Chidananda
Kelkar’s main grouse in life was
about his diminutive stature. “Deva,
why did you make me so puny?” he would ask, in a scolding and plaintive tone,
to God, everyday in the morning.” His morning puja was incomplete without this part admonishment; part cry for
help. “Now that you’ve already done the damage, please give me the moral, if
not physical courage and strength to overcome all my adversaries in this world,
he would continue, all the while cleaning the photos and statuettes of the
various deities, carefully arranged in his puja
corner, in the kitchen of his 2 room house which was on the second floor of
a chawl that had weathered many a
storm, yet remained standing proudly, much like the 56 year old Chidananda himself.
His adversaries were all those who
occupied the cosmos of his worldly existence; such as his teasing neighbors, unkind relatives, jeering
so-called friends, why, sometimes even his 20 year old college-going son and his wife, Suvarna, who occasionally, ribbed
him about his height and weight, though in a good-natured way!
The copyright of this story is with Mrs. Priya Ramesh Swaminathan.
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