Once Upon a Dead Uncle

His name was Vijayaraghavan- named after my long forgotten great grandfather. But for the people who still remember him, he will always be Viji.

My Viji periyappa, four years my father's senior, died of brain tumour at age of 30, long before my parents married and I was born. I know him only from an ancient portrait that hung in the family room, and the many anecdotes that my family has shared with me.

Much has changed since his death- the various members of the family moved on, took their lives elsewhere and eventually rebuilt the house in which they once lived. Nothing remained of the old house, or so we thought, until the sewage pipe got blocked. To avoid digging up the road, the engineer retained the old sewage pipe, but much to our dismay, it isn't taking our crap. From bottom-up, everyone in the three-storey building has been stumbling over themselves in panic due to the plumbing disaster. My father, who has never so much as changed a light bulb in the house, poked me awake this morning and demanded that I fulfill my duties as the daughter of the house.
"Find a plumber!" he bellowed.
"Okay" I said lazily and promptly went back to sleep. 
Knowing that he is no match for my rolling slumber, daddy sat down with a sigh. "Viji," he began "Knew almost everyone on the planet. He would know just where to find a plumber." It had been ages since anyone spoke of Viji periyappa. The sleep still swilling in my eyes conjured the image of my dead grandmother, dressed in her old yellow sari, her imposing eyes suddenly softening at the memory of her lost son-

"Oh, how he loved little children!" she would say animatedly "He would carry one on each hip, one over his shoulder, one on his head, one on his nose!". Her stories were filled with how he would take me to the bakery everyday and buy me cream buns, flaky puffs and porous milk bread warm from the oven. The freshest, most delicious goodies just for Viji's niece because he was friends with the Baker.

My older aunt would pull a face every time my father was being his difficult self and talk about her other brother Viji. "How understanding that child was!" she would say "He would always let your father use the new things. Toys, clothes, you name it. And he would make do with the old" 

Her son, who is 13 years older than I am, was once pampered by this Viji periyappa of mine. With a twinge of jealousy, I would listen to how Viji periyappa would take him everywhere on his bicycle. He never speaks of my uncle and I never understood why. When my aunt, his mother, also met her untimely end, I watched him descend into silence once more. It is then I understood that he is the kind of person who doesn't speak of his grief.

Another time, I found my grandfather's old diary. His handwriting almost indecipherable, he had filled pages and pages of yellowed paper with details so steeped in painful vividness that it brought tears to my eyes. I was 13 years old then, my curiosity suddenly flared by all the new details of how Viji periyappa suffered through his cancer. My grandfather, who was a journalist, had tried to make a note of all the facts. But as much as he had tried, even he could not keep the tone of helplessness out of his writing. 

"Viji unable to remember the way home" one entry said "Was brought home by shopkeeper from two streets away"

The memory impairment worsened- "Viji awake at 2 AM. Unable to locate bathroom". 

I remember pushing myself to turn the pages, without a break. Somewhere in the middle of the diary, the notes stopped abruptly. There were two lines in the handwriting of my younger aunt. They simply said "Viji no more. End peaceful."

I promptly took the diary to my other aunt. By then, the family had lost my grandmother, my grandfather and my older aunt to the tides of time. My aunt is now the only willing story-teller left in the family. Her eyes were moist as she opened up more stories of Viji periyappa, gently unwrapping all the wounded memories she had stored away. 

He was an optimist, I learned. Even through his cancer, he never lost his will to be humourous. I will never find out how much he really suffered, but I know that he believed in the magic of placebo. Apparently, he used to speak of believing that he was cured to trick his body into curing itself. I don't doubt that he had done a fair bit of reading up. The avid reader that he was, sometimes, when I look into the expanse of our bookshelves, I find an aging novel in the depths- something that he had picked up for a train journey and promptly devoured its contents, the stamp of the Higgin-Bothams bookstore printed in dull blue on the first page. 

My grandfather's brother, who never married, has always lived with us. Today, at the age of 82, he is the oldest member of our family. I call him Chikappa. For all intents and purposes, he has been the grandfather to me. My real grandfather died when I was four. All that I have left of him are his many books and his journalist's blood. 

Chikappa was the first to find out about Viji periyappa's ailment. Apparently, when he found out, he didn't say a word to anybody, keeping the doctor's report to himself. Even Viji periyappa did not know that he had cancer, almost for an entire year. It was my father who told me about Chikappa's fortitude during that tough time, diligently taking Viji periyappa to the doctor regularly and having him treated. It was not until chemotherapy had to happen, when the truth came stumbling out. 

More stories- My father went on about how Viji periyappa worked for Kirloskar. "Nobody cared about their products" he said "Viji was into marketing. He went to Bombay and sales shot up!". A people's man to boot, once again Viji periyappa's ability to entertain and empathise surfaced through daddy's memory. 

Sometime in the early 80s, daddy had a hopelessly failing business. "Sometimes, I wouldn't even have the money to pay the shop's rent" he recounts "My father would be so irritated, constantly asking me to close business. But Viji used to hand me money every now and then without their knowledge."

Viji periyappa and my father looked like copies of each other. There is really no way one can tell them apart in an old photograph. Two peas in a pod they may have been, but my father never had Viji periyappa's carefree streak and a disposition for light-heartedness. Daddy's hearing disability has always put him at the edge of anxiety, driving himself to work harder and harder, constantly worrying about the rainy days to come. 

This morning, when daddy was talking about how his brother would have brought home a plumber and have things fixed, he looked into the distance- "Viji had so much going for him" he said "He went and ruined everything."

"Huh?" I said, suddenly confused. 

"Just like your brother" Dad said to me "Not a serious bone in his body."

The untainted, Utopian image of Viji periyappa that the family had painted for me was suddenly taking on a new dimension. Nobody speaks ill of the dead, and daddy spoke no further about it. 

"Not a serious bone in his body". Did daddy mean that he was not prudent financially? That he never got around to doing adult things like investing in property? But he was barely 30!

"Just like your brother". Carefree, larger than life, friendly, social... Sagittarian. I was jarred awake. My Viji periyappa was Sagittarian. My mother often remarks how my brother resembles Viji periyappa. My aunt once said that it was just as well that my brother's birthday is on the 16th of December, Viji periyappa's was on the 15th. 

All the story-tellers in my family, they've grown quite old, I realized. There will be no one to talk about Viji periyappa after a couple more decades, at the most. My veins fill with fondness for the uncle I never knew. For the simple reason that we belong to each other by blood, I feel all this sorrow. All these years, people have told me so many different things about him and for the first time today, daddy said something that wasn't so perfect. Viji periyappa had his own flaws. He was, after all, human. There is now an abyss in my memory of him- one that needs to be filled with all the details of his imperfections, the resentments he had, the regrets he wanted to erase, the sorrow in his tears, the knots of fingers when he wrung his bony hands in despair. Can anyone tell me more about it? I do not know. Will I ever understand who Viji periyappa really was? I think not. 

I have spent about three hours writing out this accidental memoriam for Viji periyappa, just in time for his birthday. I am the last person who can do justice to his memory. And now I must wrap this up, for I have nothing more to say. I can hear daddy yelling at me from the other room. I should go find that plumber. That's what Viji periyappa would have done.