Remembering Appa on his birthday

It is Appa's birthday today, and I am a hairball of emotions. 

I am thinking about how we celebrated his birthday last year - not on his actual birthday, but when he was here in Boston in July last year. My parents in law were here for the summer, and my sister & family had brought Appa to drop him here, and he was to fly back to India a couple of weeks later. Both his daughters, his sons-in-law, and all four grandchildren were here, and I do not remember the last time this was the case. It was a good occasion for us to celebrate, and we celebrated his 70th, a few months after his (fake) official birthday, and a few months before his actual one. I had to think hard about how he would like his birthday to be celebrated, and we settled on doing a puja at home. Lots of new arrangements needed to be done - had to cook for about twenty people, Indian flowers needed to be organized, etc etc. It was super fun and satisfying to do the puja, that we kinda forgot about Appa's birthday. We wound up cutting the cake late at night. I must admit, it did not cross my mind even for a second, that it would be his last birthday celebration. 

I miss him in so many ways, big and small. I have lost (yet another) anchor, and I feel untethered and unmoored. I miss his ever encouraging words, his untiring follow up on administrative tasks I slack on, the weekly calls when we would compete to be the first to say "you don't speak to me these days". I no longer have any access to any of the goings on in the extended family - a wedding here, the birth of a child there, an illness somewhere else, someone visiting home, or someone he ran into in a random place who enquired after me. That connection, tying me to the family I was born in, has been severed.

I am also thinking of how we celebrated his birthdays. I don't really remember. At some point, he started celebrating his star birthday, which would fall on a day within a month of his actual birthday, but on an unpredictable day. I don't remember tracking his star birthday, and as an adult I would know only if he told me, and I'd be like "happy birthday!". Not that he wasn't a big believer in celebrations. He was, and he did celebrate. Any occasion would turn into a joyous day to celebrate. With good food, sweets and fruits, for anyone in the vicinity. 

But what comes to mind are not his birthdays. I remember mine, and most recently my fortieth. Maddy and I turned forty on the same day (we share a birthday, duh!) during the pandemic, and we still had severe movement restrictions. Appa had organized forty different varieties of sweets and snacks (each in its own box, about quarter kg each, numbered to be sure) and delivered to us at home. How he pulled that off is a testament to his creativity. 

I am also thinking about his humble beginnings, his struggles in early childhood, his broken heart, the tribulations he encountered while I was growing up. How he never gave in to any negativity, how he found a way out of mighty complex situations, how he would do all that with a beaming smile. There is much to celebrate about his life, on the day he was born. 

I remember the several Shraddhanjalis in his honor, the hundreds of people who called, texted and met us in person in the days following his demise, and how they all remembered fondly what KVS had been for them. It was a humbling experience, in that, I had no idea who a large majority of these people were, no idea Appa had done anything for them. The legacy he has left behind is a large one. His shoes are not easy to fill. I know and understand that they are not mine to fill. However, the hope and prayer is that some of those bright rays did fall on me, and I take a leaf out of his life and do things I can be proud of, as his daughter.