My grandfather died yesterday.

He was 92 years old. Brimming with curiosity & wit until the end.

His time with us exemplified this messy, beautiful journey we call life.

He lived deliberately.

But #Covid called & we didn’t have the luxury of saying goodbye. 1/n

This is the earliest photo we have of him.

Trichy, Tamil Nadu, 1938.

Ham Radio was his thing. He made this one himself, aged 10.

It was to be the first sparkof a life-long obsession with gadgets & telecommunications.

His wedding photo with my grandmother (1954).

They went on to have 4 sons & 2 daughters (my mother their youngest child).

They struggled immensely with a life blighted by financial instability. My mother often went to sleep hungry.

But they raised & educated all.

1977. My mother (blue dress) with 3 of her brothers, her sister & her parents.

They weren’t rich.

But in a world where some are so poor that all they have is money, and where loneliness is perhaps the greatest poverty of all - they had each other.

He adored his grandchildren.

Here he is with a one year old rogue (me) at his son’s engagement,1987.

After I moved to he would kill the fatted calf (metaphorically - we’re Hindus after all) for my visits to .

He would trek across Madras to buy me jalebis & red bananas

He was a sponge for knowledge. He would read anything from New Scientist to Which? magazine.

He was a YouTube virtuoso. He had no greater love than mobile phones.

His favourite haunt was Chennai’s Ritchie Street - An absolute haven of dubiously legitimate electronic goods.

After my grandmother died (1996) he lived with his eldest son & close-knit family.

He was a quietly brilliant patriarch, cheering my cousins on with skiving school or first loves or sponsoring their nights.

The last time I saw him and my grandmother together (1995)

It was a stroke of luck that he got to see my first son.

I’ll always treasure this photo (2014).

And I’ll regret that he never got the chance to meet my second son and hold him in his arms.

We had booked tickets for this August. Best laid plans, and all that.

He would have a massive grin on his face whenever his family was all together.

He’d potter around with his Bluetooth speakers & debate the relative merits of iPhone vs Android into the small hours of the morning.

He would have detailed monologues about 5G in his sleep.

This photo with my mother from 2018.

His 90th birthday celebrations , with inexplicably Dora-the-Explorer themed hats.

You can be a passenger through life, or you can live it deliberately. He - to quote the Dead Poets’ Society/Thoreau - sucked the marrow out of it.

The human cost of Covid - the stories behind mortality statistics - reach so far beyond just ‘loss’.

The catharsis of infinitisemally small acts - holding your loved one’s hand, being with them as they breathe their last - have been a heavy price to pay.

He died alone.

In , funerals are ritualistic & involved.

There’s a pyre The eldest son lights it.

“The only hope, or else despair. Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre. To be redeemed from fire by fire”. TS Eliot

There is catharsis in these acts. And that is what Covid has wrought from us.

Reminiscing about his life with my mother yesterday.

And it hits you that grief doesn’t occur in a vacuum.

It intertwines with & imbues a circus of other emotions. Memories that make you laugh uncontrollably. Tears of joy mingled in with the sadness.

He’d have it no other way.

We all unravel into the same delicate threads eventually. But I wanted to mark his life in this thread.

As his ashes are scattered into the Bay of Bengal today, I’m thankful for my good fortune to have had him in my life.

Rest In Peace, LS Rajaram (9/3/1928 - 5/7/2020)