Shankar, a tribute

There came a phone call on the evening of 18th December, 2017.  Unfamiliar voice, "This is Kiran....".  A simple clue pointed he was a childhood friend.  We had met each other occasionally but not in regular contact and never before on phone.  He goes on to tell "someone with me wants to talk to you .... [gives the phone to him] ... Hello Dinu, this is Shankara.  Remember me? ..............[some pleasantries]...  I have come to Mysore for a few days [from America].  I am right now with JS Kiran..... where and when shall we meet?".  His voice, instantly recognizable, was just the same it was, when I had last met him, thirty plus years ago.  What a delightful surprise! He had suddenly wanted to meet me, on this visit!  Kiran had located my telephone number through some of his known sources.  They were classmates in Engineering and one year junior to me in school. 

Shankar and I were great street mates who had enjoyed playing cricket, hide and seek, chess, carrom, marbles, etc. along with other street boys at Devaparthiva Road where just 50 metres separated our houses.

Not surprisingly, it was just a smile and handshake when Shankar arrived, at my residence now at Vani Vilas Road the following evening.  Shankar has never been one to show too much emotion or was too outwardly expressive.  Only, some words in his speech had 'Americanized' after living there for 25 years plus.  He was the same, simple chap. From a young age itself, his maturity had been beyond his age and his level-headedness was a trait.  He was well behaved and decent in every manner.

Very joyfully, we reminisced the fondest and most enjoyable memories of those beautiful days for close to 90 minutes. He briefed me about how he had switched over to a job that was non-engineering/technical and how he was stressed about it and how he kept his fitness routine. 

  My late aunt had introduced me to play on paper, 'word building game' and sometime during my middle school days, some friend had 'Lexicon', a word game played with cards.   I had then not known about Scrabble, but it was Shankar who introduced me to it with the Set he used to bring here and play.  I reminded him of how we spent hours and hours playing this beautiful game, laughing and laughing so much [what we now term as ROFLOL] esp. whenever we made funny sounding non existent words.  This greatly irritated my grandmother who used to come shouting at us to stop laughing!

Later I made a Scrabble set from cardboard, myself.  [click to read that separate blogpost]

It was also from him I came to know about live radio cricket commentary from BBC in 1973. It was he who showed me that it was aired on the 31-metre band.  He had taken me to his grandmother's house opposite Manuvana Park to show where he had tuned in to that station.  It started off my great fancy for cricket commentary, particularly from BBC and later from Radio Australia for a number of years.

Shankar had known about radio stations from his father, G.Sachidananda [Sachi, popular name in the street].  He was a Hindi Professor at Maharaja's College, jolly chap, fun loving, loved to humourously tease people who passed by his house, in some particularity, womenfolk. He and all his children were intellectually brilliant. Sachi's father was Gundavadhani, a great Sanskrit scholar.  

Shankar had showed me the news magazine from Deutsche Welle [Voice of Germany, Cologne] that his father used to get.  From it, later, took me to the great hobbies of DX-ing/Shortwave Listening and Penfriendship. Details in another post.

In 11th I had failed.  And Shankar became my classmate for 12th [2nd PUC] and we often went to college together.  It was due to Shankar's simple teaching and clearing the doubts that rescued me get through a couple of troublesome subjects.  He made them look so simple, so easy!  So brainy he was.  He never seemed to study long hours. He was gifted in grasping the gist very quickly and was able to put it in simple and effective words and sentences.  He was never known for mugging up the lines, he never needed to, because his memory was very sharp.  It was not a wonder at all that all his school education was done on scholarship [the education dept. paid for meritorious students].  It was a great thing back then, much to some awe and envy of fellow mates.  Not surprisingly, his engineering, also with distinction found him a good job in Bengaluru where he moved and married silently and had moved to America!  That's when we had lost touch.

In the mid 70s I had introduced him to the 'katte', where a group of mostly mischievous friends in late teens, 'wasting time' at a particular spot in the neighbourhood and also played tennis ball cricket.  We were the silent ones, along with 2 others. He continued to go there even after I migrated to another group because of my joining a regular cricket club.  In later years, rarely, I used to see Shankar walking by when he visited home [from America] without stopping at our house.
It was a mystery and will remain so, permanently, because Shankar is no more.

Last April, news about his demise shocked me, as it did to everyone. He had suddenly died, found fallen from the bed at night.  It was not even 4 months since he visited.  And met so many old friends, including me.  As my mother was at home too when Shankar came, his childhood recollection about a couple of incidents with his little brother and grandmother had joyed her.

It makes me think what had driven him to meet so many of his old contacts this time.  Did something in him 'knew' it would be the last time?

When he went back to America, he wrote:

Dinu,
Attached is the picture we took yesterday.  Once again, it was great to meet you after a long time and to have the conversation with you and your mother.      Regards      S. Shankar 

This is the picture from his phone [taken by my w], as it is:

Though he said he had a happy family with grown up children, was it job stress that took its toll?  We may never know.
May his soul rest in peace.