These days, when people go to restaurants, they order bottled mineral water. This is done on the premise that the free-of-cost water provided by the eatery may be contaminated — but the chargeable food that is served is acceptable. Such cautious practices pale into insignificance when compared with the acts of my father-in-law.
A well-built and hefty figure, his mere presence would galvanise the air. A student of P.S. High School, Chennai, he worked as a silk inspector. He feared he would have to compromise on honesty and quit his job and joined hands with a silk merchant in Arni in Tamil Nadu as a salesman and a saree designer.
He would carry bundles of silk sarees on his shoulders, walk kilometers on end, stand hours on end at major outlets to collect outstanding payments and travel extensively. Drawn by his selling skills, sincerity and integrity apart from his Midas touch, the owner of the establishment took him on board as a working partner. Thanks to the support he received from his employer and well-wishers, father-in-law, who had seven daughters, got all of them married with ease. His meticulous precision in planning and execution always came to the fore.
He was noted for his hospitality, generosity and respect for elders, but was quite circumspect and ultra-cautious at times. His palatial house often doubled up as a guest house for customers who would flock to the silk town with their family to pick and choose sarees. His wife and mother-in-law would always be busy in the kitchen while his children and assistants from mailgai (shop) would serve the customers delicious home-made food. Once, when he asked his last daughter, who later became my wife, 12 years old then, whether a guest had eaten the dosas served, she replied excitedly: “Yes, dad. He took all the five dosas I served.” Upon which she received a fiery look and a sermon: “Never count the quantity of food that you serve. If you do so, you cannot serve wholeheartedly.”
When he met people elder to him, he would unhesitatingly prostrate before them and seek their blessings. He would insist that his children also follow the same tradition. As one who knew the pain of selling, he was very kind to door-to-door selling vendors and buy in large quantity, more so to help them than to meet his needs.
Well into his sixties, a childish craving surged in him once to eat cotton candy as a candy vendor went past his house wheeling his implements in a cart. Father-in-law was quite fastidious about hygiene and could not accept the artificial colouring additive that renders the rose colour to the candy. He called the vendor and assured him of adequate compensation for meeting his demands. He asked him to empty the contents and clean his machine thoroughly, add sugar supplied from his house and then run the machine. Reluctantly the vendor complied.
Out came layers and layers of fluffy white cotton candy. Father-in-law tasted it and distributed it to his family members and scores of other children who gathered after hearing about the white cotton candy largesse. Like a child, he ran back and forth, bringing more and more sugar from his house and asking the vendor to produce more and more candy. The vendor had a field day and was thrilled at the money he made.
When father-in-law passed away in 1991 at the age of 68, the business community in the town downed the shutters for a day as a mark of respect to their friend and guide. Outnumbering close relatives, a posse of vendors who frequented his house wailed beside his body. Amidst the mourners was the cotton candy vendor. Weeping, he said: “He had a heart, pure and pristine as snow. That’s why he asked me to make white cotton candy for him.”
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