208 கலைமணி பாஸ்கரத் தொண்டைமான்
grand father died in 1965, I was just fifteen years old. But I was old enough to know that my Ammaachi never bothered to read any of her illustrious husband’s writings; I had also never seen her attending any of his scintillating lectures on art, poerty and sculpture. I have heard her remark to him sardonically as to whether he himself was writing all those adulatory letters to himself.
It was much later in my own life that I realized that Ammaachi by her quiet, unasuming and non interfering ways had provided the bedrock of support on which her husband’s monumental achievements were built. Ammaachi loved her husband, her daughtes and all her grand children in a way that is no longer fashionable - without any concern for herself.
She had seen much pain in her life. She had lost a young daughter before she was thirty. She lost her only son when he was nineteen years of age to blood cancer. Thondaman Thatha himself died just after he turned sixty one in 1965. Hardly three years later, her elderson-in-law and my father, V.K.C. Natarajan died in a swimming accident at Kanyakumari. Much later in 1990, she lost her younger son-in-law, R. subramaniam, also at a comparatively young age of sixty. In 1996, I her eldest grandson, lost my elder son Niranjan Baskar Nataraajan at nineteen, the age at which Ammaachi lost her son, Karunakaran. She did not know of any other family which was visited upon by death and tragedy at such regular and unfailing intervals. she had to the best of my knwoledge never, touched the Bhagwad Gita. But I realize that she had completely understood the teaching about Karma Yoga and was always there to give her unassuming and quiet support to her husband, her daughters, and her grand children, whose need for consolation was her greatest priority.
It would be a fair assessment to say that Ammaachi gave unto us all much more that what we ever could return to her. I am still haunted by the images of her emaciated and bony fingers holding my hand to console me when I wept at her bedside after Niranjan’s death. Hardly two months later, she had called it a day on the 9th July, 1996. She was eighty nine. As the doors of the electric crematorium closed, I was overwhelmed that this was my last look at this simple woman who had done so much for us, all her life. Even as the flames caught the bright silk sari adorning her body, she looked endlessly affectionate. I wish I had the talent and skills with the written word to compose a worthy enough eulogy for Ammaachi.
