I am talking about my grand father J Shivananda Shastry. He was a versatile person and to be frank I have never seen any person of his decade who could possibly be so active and energetic at that age. I feel truly blessed to have grown under him. It was last year when he expired at the age of 96. I am writing this article in his remembrance.
Till today I feel proud to be his grand son and I cherish the joyful moments I had with him. He was a doctor by profession. He had served so many patients across many villages through out his career. By the time I was born he had retired from his government duties and he had a clinic in Aimangala (on NH4 near Chitradurga) where he was treating his patients. Daily he used to commute in a bicycle. Even today I am amused at the energy he had because I feel so exhausted and tired when I go to office daily in a bus.
During my school days I had Sanskrit as part of my curriculum. It was difficult for me to absorb the subject. I used to take his help to translate the Sanskrit text to Kannada/English so that I can understand. He was the only person in house who had knowledge of Sanskrit. As he had practiced Ayurveda he was well versed in the subject and he used to help me out. He was a regular visitor to the City Central Library in Jayanagar 5th block. He used read a lot of books and the most amusing thing is he used to complete any book within a couple of days. At last it so happened that there were no new books in the library which he had not read. I feel sometimes very much encouraged to read books like him, but somehow laziness creeps in and it takes almost couple of months to complete one book and then I feel I need some rest before picking the next book.
He was a very good cook and when my mother was not there he used to take full responsibility of preparing food. I used to assist him even though my assistance was of little help to him. There were days when he had prepared lunch and got it packed for my school. Even at the age of 90 he never gave up is cooking. Whenever he got an opportunity he not only cooked for himself but he also cooked for me and of course he prepared delicious and healthy food. One thing I must remember about him is his ability to balance his eating habits whenever he fell ill. He used to recover very soon just by managing his eating habits. He used to suggest the same to all his patients.
He used to narrate me stories of some of the cases which he attended as a doctor. Once a villager was pierced by a bullock and his intestine had come out. My grand father being the only doctor in the village had to treat him (well if it was in Bangalore the doctor would have asked the patient to come to hospital/clinic and then would have asked for verification from police in order to ensure that it was not a murder… and at last would have hollowed our pockets). With a lot of courage he had put back the intestine and told him that he had somehow stitched the ruptured intestine and gave him some medicines which would heal the wound. My grand father had lost all the hope he had about the patient being alive after the operation. To his surprise after one year the same villager came and thanked my grand father because he was alive only because of him. Can you imagine the kind of satisfaction one would have got by saving a life?
When I was doing by Engineering in Computer Science, I had to do a lot of projects as part of my curriculum. One of the projects which I was doing was a real time simulation of the stars in the sky. I and my friend were trying to simulate the movement of Moon and we found it difficult. As my grand father was following the status of the project he came to know about the difficulty we faced. He had learnt about the mathematics behind almanac when he was young. In the almanac, some mathematical formulae are used to track the movement of moon. After so many years he had forgotten the mathematical logic behind it. It is indeed acceptable at his age because I often tend to forget things at this age!. He was rather not happy about not solving the problem and so he had not slept one full night because he was thinking what the solution to the problem was.
I used to discuss with him about what is internet, programming… He used to get amused by the technological development. He often used to ask fundamental questions which were difficult to answer, not because it was difficult to explain to him but we ourselves didn’t know the fundamentals well. He always used to question us about the status of our projects and he used to wonder why these guys take so many days to complete a single project. I really didn’t know how to put our efforts in a way he could understand. But through out my education although he didn’t teach me or preach me, he made me learn by myself. I realize the importance of it now.
I had many more wonderful moments which I am unable to script it here because they were so elaborate that I probably should write a book or I found it difficult to put it in words. I hope not only me, but anyone who has come across him would probably find it difficult to write about him.
