GNS
As the story went, one told by my grandmother when she was alive, she was cooking in the kitchen one day, when she heard a loud thump followed by a scream. The mother instinct in her kicked in immediately after she recognized the scream as her teenage son’s, so she dropped everything in the kitchen and ran to the other room. There in the main room, she saw her son on the floor, still in contact with a big pedestal fan (weighing close to 25 kgs) tilted but still connected to the power supply. She had the presence of mind to realize what was happening and quickly unplugged the fan from the source before touching him. Her son had just received extreme electric shock and if not for her quick thinking, he would have stayed in contact with live electricity for a few more seconds and who knows, may have gotten fully electrocuted or ended up being permanently incapacitated in some form or fashion.
Ironically, that boy’s tryst with electricity would continue a few years later, with him earning an Electrical Engineering degree from Annamalai University.
He was Natarajan to his mother and father, Nataraja mama or Nataraja chitthappa or periyappa to his nephews and nieces, Nataraja thatha or “Car thatha” to his older sisters’ grandchildren and great grandchildren. He was just GNS to his professional colleagues, fellow Rotarians, Freemasons, his District Club social circle, and friends in general. His employees simply called him “Sir”. The passport referred to him as Nataraja Sundaram Ganapathy while all his official records called him G. Nataraja Sundaram. He was Sundar Thatha to his three grandchildren and just “Appa” to me and my brother.
He passed away due to a heart attack presumably induced by severe dehydration.
He was the only son, the fourth and the youngest of the siblings. He was born in Tirunelveli and lived most of his life in the same house. The house is more than 140 years old and it is where I spent the first 17 years of my life. His father (my grandfather) was a Mathematics professor, a genius in his times, who retired as a college principal, only to latch onto a new post-retirement hobby of medicine and then dedicated the rest of his life to the community by providing free medical service until his end. He is now remembered more as a philanthropist than as a scholar. Appa’s father had high hopes on him, but as if to live upto the stereotypes, Appa was not in any kind of academic quest whatsoever.
Either he liked his hostel life so much or he figured out he wanted to play some role in shaping the college politics for a couple of junior batches, he ended up spending more time in the university than what a normal student would do to earn an engineering degree in those times. He somehow managed to graduate much to my grandfather’s surprise. There are stories that still get passed around during family gatherings about how he would sneak out of the hostel in Chidambaram for self-declared long weekends in his first couple of years, and then spend that time at his sister’s house in Madurai. Of course, his parents did not know how their son was particularly short of the required attendance percentage for several semesters.
It was approximately around this time that Indian Oil Corporation decided to expand their Liquified Petroleum Gas cylinder distribution to south Tamil Nadu. They were looking for unemployed engineers to become dealers for the IOC LPG franchises in Tirunelveli. Appa promptly resigned from the lucrative job he had as a Junior Engineer at the Ennore Thermal Power Station, a job he held onto only for a few months and applied to become a franchise owner. And he got selected. By breaking all stereotypes of what was prevalent in his family until then, he became the first entrepreneur in the family. The local business venture gave him the perfect excuse to start living with his parents once again in the same house.
We always knew Appa was not particularly suited for business. Because he never let go of an opportunity to say “Yes” to anyone. Be it helping a family member by asking him to stay with us a couple of days a week because he was dealing with a severe case psychotic episodes, thereby changing his environment, which eventually improved his mental health — or be it helping a neighbor who would walk in unannounced to seek his advice on some personal issues and then end up spending four hours of his precious time — or be it calling an electrician or a building contractor to do some odd jobs in the house or in his office after finding out they had been struggling to meet their ends meet — or be it giving away cash to an employee for some urgent family needs, cash he had stored in the house for his official deposit with IOC to procure the next load of cylinders — he was always kind to anyone who reached out to him for help and he just did not have the heart to say “No”.
As my brother and I were meeting the streaming host of visitors who came to pay their respects to him as his body lay waiting to be cremated, I realized once again why Appa was not really suited to be a business man. Visitors after visitors held my hands or my brother’s hands, and in tears, told us how Appa had helped them back in the day. From finding jobs, to direct financial help with no expectations of getting the money back, to offering career and professional guidance, to mentoring new generation of Rotarians who repeatedly sought his guidance as the oldest past president of the club, to mentoring, teaching, and even tolerating new generations of Freemasons, to a few he employed just to help feed them — i.e. not to extract work in exchange for a salary.
It is not very difficult to conclude that this generally is a terrible way to run a business. Which was why he had to add a partner to his business after 20+ years of managing it as its sole proprietor.
He ran his business more as the affectionate man we knew him at home and not as someone with a disciplinarian mask. He never carried his day-to-day hardships from work with him when he came home. And yet he was the happiest when he went to his office, met his staff and joked around, and met the delivery boys who sometimes vented to him about their day. Even on the day of his passing, he had spent a few hours in the office, doing what he loved the most — meeting people, smiling with them, giving them instructions, drafting a letter to be printed, and leaving them with happy memories.
As the only son, he was always the most favorite mama for his nephews and nieces, many of whom were looking forward to spending time with him during their summer breaks. The age gap did not make a difference and he genuinely was one among them when he was with them. He found ways to connect with people of all age groups no matter how reticent the other person is. He managed to find that one common topic that would open someone up. None of that changed when he married my mother who came to live with him from a very large family. In fact, he extended the same warmth and love so effortlessly to his newly acquired nephews and nieces through his marriage.
He had a great sense of humor and he enjoyed a good joke. He did not hesitate to laugh out loud to appreciate a joke. When my family members started reaching out to me through condolence messages and calls as soon as the news reached them, his humor was one common characteristic that every single person in the family highlighted when they fondly recalled Appa.
“He was the only one with whom I could talk Tamil literature, Saivism, books, and fun topics too. The rarest uncle who was loved by everyone in the family and who was so easy to relate to regardless of age.”, said one cousin.
“For me he was the most fun and chilled family elder in the family. He was a BITSian at heart. I recall an incident <….> and both of us burst into laughter at my confused state of mind..”, said another cousin.
“He has given so many advices at times of need..”, said another cousin.
“One of the best social service workers and my advisor..”, said another cousin.
“He taught us swimming during our summer holidays. We always looked forward to our free time with him.”, said another cousin.
Our summer holidays during our school days were both fun and unpredictable. We never knew what the vacation plan was until on the afternoon of. He would come back home from work one fine day and announce “We are going on a road trip to Ooty. So, go pack!! Let’s have some fun!”. Our pesterings never helped him plan better and it was always a surprise. But once we hit the road, he made sure we had the best time of our lives for as long as the vacation lasted. To say he enjoyed driving is an understatement. He loved to drive and he loved his time behind the wheels. He owned a car till his end. It was only in the last year or so that he had cut down on his self-driving indulgence and instead employed a driver for most of his drives.
As a cousin remarked, “His first child was his business and his second child was his passion to drive..”
One day he showed up in the house with a puppy. Yes, as kids, my brother and I had talked about having a dog in the house but none of us were involved in any discussion around getting a real puppy on that day. The puppy, whom I named “Demi” was my first love experience with dogs and having Demi in our house changed all our lives for the better. Whether it was the day when he walked in, struggling to carry a Mridhangam, and proudly announced how he had enrolled in a “Mridhangam Class” — or whether it was surprising us with a vintage Gramaphone made in the 1930s — or…Appa lived every moment of his life in the present. He did not worry too much about the future on which he had no control over. Almost all his impulsive decisions were benign and meant to bring joy to himself or to people around him.
He drove us to our school every morning and never once demanded to know how we were doing academically. His involvement with our school life started at getting admissions and ended at getting our certificates (after graduation). Everything that happened in between did not bother him one bit. It took him almost 5 years to notice that my interest in cricket was more serious than what he had assumed. So he introduced me to his friend who used to run the most professionally run cricket club in the city. From the same evening, the 15 year old me was playing in the nets alongside 19–23 year old serious cricketers. If my cricketing techniques improved enough to play in the districts for one season, I owe it all to the experience I acquired in that club. When he noticed my “Veena” learning had to be cut short due to some logistics issues involving the building where my guru was teaching and it was almost impossible to continue to learn Veena after that, he insisted that I stayed in touch with music somehow or the other and brought home a Carnatic vocal guru who offered to come home and teach me. In other words, he never told us what to do or what to become in our lives. He tried to find ways to nurture our interests and left the rest to us.
As one gets to a certain phase of life like I am in now, one realizes deaths in the family are part of the timeline of life. And that, on the face of it, he was one of few people of that generation in India who managed to find foothold in a pre-liberalization country starved of job opportunities by starting one’s own business, but did not get to smell roses when it came to running one’s own business. Unlike many others of his generation, he kept pace with the exponentially maturing technology to the extent he needed to and was not clueless when it came to staying in touch with his grandkids using technology. He did enjoy checking out new gadgets, and asked us questions about the technology behind them and their functions.
As I settle down to pore through shelves and shelves of voluminous files and paperwork he had let us with, I realize that the man died with not too many possessions. He spent the last two plus decades of his life serving as the president of a charitable trust which if left unattended by someone like him with that kind of respect and reputation in the community, would have gone into the hands of greedy men waiting to pounce on the lucrative land that belonged to the trust and all its other properties. He did not pay heed to his wife’s constant plea to not get involved because of the troublesome role it is, but continued to overcome all the challenges thrown at him — lawsuits, personal threats, and ensured that the philanthropic goals of the trust were met unperturbed until his last day.
Appa also had a terrible habit. He avoided self-care and doctor visits if he could, and refused to undergo even basic medical tests as often as he should have had at his age. He ignored periodic advice from his children and his wife in that regard. He clearly did not google his symptoms for severe dehydration (as I did after my mother told me of them) and he did not realize that in some rare occasions, extreme dehydration when not attended properly, could lead to cardiac failure.
There were particularly tough moments during the cremation rituals when my brother and I, as the sons, had to touch his head, feet, arms, chest, and pour water and water mixed with other ritualistic items, and whisper “Kasi” to send him off. It is a strange feeling to touch the lifeless body of someone you love — someone who is dead. You are so caught up in the ritualistic motions that you stop grieving at that moment and start questioning the rationality of the science behind how this inanimate mass of largely carbon, hydrogen and oxygen was once alive and discussed politics with you over the phone, enquired about your son and daughter, convinced a friend to add you to the cricket club, sneaked in an extra donut or danish from the hotel breakfast buffet with his sweet tooth and a wide grin, loved Boney M. but loved Maharajapuram Santhanam more, made efforts despite lack of formal training to identify ‘ragas’ while listening to a new song, made quick and beautiful sketches on pretty much any surface when bored, questioned the duality of his own belief system and never irrationally defended his belief system when rationally countered by his non-believer son, enjoyed scotch, and for the helping nature he had, never once was tempted to help a Nigerian prince in distress to get his fortune out of his country.
According to the official records, G. Nataraja Sundaram died on June 30, 2023, but as we heard from everyone who visited to pay their respects and to see him off, “Natarajan” or “GNS” or “Sir” will forever be alive in their memories.
Because Appa has touched more people’s lives than I realized and in more ways than I will ever understand.
