Our ‘Nanna’ passed onto an enlightened plane on July 01st ….
But why a Jedi warrior?
A Jedi seeks knowledge and enlightenment through discipline and consistency.
My earliest memory of my Father is reading out to me from a book called ‘ Aircraft Aircraft’ …I was all of 6 months old…..too young to know my Dad was programming me toward a lifelong love of airplanes and anything aerospace.
Knowledge
Back in the late 60s early 70s when finding good publications to gather knowledge was difficult…Our Dad always had the latest Time Magazine, Popular Mechanics, Discover among a multitude of publications considered benchmarks even today. His logic was knowledge is power and he always worked towards empowering himself to knowledge. We had not one but two sets of encyclopedias at home ( Britanica / Funk & Wagnals )…was the original Google.
Discipline
Every morning up at 0600hrs and coffee at 0615hrs…come rain or shine. Nanna was the first person in our life to sometimes trick us into getting up early. During the summer holidays as we slept…Nanna would step outside I-6 Dattaguru Society and shout ‘ Babblu …Thambi ‘…and we would promptly jump out of bed thinking our friends were calling out to us…and He would be outside grinning ear to ear! Took great pride in all the ways He tricked us…..
Consistency
Nanna would consistently beat us at Chess / Othello and pretty much every other board game there was. How did he do that? Nanna firmly believed in the 10,000 hour rule way before it came into style. He called it rote / mensuration / practice. Once he chose to excel at something he would go after it until consistency won over any other short comings. He excelled at the Mouth Organ / learned how to play key boards ( his first keyboard was the Casio VL-Tone )at the age of seventy and was constantly on the search for fresh activities to master!
An early adopter of Computers…our first computer was the Sinclair ZX Spectrum+ ….he promptly set about teaching himself programming to get the Computer to his bidding! For – Next loops….If – Then loops…BASIC….COBOL…his pet computer was the Casio PB-110. His love for computers just kept on and on and on…Nanna loved his gadgets.
Enlightenment
Nanna was always on the lookout to try and continuously improve his level of EQ. His attitude was there is so much to learn about people and behaviors. Nanna’s greatest quip was ‘ We have no control over anything except the way we react’ ….and it was difficult to catch him out of composure. Every experience a learning curve.
The First Chapter
In Jan of this year Nanna, a diabetes fighter over the last 43 years had yet another series of cardiac incidents. Nanna flat lined for almost 5 minutes . We had given up hope and as a Family decided to pull the ventilator….and where his pulse should have faded out…it came back strongly and Nanna was sitting in his ICU bed as though he had just got up from a good night’s rest….He ensured that KIMS Hospital kicked him out the very next day and He was happy to be home.
In hospital even without his voice he asked ‘ Did I fight like a Jedi Warrior?’
A joyfully teary me replied…’ You are our Obi Wan’
Rayaprolu Kodandarama Sarma
04 June 1940 – 01 July 2023
