The Rudraksha Mala
A sketch of my Grandfather
As I feel these Rudraksha beads in my hand, I remember how my Nanaji used to sit in the tiny Puja (prayer/meditation) room, chanting his mantras, counting these very beads.
Nanaji and I were never very close, but we had a bond. In many ways I was more like him than his other grandchildren. But I was the daughter’s daughter. The position of the favourites was reserved for the sons’ sons. And that’s all right. That’s just who he was.
The last few years, he was always complaining about his old age and the aches and pains that came with it. We tried to humor him but we also tried to avoid him. I wish we had paid less heed to our irritation and more heed to how his eyes had become dim with age and pain.
The only times those eyes shone were when he told stories from his youth. He had so many stories. As a young man, he had been a wrestling champion at his village. He had gone on to study law at BHU and eventually had a successful career in the Indian Customs Services. He was very enterprising, very hardworking but being the eldest son of a district court judge, he could never measure up. My great grandfather had considered him a disappointment. Nanji had been terribly hurt by this. All his life he harboured a resentment towards his father. Unfortunately, he also harboured an inferiority complex.
Perhaps because of this very complex, he had a burning desire for self improvement. As a young man, he spent hours after work browsing the dictionary and practising the words. He would write pages of prose in English everyday to improve his command over the language.
Propelled by a deep love for ancient scriptures, he knew more stories from Puranas than anyone I know. He knew the origins and meanings of all those complicated Sanskrit ślokas (verses/poetic form of Sanskrit verses) and could hold his own with any academician on history and politics.
At school, I once wanted to participate in a speech contest but I didn’t know what to read out. Nanaji asked me to bring a pen and paper and launched into an impromptu story of a coin as it chronicles its journey from the mines to the minting factory and thereafter lands into the bowl of a beggar. Back then, I was probably unimpressed. I must have thought that all adults could do that. Only now do I look back and realize that it was exceptional. But he never got to realize that!
It is so unfortunate that feelings of inadequacy can hide so much of our own light from ourselves.
And not just by him, this aspect of his personality got sidelined by others too. People often remember his fierce temper; they forget about the fiery treasure trove of knowledge he had. But I remember! I remember his stories, his anecdotes, his teachings. I remember how in the last couple of decades of his life he quietly made contributions to many, many charities.
I was in California when the pandemic hit. My cousin called and told me that Nanaji had been hospitalized. He hadn’t been showing any symptoms until he suddenly fainted at home. By the next day, he was in a coma and within four days, he was gone. I never got to say goodbye.
A year before he passed away, I had asked him to accompany me to buy authentic Rudraksha beads. He silently went to his room and got his own Rudraksha mala (a string of prayer beads). “Will you take this one?”, he had asked and I had simply nodded, secretly delighted.
Our last big discussion had been about the Shiva Tandav Strotam. It is an ode to Lord Shiva (a principal deity of Hinduism) written by Ravana (the main antagonist of the Hindu Epic, the Ramayana) himself. Nanaji had eulogized over what a scholar Ravana had been and what a devotee and I had wondered, how could he not see that so was he himself.
To me those beads of Rudraksha represent that side of him. They represent my Nanaji, the great scholar and the great devotee.
