Maama

 Written by Praveenkumar Vaidya 

Creative Empowerment Batch 2 , 2022

Mama…As I remember…

It is imperative that we are all influenced by our parents and teachers in our life. But when I started searching who else influenced me in my life, many familiar faces reeled in my mind. Then, I was struck by one face which I thought was influenced is, my Mama, my mother’s younger brother. As we know, he was the only one of my relatives who stayed in a faraway city, Bangalore, which was a dream city for many of us. Still, we did not travel to Bangalore quite frequently, but Mama used to visit our place whenever he had his official work at our side. 

 

I really don’t remember what actually made me think about him fondly, but maybe he was visiting us from Bangalore. As years passed by, when I was in class 10, that time I had a chance to interact with him on many subjects (as he was well versed with political history, Indian history, labour issues etc.) Other than these discussions, he had a small camera with him, this made us look at him curiously. As it was his prized possession, he used to give us to hold it and peep through the viewer.  He used to explain to us how cameras work and also introduced us to negatives, negative developing and dark rooms. He used to take us to a dark room where he used to develop all the negatives. Not only that, he was good at repairing wall radio sets, tape recorders and later television sets. He also used to explain to us lucidly how Television works. He used to subscribe to the professional journal “Electronics For You” during the 80s and learnt many things on his own and made small projects. We were awestruck looking at him experimenting with electronic gadgets. This used to be quite exciting for us at the age of sixteen. 

 

He had one more passion of reading Kannada novels as I found this in my mother and her elder brother also. He was an avid reader and used to finish them within no time. I used to ask him about the books, the authors and the story plot. He used to recommend reading the novels of all authors that he read. During my visit to Bangalore, there was a small circulating library near his home where I had an opportunity to visit that library and lay my hands on all sorts of books and since then I have retained my reading habit which actually expanded my vision for any issues that I came across. 

 

When we all grew up older, we had a chance to understand him in more detail. He seems to be one among many who evoked an interest in me about stock markets long back. I remember him telling me how he purchased a few company shares and earned profit by selling them in the stock exchange. I remember taking threads from those early discussions and getting to know more about primary and secondary markets by self-studying. But when I had an opportunity working with Chartered Accountants in a college in Mumbai, it was natural for me to get involved with the stock market.  Amazingly, after his retirement, he again took up online trading and did extremely well in understanding new technology also earned some good profits. 

 

Mama was an avid cigarette smoker but when he was advised by a physician, surprisingly he abandoned smoking. Such was his determination. I questioned him how he could give up smoking so drastically and I was amazed by his reply and came to know how resolute he was in doing what he intends to do. 

 

After his retirement, one more passion that he followed was terrace gardening. I think he did it exceedingly well. I don’t know how he got hooked to terrace gardening. As he told me, he used to attend workshops organised by the agriculture department and he made a group with likeminded people and he could grow all types of vegetables and fruits on the terrace. He got an agriculture kit from Australia by Anil, his son. I think he became an expert on terrace gardening and copiously shared his success stories on Facebook. As I heard he had developed a great bond with all the similar interest groups and he used to travel around Bangalore to study and observe how terrace gardening is cultivated by all his group members. Thus was his level of passion for anything that he does.  

 

I can go on and on telling how he influenced me in my life. Two years back we lost him. Everyone has to leave this world, if he is remembered fondly for his work and leaving others influenced by his work, it’s life well lived. Isn't it? Thank you Mama.