Attending Funerals

Virginia Tech killing has sent chill feeling to all the conscious people across the world. This is one of the deadliest events in the history of America. There are various form of expressions for such event. From Indian point of view, I would like to write about the social complications which become obvious from this event.

Professor Loganathan was killed in the shooting. This killing reminds me a different concept.
Just a day before his death, Professor Loga called his parents and told, “You’re getting old, why do you want to stay in a remote village all alone? Your grandchildren would love to have your company here.” He had implored his parents similarly many times before and even goaded them to get passports. But, how many conservative parents are ready to listen their intelligent sons or daughters?

Professor Loganathan moved to the US from the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu to teach. He joined Virginia Tech in the late 1970s and had remained there ever since, working in the department of civil and environmental engineering.

He is survived by his wife, Usha, and two daughters.

His brother, Palanivelu, said his elder sibling had been "a bright boy since birth".
How difficult even for a bright son to convince even not so intellectual parents to have a prosperous life? I personally feel that all this happens because of lack of unlearning habits in the individuals.
I wrote a story of similar mature in my book “Unlearn Before U-learn” and tried to find answers for many hidden questions. I am reproducing the story for my entire blogger friends to make sense of these complicated questions of unlearning.

Why people are forced to join funerals?

What are the compulsions of parents? What are the options with sons or daughters? How to handle them?

Read the story to believe the similarity.


Binda, who had a problem with his father, forgot him for approximately fifteen years. During this period, he became the proud father of five sons and one daughter as per his mother’s wish because she had only one son and one daughter. He earned a little money. After exiling himself for so long, he felt homesick. He went home to his father. Mungi had also become mild by that time. He did not mind his son’s homecoming.
It is very difficult in this world to have faith in someone when you want to invest your hard-earned money. The best bet goes to respective hometown or village even if we are not very sure of any return or future. Binda also spent his hard-earned money of Rs 40,000 in his small village to build a pucca makan, so called a concrete building in the year 1974. He thought that since his children were small and there was not much expenditure, he could bear this burden and do something for his better future. Rs 40,000 in the seventies were a huge amount. As he made the Pucca makan, he made sure to take his entire family to the village every year to make them aware of reality and to get attached to the old culture and traditions. The children who were studying in various classes, used to hate spending that one month’s vacation in the village. They were too small to have a choice. In a poor family, when the elders live life on chance and luck, how can the children have choice? Time passed, every year the same routine continued till his eldest son Bhola joined a college in the city. He refused to join them. He became serious about his career. He saw opportunities. He saw that the engineering students used to study hard and enjoy life. He saw the magnificent difference between the people of the village who had no fun and hope in their lives and the people of the city who had a better and brighter life. He started realizing the differences. He studied hard and cleared the engineering entrance test.
Binda hardly visualized the repercussion of his son’s success. He celebrated his son’s admission in engineering college. He distributed sweets. He had lots of praise for his son in front of his colleagues and neighbours. In the neighbourhood, his status had improved overnight. People also congratulated him. He was thrilled at his son’s performance. The son was also delighted that he could do what his father had dreamt of since his childhood. Time flew and the other children also followed the path of the elder brother. Three of them joined engineering colleges and one did medicine. The house now had four engineers and one doctor. Binda hardly got help from his aspiring sons to look after his ancestral house. For many years, they could not take care of their investment at the hometown. Mungi was managing that. Once in a year, Binda used to go to village and spend some time to ensure that his retirement would pass happily. What a mirage!
For a working class family, it is a great privilege to put their children into good professional courses. Engineering and medicines were the sureshot professions of the 1980s, which made children from poor or middle class families executives. Bhola, being the eldest and brightest, finished his engineering and joined a good company. He was earning well and staying in a metro city. During that time, he witnessed the difference of life at various places in the country. The life at smaller and poorer places is like hell compared to life in metro cities. In a short span of a few years he saw the length and breadth of the country like India. He observed that in a small town, there is nil or very meagre opportunities while in the metros, you have tremendous opportunities. The difference in the quality of living is tremendous. Bhola was very conscious of these developments. He made sure that all his brothers could find jobs outside that small town and move to big places. There were significant changes of the status in the lives of his brothers. All were very well settled and earning good money. All were able to exploit the secular credentials of the country. During the 1990s, when Narshimaha Rao opened the economy, all brothers could buy cars and houses through bank loans. They tasted the growth in a rising economy.

Binda had to retire and he was planning to settle in his hometown. Bhola didn’t like this idea. He tried his best so that they settle in a metro city or at least a good city. But Binda did not agree. He did not have any responsibility to his rising sons. He went to the village with his wife. He again spent a lakh of rupees in repair his pucca makan. In the eighties too he had spent some eighty thousand rupees on the same makan. Bhola was frustrated, demoralized and disgruntled. He had so many dreams to keep his parents in a better state. When he joined engineering, he would study all night thinking that he will be able to earn enough to look after his poor and deprived parents. He will be able to take care of them. He will be able to provide them with all the basic comforts of life. But nothing happens in life in an easy way. Bhola could hardly get time from his highly demanding job to convince and educate his father about a better life. There is a limitation to wisdom. Your knowledge enhances till you keep reading and learning. You keep learning till you are compulsorily unlearning. Once you start working within your existing knowledge domain, you stop growing. The same thing happened with Binda. For fifty-eight years, he kept on changing and progressing, but when the question of reaping those fruits came, he almost behaved in the same fashion that his father had long ago. He did not listen to the advice of his bright and highly educated son. Is this what happened between the generations? Is this what happens in the family of a developing country? Who is going to understand?
There is a severe limitation of learning or even unlearning. Like learning good things, even unlearning bad things does not come naturally. One learns the same thing that he has hated in his environment unless he tries to change. He has no option to learn from anywhere. He learns all the unwanted behaviour from his environment unconsciously. He hardly comes to know about these developments. Binda also faced the same problems. He behaved in a similar fashion that his illiterate father had around 30 years ago. Binda never liked the way his sons married the girls of their choice and that too two of them from other castes. His wife also could not tolerate this. When the children wanted to enjoy their achievements with their parents, Binda and his wife were living a secluded life in the village. The changes in life are so fast and drastic that we hardly comprehend things even for our own comfort. We find difficult to bother for our basic necessities. While all the children were struggling in their respective jobs including one in Boston, US, their parents were living a miserable and deprived life in a village. Bhola had felt from the beginning that the village property was not worth maintaining; rather it was more a burden than an asset for an educated person. He was correct. The parents could not live even for a year in that remote and miserable place especially after staying for thirty years in town. They changed their location to a small town at Dhanbad but continued with a deprived life despite the richness of assets in rupees and dollars.
Life hardly gives one the luxury or choice of a good life in a bad place. Bhola tried his best to make his parents dispose off their property in the village and small town and join him in the metro. But it did not materialize. Rather, his illiterate mother even suggested at the age of sixty six to his highly educated and most successful son of forty four should spend a few lakhs to build a house in the small town. What is the compulsion of poverty? Bhola rememberd Rs 40,000 spent in the seventies in the village. Today, in the 21st century, it has become a liability after forty years. The house has become depleted and managing it is difficult. Because if you go to the village, law and order is so bad that you are not sure whether you will be able to come back. How could you think of anything else? Since the 1970s, the equity capital in India has increased 460 times; it means that if Binda had spent Rs 40,000 in equity in the 1970s, today in 2005, he would have got Rs 40,000 X 460 – Rs 1,84,00,000 (approx Rs 2 crores). Forget about the Rs 80,000 he spent in the 1980s and the one lakh he spent in 2001 on the same house in the same village. What a richness of continuation of poverty! Can help from the World Bank or United Nations be able to eradicate the inbuilt poverty in the traditional system? Could the advice of Jeffery D Sachs help this self-imposed poverty? Is eradication of poverty going to take a few generations in developing countries even in the 21st century?

Bhola’s illiterate mother hardly understands mathematics. In a developing world, there is a very different kind of inertia. Clear and open mathematics is not understood. The common man is hardly aware or even conscious about common ideas. The parents educate their sons or daughter, but they are not ready to listen to their advice and not even ready to take their support. They do not believe their wisdom. They do not rely on them. They are not ready to enjoy the newly achieved luxury of a good life. Their ego system remains at a peak. Their decision making systems remain of 1960s in the twenty-first century. This results in a total waste of their lifetime efforts. They remain deprived, poor and miserable. Binda also passed his last days in a similar fashion and one fine day, amidst all this prosperity, he left this world like his father, Mungi.

Like father like son. Binda’s youngest son, a civil engineer employed in the Public Works department in the United States of America along with his civil engineer wife, a Gujarati Brahmin girl and their one son and one daughter came to the small town of Dhanbad (where there is no landing facility) to pay homage to his father. What a rich homage to a deprived father, deprived of basic living facilities!

Today, when Professor Loganathan’s parents and relatives were provided passports and immediate visa to join the funeral, it verified my faith of the unlearning needs. Parents and relatives were obliged for this kind support of media and government but what happened to that intelligent son who gave the life to ensure that their parents visit USA at least once.

What a great tragedy of developing sons?

Sons have to give life to ensure a simple change.

Are parents in all over the world listening to ensure change? Can we unlearn to enjoy life?

Take Hard Decision in Lighter Moment!