Aajoba is what we Maharashtrians call our grandfather. My mother being the eldest among her siblings, I was the first grandchild born to my maternal grandfather and since everyone around called him Baba (what we call our fathers in Marathi), I too started calling him Baba. As the number of grandchildren increased in the house, with each grandchild the name for my grandpa changed. After having a total of 6 grandchildren, the common name decided by everyone was Aba (Short for Aajoba).
He was a person of Modern times, always updated. Born in 1930s, in a typical Maharashtrian family with around 8 siblings, being the eldest of all, he completed his graduation, Bachelor in Science, Agriculture, looked after his family, Married a beautiful woman, had 3 children and after marrying away all the 3 children according to all the customs and traditions and finally retiring from work life, he lived his life in leisure. Oh! I forgot to mention, while having his 3rd child, he was completing his Engineering in Agriculture degree as well. Yes, he is a Double graduate!!!
Computers came in India after his retirement and my birth, he bought one, self tutored and started using computer. He never took anyone’s help. I remember him making videos by scanning all our pictures he had, taking it on PowerPoint slides, adding clapping and many other audio clips. Then, he also used to look after all the accounts for his complex, so he did all this in Excel, something which seems difficult to many youngsters in todays time as well. Not only that, he taught us how to play various games like cards, Wolf 3D used to be our favorite. He also taught my grandma the basic skills and Wolf 3D, obviously. I remember sitting on her lap while she used to play and mimic the characters.
Not only computers, he had to have everything new. Be it keyboard and mouse set or printers or even mobile phones. He always was updated and self taught, be it any device. After the breakout of Covid followed by lockdown, he educated himself more on the topic “Online shopping”. I remember him always asking “only one?” anytime any parcel arrived, which happened almost every alternate day. We used to wonder how many more he has ordered!
I lost my grandfather on 4th September, 2021, an incident which we are still unable to get over. We miss him dearly in every small thing like, he was very particular about all his stuff and liked no one touching it, except a few members. And now if by any chance, we find his wardrobe in mess, we get into a panic, thinking what if he finds this out!! His wardrobe was up to date, he had clothes for every event, be it marriage, casual meetings, travelling, Jungle safari, even as basic as a morning walk. And after losing him, we grandchildren started claiming to get his stuff and we didn’t desire to miss any of our favorite things. One of my cousins has almost all of grandpa’s wardrobe.
Here are a few short fun incidents that happened in my grandfather’s life, which he was totally unaware of. My grandfather had lost his hearing ability due to an accident in his young age, when my mom and her siblings were still kids. He used hearing aid but, it rarely helped him as he started growing older. Later on, his hearing aid made some sound, which was loud enough to make you think and wonder that there was something wrong and needs acknowledgment. The reason for this sound was a small air gap between his ear and hearing aid machine. Due to Covid and work from home situation, I and one of my cousins used to visit them every 2 months or so, for a span of at least 15 days. It made them happy and we helped them by running errands for them. Not just that, but we got some change from our daily boring life too.
Once I, my cousin and grandpa went to a supermarket to buy some grocery and as usual, grandpa was wearing his hearing aid. After sometime the hearing aid started leaking and hence, made the loud sound. Some attendent from the supermarket noticed the sound. She, then told about it to some of her colleagues. They all started looking the cause of the sound. They checked the AC, some other gadgets and I understood what was happening. I told this to my cousin and we (I and my cousin) decided to leave those guys in suspense. Yeah!! evil of us! But as we moved away from that aisle, they looked for the sound for another 5 mins and then the sound started to fade as we moved away from them.
Later on after a few months, he was required to be scanned so we had to visit a radiology center. Similar to the above incident, a few mins after entering the center, the sound was on. Some staff members started noticing the sound and hence, started looking for the source. As it was a radiology center, there were a lot many machines, which have ability to cause some issue and start beeping, so I decided to tell them about the source and cause of the sound. Otherwise, you know, it would have panicked everyone around.
This is a small token of our love for you Aba. We all miss you and losing you has impacted our lives a lot. There are many such stories and many more stuff to write and remember about my grandfather but lets jut keep it short for now.
PiggyTrail 