ROOTS – Part I

Dad was tired, he said he needed rest for now; I helped him to sit down and sat next to him. It was a pleasant evening, Dad was training with his prosthetic leg and today he was doing very good. A year ago he had to amputate his left leg due to lack of blood circulation. My mind was drifting towards the hospital days and to distract my thoughts I asked him about his childhood.

One of his favourite memories is the one where he and his friends used to collect cashews and sell it for their pocket money. They used this cash to watch movies from the nearby theatre. I was so amazed to hear that they were involved in creating our village sports ground. In their times, the sports Ground was situated at another place and the owner sold the place, so they had to move all the clay to the new property and thus giving birth to our new sports ground.

When he was in 10th Standard or so, my Grandpa came back from Singapore losing his job and he was furious about anything and everything. Grandpa asked my Dad to leave the house and after that he stayed with his relatives. He stayed with his uncle in Pettah, where he took an admission for him in the ITI and that’s where he learned welding. One of our uncles was working in Siemens Chennai and he asked my Dad to join them, so he took a train to Chennai and started his first Job. He worked in Chennai for two years and was taking care of the family by now. He came to know about the opportunity in Mumbai Branch and by now his sister was married and was settled in Mumbai.

The Job in Mumbai excited him and luckily his supervisor liked him very much and he was assigned to take care of contract jobs in various parts of Northern India. When he was in Mumbai he stayed with his sister. After three years, Grandma asked our relative to take a visa for him to Dubai. They pledged his sister’s gold for the visa and ticket amount. This time he didn’t take a train, rather a flight to Dubai! 

While he was working in Dubai, he came to know that opportunities and payment in Abu Dhabi was comparatively much more than Dubai, so he decided to shift to Abu Dhabi. Eventually he got a job there in Power House Electrical company, which was a government job. It was the happiest day of his entire life.

By now the mosquitoes were starting to attack us. I told Dad that it’s better to get inside now and I helped him get up and walked back towards our house.