A lot of remembering!

Last Sunday was the 21st--it's a date that seems to come around with alarming frequency...can you believe it, twelve times a year, and five times already in the past five months! Not that the 21st is special. In fact, it is as un-special as a date can get. But those of us who read this blog recall with painful precision what exactly that date means. I know that with time things such as dates and times get fuzzy and events acquire a bottled significance that has nothing to do with markings on a calendar. "Bottled" like perfume, because you can take them out at will and feel everything that was felt at the beginning; and then put away, safely, so that they lurk somewhere in the corner of your mind, safely, while you go on with the business of your day. They can either be like a faint whiff that enters the edge of your consciousness, touching your every activity with a certain unmistakable fragrance, or like an overpowering scent that leaves you reeling.

Last Sunday brought a bit of both. Amma and I went to a memorial meeting held for a dear friend, Janaki Iyer, who passed away two years ago, on September 15. It was a small gathering; about twenty friends who had spent time with her in various ways, almost all associated either directly or indirectly with the small school she ran for girls who would otherwise never have a chance at education, Ananda Bharati. Appa knew Janaki and her husband (Ja and Steve, as their friends know them) and Ja's sister, Kamla, who taught economics at the University and remembered Appa as a colleague of many years. Kamli, as we call her, had not met Amma or me since Appa's passing, though she had spoke to us on the phone. She recalled how, one time when she was just arriving at Science College on the Osmania Campus, as her auto pulled up Appa came to her and said, "There's a bandh and there won't be any classes today--why don't you just take this same auto back; otherwise it's going to be hard to get one." She was really surprised that a senior colleague would take the trouble to come out and tell her that--the general attitude in the department was, "Well. we are all sitting her and can't get out even though there is no work, let her come and suffer as well!" When I told her that he was not an ordinary father, her response was "But he was not an ordinary human being!"

We spent the rest of that meeting reminiscing about Janaki, but for me it seemed a great way to spend a 21st, in the company of good people, who believed in good work, sharing a warmth that such commitment brings.