued through my bachelor’s degree, by which time two of my best friends had joined me in looking to him as our teacher and guide. Even after I left for university, his support continued in a different way. My scholarship was disbursed only once or twice a year, so whenever money ran short in between, it was often my brother who came to my aid.

After I moved to New York in 1980, communication became less frequent for almost two decades. But whenever we returned to India, usually once every two or three years, my brother and his wife would find some pretext to turn our visit into a celebration, inviting relatives and friends to a full-day gathering at our house. Somewhere along the way, my wife and I adopted that tradition ourselves, and almost five decades later, we still look for occasions to bring family and friends together.

With international calling becoming easier around the year 2000, I made it a routine to call my mother every day. We would talk for at least ten minutes before I set off for work—about her health and needs, but also simply about the ordinary things in our lives. My brother would often join in if he happened to be around. When my mother died thirteen years later, the daily calls did not end; my brother simply became the person at the other end of the line.

Over the years, our conversations followed the changing concerns of our families—my nieces’ marriages, my sons’ college education, finances, property matters, and my mother’s health and medical care. But there was a larger family world that came to me through those calls. Many of our relatives and friends lived near my brother or gradually moved to his city, and they too turned to him for help and advice. Through him, I remained part of their lives from thousands of miles away, receiving almost daily accounts of their problems, celebrations, and ordinary happenings.

What I remember most from our conversations was my brother’s insistence on the importance of letting go of old relationships when their time had passed and remaining open to new ones as life moved forward. He often used the flow of a river as an analogy: just as the water in a river keeps moving, giving way to new water, so do relationships in our lives. That simple thought has had a profound influence on me as I have grown older.

Within minutes of my brother’s death, I received the shocking news. Once I had absorbed what had happened, I sent a message to our family priest back home, letting him know that, as the only surviving male member of the family, it fell to me, according to Hindu custom, to perform the funeral and the related rituals. I performed them with a curious thought lingering in my mind: I was returning a favor.

Below is an extract from an In Memoriam posted on Facebook by one of my longtime friends Ram Mohan T (aka Rambabu) after he learned of my brother’s death. The English translation is mine.

(My brother, Ramakrishna Sastry, was named after our paternal grandfather, a Vedic scholar who died shortly before my brother was born. To his friends, my brother was simply “Sastry.”)

“Sastry became not merely a close friend but almost an elder brother to me, helping and guiding me in many ways. He possessed an extraordinary breadth of general knowledge. I had come from a village with virtually no exposure to town life, and it was Sastry who opened my eyes to the larger world.

“He won our hearts with his warmth, his wit, his playful conversation, and the way he would occasionally tease us. Though he was two years older than we were, he became both friend and adviser, encouraging us and helping us move forward in every possible way.

“Only recently, we met and spent time reminiscing about fifty years of memories. That scene still plays before my eyes. I can almost hear Sastry asking me, ‘So, what else is new, Rambabu?’

“Sastry, tears alone are not enough to pay tribute to you. Just as you live on in the hearts of so many people, you will remain in my life as one of those rare and precious human beings one is fortunate enough to have known.”

Happy birthday, Anna. You would have been 74 today (Oct. 5).