R.I.P

I don't really know if I can sound serious about anything and successfully convey the seriousness to whoever my audience might be. This is because I feel I become too melodramatic and that distracts from the seriousness of what I want to say. Faced with this 'serious' inability, instead of trying to find out where I lack and work on it, I have gone down the route of cloaking whatever I want to say in slapstick, sarcasm, irony, self-deprecation, plain humor and an assorted combination of these. Though I don't have statistics to show the effectiveness of this approach, there hasn't been any perceivable downside because of this.

But there are times when the inadequacy of my slapstick approach is fully unmasked; Times when the subject doesn't lend itself to slapstick or any other kind of humor; Times when I am not too comfortable taking such an approach because it just doesn't feel right. Or whatever. This is one such.

He was a little over 75. I probably remember him from the time he was around 50. And I had only seen old black & white photos of him when he was much younger and handsomer. At that time, to my very young mind, those sepia toned photos were the only proof he had to show me that he hadn't always been 50 with a bald shiny head and wrinkled skin. The quarter century, starting from when he was around 50, had managed to turn his skin saggy, throw his hearing equipment out of whack and transformed his mouth into something that came to resemble a new-born's. But it could not stop him from being active.

Ace story teller, inveterate movie buff, born foodie (he had a mouth filled with sweet teeth!), Pat Boone fan. My Grand-dad. He passed away a couple of days back.