Tag: Genes

Weekly Gratitude List – April 28, 2012

It is a measure of the state of my mind that instead of pressing the ‘Save’ key, I pressed the ‘Publish’ key and my weekly gratitude list got posted on Wednesday night.

It was of course very gracious of my readers to have thought that I had deliberately posted it early to keep them updated on what was happening vis a vis my father’s medical problem and I am grateful for that nice communication and the good wishes that accompanied them.

I hope to resume normal weekly postings henceforth and towards that end, let me first finish this week’s post.

On Thursday, my cousin Damodar and his doctor wife Asha, drove down from Navi Mumbai and it was the nicest thing that could have happened to me and my father. After studying all the reports, my cousin in law was able to calm dowm my father quite a bit and that was a sight to see. Damodar, being form the genetic pool, showed the same impatience that I feel and I felt gratified that it was genetic rather than something wrong with me! Both of them informed me that they had had the same problems that I have, with my father’s late elder brother, Damodar’s father. So, the behaviour too could be attributed to genetic factors!

Asha had prepared some delicious dishes early in the morning to be brought for us, and Mangal had done her bit at our end and we ended up with a grand lunch. I was sad to see them leave in the afternoon.

Friday was the first truly peaceful day that I had in many days. There were minor hiccups but within manageable limits. I went to the park and had a long sit with my friends and laughed a lot and shared many a story. It was noticed by my friends that I was back to normal too.

I hope that the future will be as peaceful as the last two days of the week.

Ancestors.

Welcome to the Friday Loose Bloggers Consortium where Akanksha, Anu, Ashok, Conrad, Delirious, gaelikaa, Grannymar, Magpie11, Padmum and I write on the same topic. Please do visit the linked blogs to get ten different flavours of the same topic. Today’s topic has been chosen by Delirious.

No, I do not intend to trace my ancestry to an ape. I shall leave that to the experts.

What a topic! Delirious with all her experience in China can write a tome on it, but I have to let my Muse really go into overdrive for this.

If, as it is believed in the East, our Ancestors are watching over us, mine would be spinning like tops after reading the first paragraph. Poor things, they must be wondering where they went wrong producing my kind of a descendant.

From all accounts that I have been able to source from various aunts, uncles and my parents over the many years, my ancestors, bar one, were all very colourful men. Sadly, there are not any stories about the women ancestors as, presumably, they played insignificant roles in the lives of those grand men of those days. My generation of siblings and cousins however will leave a lot of stories for our descendants about some stalwart women.

I would like to talk about one man who was not colourful in the traditional way that the others were. My father’s paternal grand father was a very religious person and was highly respected for his spiritual attainments. My father remembers him as being a majestic figure of over six feet height and a regal bearing. What my father remembers most about him was the way he would go for his morning bath in the river Kaveri and perform the morning prayers on the river bank before returning home. On his way back, all residents in the street would await his passing by and bow to him in respect and recognition of his status as a spiritual person. At home, he would spend most of him time in prayer, meditation and study of our Vedas and other religious texts. My father and his brothers maintained that the current relatively prosperous state of our family is due to the austerities that he undertook for the benefit of all beings.

While he was so absorbed, his brothers were more secular in their pursuits of happiness. Some of them were noted for their philandering, and some for short tempers and feudal ways. When I look at my family as it did when all my father’s siblings were alive and as it exists now, I can see some traits of the latter in many and some traits from the former in a few.

Some genes travel in one direction and some in other directions, I suppose.

If you were to ask me what genes I inherited, I should admit that I appear to have inherited both! Now, whether that is possible or not is for the Natural Selection Experts to decide, and I do not intend sweating over that question. It suffices that my ancestors were colourful one way or the other, as I used to be told that I was too, in my prime. I certainly qualify as a holy person, with many cigarette cinder burnt holes in many of my clothes, particularly singlets, my most favoured upper apparel at home.