ARUNBHAU

My maternal grandmother was widowed at an early age and spent most of her life thereafter with her elder daughter. My mother was the younger daughter. So her sister’s house at Rajkumar College Raipur was Maika for her and I spent many summer holidays there in the early 1960s. Arunbhau, the eldest of the three offsprings of my aunt, was 12 years older to me. He was the ideal elder brother I always wanted to have. He taught me how to ride the bike when I was barely 5. He also taught me how to drive a scooter on his brand new Vespa. He encouraged me to go around doing small errands on his Vespa when anyone else would have hesitated to give his precious new Vespa to anyone, especially to a callow teenager like me. He also encouraged me to join the nearby Library and read a lot during the holidays. My love for reading was his precious gift to me.

On the other hand, in the initial years, he was also my tormentor-in-chief. Under his leadership, the entire household was teasing me relentlessly and 3-4 bawling tantrums in a day was par for the course for me. One giggle from him was enough to start the waterworks. As an only child, I was always clinging to my mum. I suspected that she loved both Arunbhau and Chandubhau more than she loved me and they spared no effort to rub it in. But again , he saw to it that I did not fall asleep without having a meal in the night. He carried me piggyback when I was tired/sleepy during our collective post dinner strolls.( To be fair, the other cousin, Chandubhau also performed this task often. )

Arunbhau also bought me my first wristwatch, an hmt, a prized possession then, from his first salary, when he came to Jabalpur to work for MPEB for a brief stint before he went back to Government Engineering College Raipur as a faculty member. 

In subsequent years, he was always the object of my envy as he was doing my dream job in academia. He was always surrounded by books and periodicals. Whenever we met, he was full of his ongoing research projects and the next five or six projects on the anvil. He had an eclectic range of interests from Sanskrit to Vedic mathematics to history, apart from his chosen field of electrical engineering and other related subjects. He was, however, not one to give long speeches. “I” string was missing in his conversational violin. At the beginning of my working life, he forced me to quit a job I was miserable in, without giving me a long lecture; and consequently my career took a turn for the better.  

Our meetings were less frequent in last few years as we were both caught up in our respective careers. But whenever I visited him, I always found some nieces or nephews staying with him for some studying/coaching stints. Students of various courses were always hanging around for ‘guidance’ and were never discouraged/disappointed. His house was always open to all seekers of knowledge/refuge. He helped many people without making a song and dance about it. He was in the habit of buying the return tickets for many of the relatives who visited his home, particularly  for the condolence visits made after the deaths of his dad and mom. 

His quest for knowledge was eternal and his enthusiasm for research was boundless. He left us all in a hurry. I am sure he got news of some exciting research project being planned in the paradise land could not wait to join it. May his soul find many more exciting projects.