Didya leave something behind??

It’s funny how we are obsessed with death and continuously work towards the whole “how to delay/stop the aging process”. No I am not gonna start rambling about the multitude of de-aging products and them all now. I got thinking about what makes people remember us after we are long gone. Do we leave specific memories or we are remembered by the way we lead our lives? Does one have to be a famous personality for the world to remember them? Of course our families and close friends will always remember we existed but what about people we interact with on a everyday causal basis. Will they remember we existed? I wish I could imprint my memory on a whole lot of people who mattered to me so that they would tell random people about me years after I was gone.
What got me started thinking about this was a conversation I had this morning with my autowala. Ya I have (rather most of my family has) these regular autowala’s who stand outside my house. At almost any given point of time you can count on them to take you wherever you want, which is a true blessing because if you live in Mumbai you know that autowala’s throw worse tantrums than a 2 year old kid who’s missed his nap.
And I need to thank my grandfather who left us almost 10 years ago for their loyalty towards our family. I was in the 10th std when he passed away (a few weeks before my board exams) and I was truly devastated. Being the first grandchild in the family and the only one for almost 9 years I was thoroughly pampered by my g’parents and uncles and aunts. When I started going to nursery school I hated it! I used to cry and cry on the way to school that I didn’t want to go to school and the moment the bus driver heartily passed me on to my school teacher I started crying that I wanted to go back into the bus(even in my little mind I knew the bus would take me back home). In those days money was considered something that shouldn’t be taken very lightly and serious consideration was taken before spending any additional rupee. Even then, unfailingly my grandfather was at my school gate the moment I ran out of my class every single day. Then he would take me to a local fast food joint and we would share an idli sambhar and a special falooda. That is one memory is will always associate with him, even though there are lot more coz he’s always been a focal point of my growing up.
Anyways coming back to today, as always I was running late to get to work and I walked down and got into one of my regular autos. They all know where I go so unless I tell them differently, we are off to the station. About a minute into the 7 min ride to the station the rickshaw wala said that my g’mom was telling him about me when he took her someplace a few days ago (yea it kinda made me happy to hear good things about mah’self specially after storming out of the house coz dad and I had an argument in the morning and I was feeling lousy). One thing led to another and he mentioned that they all still very fondly remembered my grandfather. He said something which triggered this post, they all remembered Baba because he always treated them as one of his own, and developed a special kind of kinship with them. Baba was like this with every person he interacted with, like these rickshaw wala’s and even his factory workers come home every diwali and on his death anniversary after 8 years of the factory being shut down. And we have never thought of them as employees but almost as an extended family. I still have cuttings of wire pieces from the time I used to spend days in the factory (which supplied wires to big electrical companies) sitting and playing with all different colors and types of wire samples..

I wish I could be a little bit like him and spread love and happiness to people around me.
Baba….I love you and miss you …I know wherever you are you are always looking over us and will always guide us. I wish you hadn’t left us so suddenly and were here to watch us all grow up and I knew you’d be very proud of us. Love you forever..my dearest Babu..