Rich Man

We all have that one person who has impacted us in ways that the world can’t see. For some, it is a stranger, for others, a friend. For some a parent, for others, a spouse or a cousin or someone they know.  In my case, it has been my grandfather.

While most stories show us that heroes are the truly invincible humans with super-human characteristics, real life shows us that heroes are those who silently, yet significantly, do little things that make a Big difference.  As quite rightly put by the show, The Wonder Years, “Growing up is watching your heroes turn human before your own eyes.” C'est la vie.

Like every family out there, mine too, has its own series of running jokes, which never fail to make us crack up. For us, one such joke involves my dad pulling his own father’s leg, calling him a “Rich Man”, every time he buys something small or mundane, even if a bag of chips, on his evening walk, for all of us. Although over the years, this had been just that, a joke; little did I know how rich my grandfather truly was, until one fateful day, when he fell ill. 

At an age of over a four-score, my granddad’s ways of entrusting the ways and means of nature, for a fulfilling existence on this planet, had never failed him. Yet, a gradually weakening digestive system coupled with an unfavourably cooked meal together made him find himself in the hospital for two nights, under the title of “food-poisoning”.

The doctors were not as concerned as we were, and seemed as assured themselves, as they were trying to make us, that he would be just fine. Yet, the family’s concerns though unnecessary, did keep my grandfather indoors for a week more, after being discharged from the hospital.

On the day when my grandfather resumed his evening walk, in the neighbourhood, after convincing his wife, children and grandchildren, that he was now, “Fighting fit” as he put it, I was fortunate enough to be employed to the duty of accompanying him, were he to need any assistance, “Just in case.”  What I set out for as a casual stroll around the place that I had lived in for over half a decade, turned out to be a revealing and rejuvenating experience that made me question a number of perspectives I had held for as long as I could remember.

We started out on the road that our house was situated on, and took a left towards the locality’s park. On the way, my grandfather stopped to give a toffee from the many he always carries in his pocket, to the watchman, at the gate of our apartment.  The smile on his face at that point, told me that this was a little ritual that was in no way new to them, although new to me. The same thing happened throughout the evening, all the way to the park. However, unlike the watchman, who would have surely heard from some neighbor in the building the reason for my grandfather’s absence for over a week, others were unable to hide their curiosity and relief, on seeing him after more than ten days.

Be it Mr. Gupta who was finally relieved to get back his companion to sing Naushad’s old Hindi songs, or Mrs. Patnaik’s granddaughter who ran from her mother to get her daily quota of chocolate from her ‘Santa Uncle’, it was almost as if the whole locale had come alive in a way I had never seen before. Slowly, it began making sense to me, as to why my grandfather grew so upset when he was made to miss his evening walk, even for a day. 

On reaching the park, my grandfather went to join his friends, who were sitting in a circle near the central fountain. Although they all smiled at me, and warmly invited me to join them, I knew from experience that this precious time they shared all together, was not something I wanted to be an invader in. Hence, after greeting all of them, I said that I was off to take a walk around the garden, and that I would meet my grandfather in half an hour. I took off jogging, but without my iPod or music, that turned into a drab. So instead, I stood by a tree, watching my grandfather and his friends, from a distance. 

Watching him laughing, talking and singing there, like a little boy who had just been reunited with his friends at school, after a long summer vacation, I realized that my dad had been right in calling him “Rich Man” all along. Sure, my grandfather had a lot of things he was proud of owning, materialistically. Yet nothing, I realized, made him happier or richer, than the smiles of the little children, who ran up to him from their swings, to greet him and get a chocolate each. Nor did anything make him feel more alive, than that moment, when he sat amidst his friends, ruminating of how much music in films had changed. It hit me that nothing could measure his true happiness like the fact that Mr. Pramod’s dog who never bonded with anyone, refused to go back from the park, without being fed a biscuit by my grandfather, as was their routine.  I could see, that irrespective of the clothes he wore, or the dwelling he came from, the fact that my grandfather is a good human being, is what appealed to the people around him.

Among the many socialite friends I’ve had, I fain believe that few of them have had the kind of happiness that I saw, on the face of my grandfather and all those people whom he interacted with on his walks everyday. While the former are of the opinion that happiness lies in materialistic things, the latter proved to me that day, that true happiness comes from within, and shines like an aura, permeating into the very atmosphere that surrounds them.

Someone once accurately said, “Great people don’t do extraordinary things. They do ordinary things in an extraordinary way.”  And looking back, I now realize that though I knew that my grandfather was a good man all along, it was then I saw the great man he was. I also realized that maybe, just maybe, the reason my father always called my grandfather a “Rich Man”, was because he too, had once gone on an evening walk with him. 

-Teen Adventurer