Kalivaradhan

Kalivaradhan (1946 - 2021), my father was from Annavalli, a village south of Cuddalore , on the road/rail towards Vridhachalam.

Even though he lost his father when he was just 2+ years, his mother lived with us in our home until 1990. He married Jeeva , my mother in 1971 at Thiruvannamalai.

Extended Family

His mother was the second child among 4 sisters born in Thuthipattu Village. Two of the elder sisters married into the same family in Annavalli, marrying two brothers. The elder brother had one daughter. Thambumalla, the younger brother had two children, a daughter and son i.e my father. When the elder brother died, Thambumalla took care of both families. He also arranged the marriage of his brother’s daughter to Muthuvaradarajulu in Muthukrishnapuram village, roughly 18kms away. Unfortunately Thambumalla too died within a short time. Thambumalla’s father-in-law shifted his family to Annavalli along with two unmarried daughters to take care of the two widowed daughters and the grand kids of his second daughter. He too passed away soon after getting the two daughters married off to Bahoor and Vadavadi.

Early Years

My father grew up under the care of his grandfather. He remembered the hardworking nature of his grandfather who did the business of hulling paddy besides farming. Once his grandfather died, he became the only male member of the household which consisted of the two widowed sisters and two children of the 2nd sister. The family had difficulty to feed so many members. The elder widowed sister moved to Muthukrishnapuram to live with her only daughter and Muthuvaradarajulu, her son-in-law.

Muthuvaradarajulu supported my father’s 3 member family still living in Annavalli to the best of his ability. He himself had 4 children besides 3 elder members to support. During this period, my father sold milk to the local tea shop. Every day, my father took the milk in the early morning to the shop. He will wait there for the money to be paid by the tea shop owner from the proceeds of his tea sales. On some days, he also listened to the quality complaints about the amount of water in the milk, while waiting for the money. To farm their land, he also made trips to get farmhands whenever such needs arose. Being a small kid, he was always made to wait or ignored on such occasions.

Growing up and schooling

During these tough times, my father savored his brief visits to his more prosperous relatives at Muthukrishnapuram or to Vadavadi.

As he grew older, the support structure slowly improved after his elder sister was married off to Rajaram, Krishnapuram. This marriage was arranged by Muthuvaradarajulu, the only adult male member of the immediate extended family.

He did his secondary education at St.Joseph High School, Kammiyampettai. Everyday he took two trains to reach his school. The first train Vridhachalam-Cuddalore passenger train allowed him to reach Cuddalore OT, now known as Cuddalore Port Junction(CUPJ) from Annavalli station, which no longer exists after conversion to broad gauge. The second leg involved travel on the Mayiladuthurai-Villupuram Passenger train, from CUPJ to Thirupadiripuliyur(TDPR) station. The school was less than 1 km walk along the railway track. In the evenings, the reverse journey had to be undertaken to reach home.

He had to make annual trips to Krishnapuram or Muthukrishnapuram to pay for year end exam fees. He successfully completed his SSLC exams in 1962.

After his studies, he did odd jobs like Malaria control scheme.

Bank Employment

His Uncle Rajaram,Krishnapuram took him to meet Rajaram,the Secretary of South Arcot Central Co-operative Bank(SACC) for employment. Based on his advice, my father got enrolled in a one year Diploma programme in Co-Operative training college in Vellore . The course and stay was sponsored by his uncle Rajaram. He could only pass the exam on his second attempt. Finally, he got a clerical position in the bank, thanks to Secretary Rajaram somewhere around early 1970. With this, rightfully, his financial struggles should have ended.

Participation in strike

My father participated in an employee strike during late 1980. My father and few more colleagues were earlier doing the job of supervising various co-operative stores across the district. This was both prestigious and provided travel allowance. Once the strike ended, my father and his team members were transferred to the farthest places from Cuddalore and my father went to Thirukovilur. He stayed right above the branch itself saving on the rental and came back home twice a week. He used to travel mostly on town buses to cover this 60+ km distance. When i asked him for the reason, he explained me the cost difference per trip and how it accumulated over multiple trips.

Bank bifurcation

In 1993, when Cuddalore district was bifurcated, the SACC bank was also bifurcated. The bank employees were given the option to choose, subject to vacancy availability. Some of neighbors like Boopalan and Sriramulu choose Villupuram district due to proximity to their native places and potential promotional opportunities. However in our household, my mother generally had a very poor opinion about Villupuram. So this bifurcation did not result in any major changes except in my father’s seniority.

Computer section

When he came to know about impending computerization efforts in the bank, he joined a computer institute to learn computers. He managed to complete a Diploma certificate course and convinced the bank management to make him part of the computer section. This allowed him the privilege of working in a air-conditioned room. There were just four staff in the newly started computer section and he was very proud about being one of them. The initial work involved data entry for all assets and liabilities of the bank in addition to performing daily and weekly backup. I remember them having some powerful Intel 386/486 servers running DOS on top of Novell NetWare. All of them included floppy drives. Later, when the computerisation was rolled out to branches, my father and his team went to various branches for training the staff.

Other Ventures

Fertilizer Retail shop

Somewhere in late 1970’s he started a fertilizer retail shop in Kanniakovil named Anand Agro agencies. I came to know about this venture entirely from my mother, when i found some booklets carrying this name in our home. Due to lack of sufficient supervision, the business was not profitable. Luckily just before selling away the shop, government revised the price of fertilizers overnight and my father came out of this venture without too much of a loss. For some unknown reasons, the building in which this shop was located went into disuse and bore that name until mid 90’s, which i saw during my trips to Pondicherry .

Investment in Shares

Between late 1988 and early 1990’s the whole country went into an IPO frenzy. The excesses later culminated in Harshad Mehta scam↗ , which led to the establishment of NSE India and additional powers being vested to SEBI in 1992. Somewhere during this period, my father’s friend Purushothaman invested in shares and claimed to be making money. So my father too invested few thousands in an mega-IPO of Usha Rectifier Corporation (India) Ltd in late 1988-89. Well the next time, we talked about shares in our home was in late 2002 during Canara Bank IPO. This was my first Indian investment and i have to overcome very strong objections from my mother . She relented only after a lot of convincing from me that I’m doing with necessary knowledge only and not based on advice from friend.

Post Retirement

He finally retired as a Branch manager while working at Panruti Branch around 2004.

Books and Movies

My father enjoyed reading tamil magazines and novels. He highly regarded authors like Kalki, Sujatha, Balakumaran, Saavi etc. He was not a great fan of historical fiction writers like Saandilyan. Later he read many monthly novels published by G Ashokan by authors like Rajeshkumar, Pattukottai prabhakar, Suba etc. He enjoyed translated works of Ra Ki Rangarajan in Kumudam magazine and thus inculcated reading habit in me.

My father enjoyed watching movies. He took me to a number of movies that he considered appropriate for me. Besides tamil movies, i remember watching a number of English action movies like Indiana Jones series, James Bond movies. He also took me to Jackie Chan movies and science fiction movies like “Honey I shrunk the kids” etc..

Moderation in language

I never saw my father using vulgar words in his lifetime. The most harshest words that he used against me were “Non-sense” or “Idiot” and that too not more than twice or thrice in my entire life. I never saw him using such words against anyone else, whether to their face or behind them. I never saw him verbally abuse or scold anyone. At the maximum, he will ask, why you did this? He never talked bad about anyone, in fact i never heard him complaining about anyone. If he has nothing good to tell, he will rather not talk about the person or incident.

The odd one

During one of the visits to a theater, i was surprised to see a person named Balakrishnan addressing my father “ennada eppadida irukka?”. My father also responded in the same way. Until then, i had never seen my father talking like that. I asked my father if the other guy was his childhood friend. When he replied in negative and instead clarified that he’s his bank colleague, i asked him for the reason for addressing in such a way. My father explained that since he could not make Balakrishnan speak without using “ada, poda”, he decided to use the same language with him.

Patience

Even though he was physically fit and well built, he never used it except on rare occasions while boarding a crowded bus to get seats for us. He always preferred to wait for the next bus instead of fighting to board a crowded bus. Even when visiting crowded places like Tirupathi, he preferred to wait or walk instead of running. Of course, he will strongly object when someone tried to jump queue ahead of him. By nature he avoided fights.

Changing Date of Birth

The date of birth as recorded in his SSLC certificate was 22-09-1944. My father worked to get this changed to his actual date of birth over multiple years. He got a Judicial order to reflect this change in Date of Birth. Unfortunately, this change was not accepted by his employer on his first attempt. So he waited for years until a new Secretary took charge and took up the request afresh and finally got this accepted around 1995 or later. He meticulously maintained the personnel records as published by his bank to track this issue. When i asked him, why he took so much trouble for this change, he explained that this will allow him to work for 20 months extra as compared to the earlier date.

Getting Caste Certificate

His success in getting a caste certificate for me benefited in gaining admission to a DOTE1 college, TPGIT i.e a government college. Without this caste certificate, i would have studied in Perundurai, where my friend who got nearly same cutoff as me joined. He paid an annual tuition fees of around ₹35000 compared to ₹2500, that i paid. This process to get caste certificate involved my father following with our local VAO over multiple years. The only money paid by my father for getting this certificate was around ₹20 to the Taluk office assistant for putting a seal. My father was always against paying bribes to get a job done quickly and instead preferred to wait longer, if required.