A Life of Love, Service, and Devotion

From children to elders, and from strangers to friends and family members, everyone has stories and anecdotes to share about my maternal grandmother, Smt. Thirumulu Natarajan.

Her nephew and my uncle, Dr. B. S. Sankararaman, said in his message of grief, “The embodiment of humanity and compassion is no more. The clock of boundless energy has stopped. The hands that fed thousands upon thousands of relatives, guests, and workers finally rest.”

My friend Anitha, who visited her on weekends and took her for car rides when we were away, said, “I never saw my maternal grandmother, and Paati filled that void for me in many ways, from ensuring I had my meals to oiling and plaiting my hair and putting flowers in it.”

Paati’s love for cooking, feeding, and caring for people became her life’s purpose. The endless cups of coffee, morsels of rice, plates of murukku, and dabbas of Therattipaal, Mysorepak, and rava laddu that she served to relatives and strangers, always with love, earned her a special place in their hearts.

She would be the first guest to arrive at a wedding or family function and the last to leave. Within seconds, she became part of the host family, made herself useful in many ways, and left an indelible mark on their hearts.

It would not be an overstatement to say that she was more active than a bee. Discipline was her hallmark. She would retire to bed by 8:00 p.m. and wake up at 3:30 a.m.; her routine was impeccable. In fact, she journaled for 65 years, and many relatives would call her to check the dates of important events such as childbirths, marriages, and the passing of loved ones. Her record of life and its events was remarkably accurate and meaningful.

Wherever she went, she won the hearts and admiration of people. She visited me in the U.S. in 1999 and stayed for three months. She visited her cousin in Orlando and went with her to Disneyland and enjoyed the rides like a teenager.

She respected all religions and treated everyone with warmth and love. That Navratri, she kept a small golu in my living room and, with the same fervor, decorated the Christmas tree after Thanksgiving. She made friends with squirrels and elderly women in the apartment complex despite not speaking fluent English. As a gesture of gratitude for her friendship, the elderly women hosted a lunch party before she left for India. A few of them kept in touch with her through emails and letters.

As we go about our lives, there is so much to learn from her playbook of life. Her zest for life and people always stood out.

Everything about her was admirable: the way she dressed, carried herself with dignity, reached out to people, and served as an exemplar in every facet of life. She was practical and benevolent. She never kept anything for herself and became a benchmark for affability, hospitality, generosity, thoughtfulness, and compassion.

She was an amazing planner, though life did not unfold according to her plans. It was filled with hardships, yet they never made her waver in her faith in the Almighty, her commitment to the path of righteousness, or her compassion for fellow humans. She was never cynical.

For her 65th birthday, we visited famous temples in Karnataka - Udupi, Kollur Mookambika, Kukke Subramanya, and Nanjangud - and received the blessings of the saints of Sringeri and Kanchi. Her devotion to Vittala was supreme, and I remember taking her to Pandharpur for her 75th birthday.

We had the blessing of serving her during her last six years in Chennai. At the ripe age of 89, she breathed her last at 7:00 a.m. on September 25, 2026 - Anantha Chaturdashi - and reached the lotus feet of Vittala. Anantha chaturdasi marks the hallmark of the noble souls merger into eternity.

Between Covers, Bricks, and Seats

 

There is a quiet joy in catching a movie in the cinema before reading the book or scrolling through critic reviews. It lets you form your own firsthand interpretation, untouched by anyone else's bias. I never judge a book by its cover, a home by its appearance, a family by its behavior, or a movie by the crowd it draws. There are so many untold stories tucked between covers, bricks, people, and empty seats.

On a weekday noon, I found myself hurrying to the movie hall to catch Last Man in Tower. A week after its release, it had already begun to fade from the screens. Two shows each across four halls in its first week had shrunk to three shows across three halls by the second. When I settled in, there were hardly eight people in the theatre with me. So, don't judge the empty seats.

Last Man in Tower is a film adaptation of Arvind Adiga's 2011 novel, and its story unfolds like a slow ache. It follows the struggle between a builder and the residents of a housing society in Mumbai, a struggle that is really a mirror held up to greed, desire, memory, values, and ethics. What struck me most was how every character believed themselves justified. No one saw themselves as the villain of their own story. That, perhaps, is the quiet complexity of human nature.

These struggles are not new. They echo through generations, playing out between parents and children, between siblings, and between cousins who once shared the same courtyard. Families have sold ancestral homes, divided shares among themselves, and moved away in search of greener pastures and newer dreams. Behind every house that was sold, every wall that was demolished, and every home turned into apartments and later redeveloped to hold more people than it ever intended to, there is a story that no one ever tells.

If you listen closely to these stories, you will find the same threads running through many of our families: greed, desire, dreams, and memory.

In our own lives too, we are often confronted by the greed of others, pulled into their moral compass, made to act against our own instincts while we quietly justify ourselves and play the victim of circumstance and choice. And maybe that is the truest, saddest truth of all. Perhaps many of our dreams are meant to be shattered and memories erased before they become fossilized.

But some things resist erasure. The songs and the cast of Last Man in Tower will remain in my heart forever, tucked away like all those untold stories between covers, bricks, people, and empty seats.