35 A 

           A friend asked whether my father was angry with me because he was orthodox. I replied no only because I was late. Here is what  my one brother has to share about Appa's religiousness  and orthodoxy during his service days.

And as for Appa's religiosity, i dont think there was any. His prayers were more an act to set discipline for himself rather than anything else.  Typically he would read the prayer book for about 2 mins when his boot laces were being tied by the orderly- so much for orthodoxy.  I think to his credit, he never expected us to do anything closely religious unless we wanted to do it ourselves.  Though in later years he expresses strong opinions on religion, the only thing we knew growing up was that we were hindus nothing more.  In one instance he went out of the way to protect a Muslim BSFJawan (a Driver) of the BSF who was been in his opinion wrongly, accused of being a Pak spy (ask him the story).  Only when he retired Appa thought that he had been a bad Dad not having imbibed any religious training of any sort in any of us. We were already in late teens. He got 4 vishnu sahsranaman books and we had to recite it aloud every day during holidays. That was hillarious.  But I should say i did use it later in life in Tokyo of all places. My GM  knowing that I was not the religious kind ( but being the only south Indians in the office) skeptically told me that it would be good if  we (chitra and I ) could join the Sahasranamam session.  There i was in my elements shouting loudest the parts that I remembered.  He and his wife were extremely impressed.  My stellar progress in career after that is part of folklore 😀