Someone I can never forget…

I had met this man in June 2007, first thing that I had noticed about him was how shrimpy he was. His spectacles and the wrinkles on his face said that he was in his mid sixties. He is rude that was the first impression I had about him.

He never got along people that easily or let people know how kind he really was but I was very lucky that he had easily opened up to me and cared for me a lot in a very short span of time. J

Mr.Balakrishnan, a respected, retired accountant of one of the best mills in the city was now working as a peon cum accountant for a very small BPO consultancy which wouldn’t have paid him more than one fourth of the salary his age and experienced deserved. But he never complained about his JOB PROFILE or the Salary he got.

This pious Brahmin had the courage to adopt a 6 days old baby without thinking about how his young son and wife would react. And he stuck to his decision even after facing all the tantrums that his family threw at him. One needs real courage to do that isn’t it?

I was nobody to him but….

He never called me with my name, at first he had addressed me as“MADAM”, I just could not let such an elderly person call me Madam. And so he started calling me “Kuttima” (something like Child, in Tamil). After knowing him for a period of around 20-25 days I had to depart to move on further in my life. But he took efforts to call me frequently and be in touch. Just 3 weeks after I had last met him, I got a call asking for Mr. Balakrishnan, thinking it be a mere coincidence that a wrong number asked for Mr. Balakrishnan, putting aside his thought I carried on with my work and after a couple of hours I got a call from a friend (Jayanthi) saying “he is no more, he has had a heart attack sometime back”. When I told Jayanthi about the coincidence and she made it clear to me that it wasn’t a coincidence and I got that call as he had my number in his pocket and people around him contacted me first thinking am his family. I was totally touched after knowing that and before I realized tears rolled down…

Balakrishnan sir, you are always and always will be remembered by me and Jayanthi…