Remembering father on first anniversary - Krishna

Here are some thoughts I shared with some of my friends here in US, most of whom knew father only through me.
-Krishna




Dear friends,

On the first death anniversary of my father - I wanted to find an appropriate way to mark the event and thought that remembering him with some of my friends is a good way.

Some of you know my father in person a little.  Most of you know him more through my words.  In fact, it is my view that all of you know him much better than you may realize - because I am so deeply influenced by him and you know me quite well.  Today I want to describe that influence with some fondness.

True & False:

For a long time I grew up thinking that I am very different from my father.  That is still true - yet, I also believe that I am very similar to him.  It is this dichotomy, this fascination with seeming paradoxes that I remember most fondly about him.  Several innocuous incidents in my childhood must have laid foundation for my fascination with paradox.  Couple of things I particularly remember are: One day he came back from a concert and described the ease with which the artist sang and went on to say - "Singing easily is really difficult".  Another time he talked about a Sanskrit poem which says: Self is to be sacrificed for the sake of family, family for the sake of the village, village for the sake of nation - but everything should be sacrificed for the sake of one".  Later on I realized the non-circular interpretation of it, but I was very struck by the seeming circular nature of it and realized the beauty in it's mathematical imprecision.  Riddles like these, some simpler, some deeper and other wiser - forever left a deep impression on me.  Conveying meaning through seeming contradiction forever holds my fancy.  Only years later - I see and recognize the zen like quality in some of his sayings.

Greatness & Goodness

Much of his life, my father talked about "greatness".  He inculcated this feeling in all around him that,  in anything one does - one has to strive for greatness.  His definition of greatness had a very wide latitude.  In fact - he would argue that you define your own idea of what it is to be great and attempt to attain it.  Through it all he exuded a sense of confidence, a sense of pride.  These feelings swept me at times, but also made me uneasy and (perhaps) pushed me towards the ideal of "goodness" as opposed to "greatness" at first.  Only in recent life have I realized a larger frame of reference that can hold both these as mutually compatible ideals.  When I coined the phrase: "It is good to be great, and it is great to be good".  I had the satisfaction of sharing it with him and seeing him relish it.

Progressiveness & Classicism:

Another set of opposing strengths that my father displayed simultaneously are progressiveness and classicism.  My father was one of the most progressive people I knew.  He always looked to the future, placed the interests of the next generation above those of previous and current. When he talked about his priorities,  for a while I thought it was the most logical - and thus unremarkable - thing to do.  Only when it came to displeasing people of previous generation, had I realized how hard it was and how determined he was. Yet, he can also be described as a stauch "classisist".  He was in love with classical aspects of all finer aspects of life - be it the classical music or classical literature or classical thinking.  Again, when I was young, I found his intensity of dislike for some of the modern trends unsettling at first.  But when I saw him appreciate selected things in modern era - I knew that he can be very welcoming of newer trends too.

These two forces came to be joined during my marriage ceremony when he gave his full support for our idea to pick and choose the best aspects of a traditional marriage and marry them with modern sensibilities.  I wanted to find a way similarly to find meaningful ways to mark this day - in addition to to the traditional ceremony when possible, in lieu of when not - each year.  For this year, it is my sharing my thoughts like this.  In addition, I also wanted to share something physical.  My mother made a symbolic gesture of sending me money drawn from his first pension cheque several months ago.  I was never sure of how to spend it.  Finally I thought on this anniversary I will share it with you in the form of books - many loved by me (indirectly by him as well) and some specifically by him.  A book will arrive at each of your homes in the next few days from the list below.  If you happen to own that book already, please feel free to donate it to someone else.

• Tao Is Silent - Raymond Smullyan
• Good Poems - Garrison Keiller
• The Mind's I - Douglas Hofstadter
• Godel Escher Bach - Douglas Hofstadter
• Impossibility: John D. Barrow
• Who Knows - Raymond Smullyan
• What is Life - Erwin Schrodinger
• Siddartha - Herman Hesse
• I thought my father was God - Henry Holt
• Themes and Variations - Aldous Huxley

-Syam Krishna