When I was in high school, I used to make fun of Thatha’s baldhead. I used to say things like- “The foliage is scarce so we can build a playground here.”
He would tell me- “Payrandi! (Grandson!), when I die and go to heaven, I will look down on you and make fun of your baldhead. Be careful.”
Well- Thatha is in heaven now and I am not yet bald. So the joke is on him.
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As narrated by Sonny Yesudian (Thatha) to his grandson Ajitson on the 22nd of December 2014, almost four years before his death. Thatha passed away on the 28th of December 2018.
Ajitson- What would you call your autobiography?
Thatha- I would call it- All praise to God.
Ajitson-I think I will write your autobiography.
Thatha- Then how can it be called an autobiography.
Ajitson- I will write exactly what you tell me to write.
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Thatha narrates-
We used to live on a lonely house on a hill with my mother, father and sister. My father was a clerk in a tea estate and my mother was a teacher before she got married.
My mother had the most impact in my life. A very prayerful lady. A very nice lady.
Thatha had a blood stain on his white sleeveless bunyan. He had shaved that morning and I could see a small red dot on his dusky face. If you looked at him- his long nose, tiny eyes protected by thick -soda bhutti- eye-glasses, you would say- 'There goes a typical south Indian man in his early 80's.' And that is what he is- bald, dark and tall.
My mother used to narrate bible stories to me as a child. She was a powerful story teller and every time she told me the story of Jesus' crucifixion, I used to feel very sad. I was home schooled by her till the 4th standard. There was a school nearby, but it was not that great.
The first day in school, when I did eventually go to school, I thought school got over in an hour and I got up to leave. But the other students asked me to sit down. “Where are you going, this is just the beginning.” We had a good laugh, good old days... I had to sit in school till four PM.
My father was a very rude man. But that is how it used to be back in the days. The man was supposed to rule the roost. Families have evolved now- he looks at me and he says- Shruti (my wife) is not your's obediently any more. She is your's lovingly. Families have changed and we have come so far.
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As narrated by Sonny Yesudian (Thatha) on the 31st of December 2014,
My father’s name was Retnam. His father’s name was Yesudian. My mother’s name was Gnanayi and her father's name is Gnanamuthu. He was know as Gnanamuthu Vathiyar. As far as I know my great grand parents were Christian too, so I do not know which generation turned to Christianity.
As a caste we were kept poor and were exploited by the Nayar community in Travancore. Kanyakumari district was a part of Kerela and was called South Travancore. We were know to be Palmyra climbers. Palmyra climbers climb the Palmara tree (a kind of palm tree) and they do something to the flower- I am not exactly sure what they do. And they hang a clay pot around it. This pot fills up the next morning with 'Palani' and the climbers would climb the tree and empty this pot in a small pot hanging by their waist. The next morning it would fill up again. This 'Palani' is used to make Jaggery (Palm Sugar).
I was imagining all of this and my mind went into an adventure of climbing trees when Leela Paati (Grandma) interrupted us.
“Some of them were farmers. Like your uncle, he was a farmer. Was everyone a Palmara climber?” she says.
Yes not all of them were Palmara climbers. Nadars can be split into two words- ‘Nat’, which literally means country but the connotation is earth and 'andawargal' or people who subdued it. So we subdued the earth and were tillers. I am not sure this explanation is correct though.
It was men like Ringle Taube, German missionaries, who probably helped our forefathers turn to Christianity. They were white people and our governments -back in the day- listened to anything white people said. Ringle Taube and his colleagues were a part of the LMS or London Missionary society. They came to India to uplift the poor. They got a lot of land from the governments of that time and gave it to early Christians. Only when you possess land do you get an identity. You must possess something. The poor do not possess anything and that is why they are poor. Similarly all that our forefathers could manage was a day to day living. Along with the land we got an identity and also we embraced the identity of being Christians.
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Written by Ajitson, a few days after Thatha’s death.
There were no flowers strewn on the road. People were reading the morning newspaper on their verandas; dogs were sniffing about and Edwin, the neighbourhood eighth grader waves to me with a smile. No fanfare as we entered the church, just as Thatha would have liked it.
I sat stooped in the hearse, next to Thatha’s coffin, facing his feet.
Thatha used to walk a lot. He would use the public buses in Chennai and if his destination was only one bus stop away, he would avoid taking a bus as well.
He led a disciplined life. Selvam, a family friend from Madurai told me how he learned to be on time from my grandfather. However, he was also the victim of being disciplined in an undisciplined world; when he crossed the road when the pedestrian signal went green. He expected vehicles to give way and did not look to see if the vehicles had stopped. An auto hit him and he was hurled to the floor with a few broken teeth.
Having said that, Thatha did not hold it against the world, or the humans around him for lacking discipline. He used to make fun of me by saying- “Grandson! It looks like you go straight to college from bed and straight to bed from college.” He did not dwell on my lack of timeliness.
He would give us, his grandkids, a ‘Well Bowled Shane.’ He would use his long fingers on our heads and bring those fingers together in the centre of our heads to mess up our hair. It would be followed by a loud exclamation- ‘Well Bowled Shane.’
My grandfather used to watch a lot of cricket and Australia’s fielders would comment their legendary spinner Shane Warne, with a ‘Well Bowled Shane,’ after every amazing delivery.
Thatha delivered the ‘Well Bowled Shane’ when we watched TV and would catch us by surprise, often annoying us a lot.
He was disciplined, but certainly not stuck up.
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The hearse rolls into the church and I help lift the coffin. Once inside, the funeral service begins and various pastors begin to speak about Thatha. He had been their teacher at Tamilnadu Theological Seminary, a college of the Church of South India (CSI) for aspiring pastors.
Rev.Friedman shares a story from his days of being Thatha’s student.
One day in class, a student was taking down the notes Thatha was writing on the blackboard. As he wrote his notes, his watch was reflecting the sunlight onto the blackboard. Because he focussed on writing the notes swiftly, he did not realise the patterns of light he was creating on the blackboard.
This created a disruption in class as some of students began to laugh in amusement. Thatha asked, “Who is responsible for this?”
The students looked at Friedman, the student who still focused on his notes, and was oblivious to his watch’s misdemeanour.
Thatha asks the hapless Friedman to stand and yells at him. When Friedman responded with bewilderment, Thatha gets further annoyed and threatens to throw him out of the classroom.
This caused Friedman a lot of embarrassment and later, anger, because he had been yelled at for no fault of his own.
After this incident Friedman began to avoid Thatha. He would look down and refuse to acknowledge him. If he were standing in a corridor and Thatha walked that way, he would begin to walk the other way.
This continued until one day he was with a group of his friends, chit chatting in the corridor. Thatha approached. Friedman immediately left his group and walked the other way. He walked a long way, into an empty classroom and he sat down.
When he sat down, he found that Thatha had followed him. Thatha called him by his name, and Friedman responded with, “What is it Annan?”
Annan is a Tamil word to respectfully address an elder brother and it was how students called Thatha. This was because the seminary wanted to instil an intimate relationship, one of brothers or family, rather than one of student and teacher.
Thatha told him, “Friedman, we are in Ministry together. It is not a nice thing avoid each other. Not wish each other a good morning. Please forgive me for scolding you.”
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Rev. Benjamin called Thatha a ‘Complete Pastor.’
“You would never find him with a pen in his pocket and a bible in his hand,” he says.
Rev. John Giridaran said, “He was a good neighbour. His love was true. He himself is like a book and you learned from him.”
What Rev. John is saying is, yes he had the markings of a pastor. His white cassock, the pen in pocket, the bible in hand, but his actions spoke louder than this. His lack of ego when dealing with his students, all pointed to a man who understood what it means to be a good neighbour.
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The Bishop at Thatha’s funeral said, “He was a tall man among teachers.”
“Some were politicians, but Annan was 100% an academician. Purely a teacher.”
I remember there was some talk about how Thatha was never interested in becoming a Bishop because it would have required winning an election and that of a thing was not his cup of tea. If the Bishop himself says it, it must be true.
There were, apparently, four Bishops in the class Thatha taught the subjects of Western Philosophy and Interfaith Dialogue in. “And we thank our teacher,” concluded the Bishop.
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As the hearse made its way from the church to the cemetery, we encountered bumpy roads and that reminded me of something.
Big lorries, dark roads, darker night, deep potholes, bad suspension and cold nights. I could feel Thatha’s hands bite into my shoulders, as the Kinetic Honda scooter hit a pothole. Thatha would also force the rickety two wheeler to swerve when a large lorry honked next to him, his nervous body twitching the scooter out of control. I never asked Thatha to relax, because my mind was focused on getting us safe and sound to the rural church he was going to preach in. I was nervous myself.
The churches he was going to preach in were in the outskirts of Chennai, and he was summoned by a pastor, who took care of two or three churches and needed help on Christmas.
The lofty academician, never unleashed weighty philosophy on the simple crowd. His sermon was simple enough for even the fresher at college (me) to understand.
Why did he do it? He was not exactly paid a fortune for his adventures on the scooter with the immature grandson, who’s driving was suspect.
For many years my Thatha and I went to various churches in Chennai. We never stuck to one church. Although, Thatha gave his counselling services (another pro bono service) at the Andrews Kirk, and we went there for a couple of years, we never really stuck to one church. Indeed my Thatha once laughed at a confirmation service at a Methodist church where they asked the new communicants to pledge their loyalty to the Methodist church. (Should they not be pledging their loyalty to Jesus?)
He later spoke at the prayer meeting of one of the new communicants. And it was there that he unleashed a casual conversation we had had the previous day. Thatha has asked me, the previous day, “What goes on in the minds of boys that age?” And I told Thatha-
“Well they come to realise that they are men now. And they start noticing all the girls around them.”
Much to my chagrin, Thatha quoted me in his sermon and many looked at me and laughed- for he had told everyone where he got that quote.
Thatha does that. For instance he got my wife Shruti to write him a letter, on the topic of marriage, which he used in the sermon at my sister’s wedding. He used casual conversations and the observations from real life in his sermons. No lofty philosophising, a thing you would expect from a pastor who was also a teacher.
Once while we were in church, Thatha asked me- “Grandson, why do you go to church.”
I thought for a bit and told him the truth. “It gives me some time to reflect.”
Thatha looked very pleased. Almost as though to tell me- “That’s why I go to church too.”
I think Thatha enjoyed the services he provided to these churches, because he wanted to be a ‘Good Neighbour,’ yes, but he also enjoyed the reflective side of these things. It made the academician- think.
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There was this one time, towards the end of my final year in college, when I was very upset with myself because I was not able to focus on the things I wanted to focus on. My mind used to, and still does, wander a lot. I told Thatha about my problem and he said-
“Grandson, the fact that you have identified the issue and are able to talk about it, means you are on the road to recovery.”
He then went on to suggest that I did things I wanted to focus on with a group of friends who had the same goals, and that never worked out, for my friends and I always chit chatted about random things. The second thing he suggested was, I change the location of where I worked on my projects. And that has been really good for me, although I have not had the luxury to pick locations all the time. I hung out in libraries and went to stay in cheap accommodations in hill stations, but I cannot do these all the time.
But I realise now, what a huge difference Thatha made in my life. My own private counsellor and friend.
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Thatha really cared for Paati, although Paati will have a hundred stories about how he was lax in that department. This example I have for his caring nature is immediately after the time I got married. Thatha told me-
“It will make your Paati happy if she continued to cook for you. So do not tell her that you want to take care of yourself, now that you are married.”
Paati’s packed lunches were legendary, with many colleagues singing her praises for years to come. They did not know that they had Thatha to thank, as well. Thatha’s counsel led to a win win situation.
Thatha also drove Paati nuts with many things, but a man does not live a full life if he does not drive his wife nuts. And vice versa I am sure!
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Thatha lies in his white cassock, the natural smile on his face ever-present even in death.
Reverent Benjamin shares-
“His daughter used to be lively. And when she died in her prime, we ourselves could not accept it. Annan taught us how to be faithful at the time of adversity. We learnt a lot from the way he dealt with this tragedy.”
As he says these words, I recollect the times I caught Thatha staring with a reverie, his one hand on the mantle and eyes on the picture of his daughter Nila.
He looked with fondness. Good memories of a ‘lively daughter,’ I am sure. When my daughter was born, Thatha held his great granddaughter in his hand, and he looked at her with the same fondness. Perhaps with the birth of my daughter ‘Nila,’ he could collect a few more good memories for him to take with him on his final journey.
“Makkal, this is Pootan,” he told Nila.
