I never knew my paternal grandfather, who passed away before I was born. But I have heard many a thing about him from my father, my grandmother, and other family members and relatives. My grandfather was the youngest of three brothers. The eldest brother was the “Oor Gounder” of their village, the de facto head of the village who played a central role in settling disputes, and had other social leadership functions that were outside the realm of regular local government in those days. ​

My relationship with Professor Kaliappan began in the year 1979. At that time, he was a lecturer in criminal psychology in the Department of Psychology, University of Madras, where I joined as a student of the post graduate course in criminology. When he was teaching criminology, he exposed me to the concept of, ‘Minimum Teaching and Maximum Learning”.  He divided the entire syllabus among us and asked us to prepare and take classes. That was a nice experience for me and l instantly liked his way of teaching. I cannot forget the after class walk to the canteen with him and other faculty members for a cup of coffee.

​We became very close when he accompanied us to attend the Indian Society of Criminology conference conducted at Aurangabad. He never interfered in our plans and gave great support. One thing I observed in him was that he never got tensed even in critical conditions and was willing to be with us, even to the extent of fighting for our comforts. It was because of him, even after completing the course, that I used to go to the department frequently and be with him and others. He created an interest in research and made me undertake research studies. My first published research paper on ‘Anxiety among Delinquents” was written along with him.

He was instrumental in making me undergo the training of trainers programme on entrepreneurship motivation and this was a turning point in my life. I dedicated my life to learning and development from that year (1992). He gave me a lot of opportunities to conduct training sessions in the university (Academic Staff College), and in the corporate, government and development sectors. This helped me start my own consultancy, Sparks Development Group, in 2001.

I also became a council member of the Indian Society of Criminology and later its secretary, when he became its chairman. I also served as the associate editor of the Indian Journal of Criminology along with him when he was its editor. Yet another assignment I was associated with him was in running the three ISC-Pudhu Vazhvu (New Life) centers for prevention of alcoholism and drug abuse in the three districts of Salem, Vellore and Cuddalore.

​Professor and madam were part of our family. Our visit to his house was always an enjoyable one. His support to me professionally and personally was something great and I cherish each and every aspect of it. When I had a health condition, he simply said, “ You will overcome it, easily.” 

[Written in March, 2016]

Appa's approach to relationships, friendships and his positive attitude towards life and its many challenges were influenced greatly by some of the truly wonderful students he was blessed to have. His personality and his style of teaching and collaboration were such that he naturally attracted many good people to him. 

One such student was Mr. Senthilathiban. He first came to know Appa in 1979, so was one of his earliest students. Dr. Karunanidhi, Dr. Latha Pillai, and Mr. Senthil - this was the trio Thambi and I essentially saw more often at our home than other relatives or extended family. They were incredibly close to Appa, and grew to be some of Amma's favorites as well. They were family in every sense of the word. Amma named my son 'Adhiban", picking the name from the second part of Mr. Senthil's full name. She would say that she loved the name as an enthusiast of Tamil names. She was also very fond of Senthil, remarking that he was such a good person.

As Appa's academic and administrative career reached many peaks, his students were a constant fixture at our home. They would stop by sometimes just to chat about personal matters, or get guidance on a thesis or research paper,  or discuss an upcoming workshop or conference. Just growing up in that environment steeped in the sights and sounds of higher academia was exciting. And Mr. Senthil and the others were very much at the center of it. Their academic and professional lives were influenced by Appa's own special brand of education and training - less reliance on traditional classroom instruction and books, more hands-on activities - camps, seminars, conferences, and training programs by the dozen. Mr. Senthil himself was actively not just participating, but constantly challenged by Appa to involve himself directly in organizing, administering, mentoring and teaching. Then there were Appa's massive initiatives for the betterment of society at large. The psychologists were not confining themselves to their classrooms, offices and clinics, but reaching out and helping those in need. Those were challenging but exciting and invigorating times.

On Mother's Day of this year, I wrote Purposeful Parenting - Part I on my mother's website. Part II focuses on some principles of parenting that my father strongly advocated and followed. When my brother and I were young children, Appa played a smaller role in our daily lives, leaving it largely to our mother to nurture us. He felt that a mother's role at that stage of our lives was more critical than a father's, and would form the basis of the sense of security that is important for young children as they start facing the world. He believed that a father should start playing a much bigger role in shaping his children as they step into their teens - treating them more like adults, guiding them to think more independently, and communicating his own experiences to them effectively so they may learn from them. 

Much of what I learned about parenting from my father was directly communicated to me by him, but I also remember many things that he said and did when my brother and I were in our teenage years and in our young adulthood. His career as a practicing psychologist, and not just an academic one, helped him immensely to identify and distill these principles. He would often share anecdotes from his experiences in psychological counseling of people from varied backgrounds as examples of these tenets of purposeful parenting.

​Build self-esteem and self-confidence
More than anything else, Appa insisted on building children's self-esteem and self-confidence. No age was too young to start doing that. He followed a few simple rules. One of them was to always encourage a child to do something independently. He was against pampering of any kind. He understood that the only way to build children's self-confidence was by allowing them to be independent in age-appropriate tasks. He was willing to help and guide when asked, but he started encouraging his sons to take on responsibilities from their teenage years. In the Indian family culture, parents often take to supporting their children well into their adulthood in many things big and small. "Let him do it, he will learn and get self-confidence" was his moderating refrain whenever my mother attempted to take her love for us to greater lengths than necessary or appropriate.

Another crucial way that Appa followed to build his sons' self-esteem was to appreciate them appropriately and specifically, and many times in a very public manner. It was not just a "good job" said in a casual and throwaway manner. The appreciation was usually very specific about what he liked about something we did. After we came to the U.S., he would write to us and convey his praise in the same specific manner. When you know that someone's praise is true and frank and not mere platitudes, it makes you feel great and does wonders for your self-esteem.

Be a role model
Everything a parent says will not matter one bit if a child not does consider the parent to be a role model. Children are keen observers and nothing escapes their attention. They are much more likely to listen to the advice of their parents if they respect them, and that respect can only come from the parents being good role models to their own children. Parents can claim that their love for their children is unconditional, but the children's love is not. Children need their parents' love, but also need to be able to respect their parents in order for them to be able to truly reciprocate that love.

​Apart from the explicit lessons in parenting, needing to be a role model to one's children was something I learned from both my parents' lives. They lived their lives in such ways that we hope to emulate for future generations. I respected Appa immensely. This respect was shaped by a lifetime of considering him as my role model. His thoughts, words and deeds were crucial in shaping my sense of self and morality, just like Appa's were shaped by his parents - his role models. And so it goes, as parents attempt to shape the well-being of future generations by setting the right example, for that is the most important parenting principle of all.

[ Read Purposeful Parenting - Part I on Dr. K. Kanthimathi's website. ]

To say that my father embodied humanism would be an understatement.

Appa was born in a well-known and respected family who lived in a small village in the rural countryside. He grew up in that village. Superstition, casteism and other social and economic divisions were the order of the day, and many of them continue even in present times. His father was the impetuous and hot-tempered youngest brother of the village leader. These leaders were not elected. They would always hail from a certain family and caste. The lower castes would serve them, especially the lowest of the low, the "untouchables".  The "untouchables" were literally that – the higher castes considered it taboo to come into skin contact with them, directly or sometimes even indirectly.

Growing up in that social environment, one would expect that Appa would have picked up some of those prejudices and attitudes, maybe from his own parents, whom he revered throughout his life. But he chose certain paths and ways to live his life, and had a strong and natural proclivity to question anything which is considered a norm or a tradition, and dared to think differently even if that thinking was not considered "safe".  He also loved human beings and forever sought out the good in anyone and everyone. These qualities made him reject divisive thoughts and customs that sought to segregate people into groups, establish group identities, and foster artificial camaraderie within those groups. Language, religion, caste – such things had no meaning for him when he weighed a person. You could not hope to curry a favor from him by saying you belonged to the same caste as him, or spoke the same language, or least of all, followed the same religion (as he essentially followed nothing but his own heart).

Last year, when we were in Appa's village, Thambi and I came across an example of Appa's humanism and his tendency to always place human relationships and interests above everything else, and the impact this had on the people he had known and interacted with.

One family from the lower castes, the "untouchables" I spoke of earlier, that was closely associated with my grandfather, was the family of a man called Naachi, who had worked for my grandfather. Naachi and his wife, Naacha, were very attached to my grandfather and fiercely loyal to him and his family. Casteist attitudes were still in play, but there was friendship that could be discerned even beneath those attitudes. Appa, the eternal humanist, had sensed that friendship which cut across social boundaries, even as a mere youth.

Last year, a man came to see me and Thambi at Appa's village home. I could not recognize him until he had introduced himself as the late Naachi's son. We had met him a few times as children when he visited our grandmother. He was now a retired schoolteacher. He had been able to educate his daughters well, and they were settled in their lives. He shared an old photocopy of a letter (reproduced below) that Appa had written to one of his daughters in reply to a letter she and her father had written to him.

There is a legend from the time and place of my ancestors. It goes that, long ago, on a stormy night, when thunder and lightning reigned, a big bolt of lightning struck an area of barren rock jutting out of the earth in the middle of a field, cleaving it and leaving a large crack. Next morning, villagers found not just the crack, but also, miraculously, a set of footprints set in the hard stone. It seemed to them that something otherworldly and divine had occurred during that storm. God himself had descended in that lightning bolt, and imprinted His footprints in the solid rock. He had marked His presence, in those footprints, to last for ages.

Earlier this month, on March 5, 2017, nearly two years after my father's passing, my brother and I met with some of his former students - Dr. Latha Pillai, Mr. Senthil Athiban and Dr. Thomas Ninan - reconnecting, reminiscing, and remembering. Most of all, we talked about what we could do to ensure the continuance of Dr. Kaliappan's legacy - his love for his fellow human beings and his helping spirit. His professional legacy itself was built on this helping spirit, and we who knew him closely feel an urgency and an obligation to continue in his footsteps, etched as they are in our perpetual and collective consciousness. During our discussion, Dr. Latha Pillai had a good point: People forget, eventually. It is human nature. So, our task would be to build something that serves as a remembrance which endures beyond the frailties of our human memories. We noted that more meetings would be needed to further shape our vision and to put that vision into action.

​I was deeply shocked and saddened to find out that Prof. K. V. Kaliappan passed away. My wife Gomathi and I were his students at Madras University (1978 to 1981). We both did our M.A. (’78 – ‘80), followed by M. Phil (’80 – ’81), and Prof. KVK was my research supervisor for both my M.A. and M.Phil. theses. Later, Gomathi and I both left for Australia to continue further studies. While we maintained minimal contact earlier on, we drifted away after some time. 

Fortunately, we resumed contact in 2011-2013. Gomathi and I visited Prof. KVK and his wife, Prof. Kanthimathi Kaliappan, and we had some wonderful and memorable exchanges. We visited their house in Shenoy Nagar and went out to eat a few times (based on the recommendation of Prof. KVK). Prof. KVK was very pleased by our professional progress and spoke highly of us – just as a parent would talk about their children’s successes. He spoke to Gomathi about academia (as she was an academic at the University of Sydney) and with me on clinical topics. We spoke at length about starting a specific clinical psychology training programme in India and he provided pragmatic ideas. Later, I invited Prof. KVK to be a member of the Australian Centre for Addiction Research (ACAR) and he gladly accepted. See: http://www.acar.net.au/profile.asp

Unfortunately, my wife, Gomathi, was diagnosed with cancer in January 2014 and Prof. KVK was very supportive, assisting us during the dreadful ordeal we faced. He recommended books to read, told us how to lift our spirits, and most importantly gave us hope. Prof. KVK was the quintessential problem solver. This is what I remember of him from the time I met him in 1978. He would never be worried about any challenges or problems. He always possessed the “we can do” attitude. His optimism was infectious. People who knew him well always benefited from his vision and resilient personality.

Due to my wife’s illness and the laborious time spent in the hospital, we lost touch once again. I did contact him now and then but did not receive any response. Gomathi passed away on February 17, 2016 and I tried to inform Prof. KVK – without realising he had passed away on March 15, 2015. 

I am truly sorry that Prof. Kanthimathi was also afflicted with cancer and passed away a few months earlier. 

Please accept my belated condolences.

They are legends and while they are no more with us, their legacy lives on through their perpetual contributions to their respective professions and humanity. 

Yours Sincerely,
Sitharthan

"Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?'"
    -- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Today, on my late father's 74th birthday, I pause to take stock. It's been close to a year and a half since my family lost both my parents within a month of each other. The two websites started last year (Dr. K. Kanthimathi and Dr. K. V. Kaliappan) were established to share and celebrate their lives, virtues and ideals, and more importantly, to serve as platforms to establish their legacy as something beyond just fond recollections of memories.

So, the time has come to articulate what that "something beyond" would be. What does it really mean to extend or establish someone's legacy after they are gone from this world? Some of the feedback and comments received in response to the blog posts about my parents have conveyed a very existential sense of permanent loss that can never be repaired. Others stated that time would repair the loss and it was important to move on, knowing that my parents' spirits would be with us forever. This comment from a friend stood out for me:

"Honestly, how futile life is. So much knowledge and wisdom disappears as if we flicked a switch. And we are left behind."

Yes, we are left behind. But what else was left behind? And was it something that could be shared, thus benefiting others in substantial and meaningful ways? Here, I have looked to my father for guidance. Soon after my mother's demise, he had started shaping his thoughts on how we may carry forward her legacy by marrying her passions and her ideals, many of which they shared as a couple and as parents, with his own passion for social change and the betterment of human beings. He was gone too soon to start working on his vision, but he shared enough of his thoughts with his sons to enable us to shape them into a broad plan and to inspire us to do the really meaningful things. My father's definition of what is meaningful was characteristically simple: How is what you do going to benefit other people, and help those in need?

Here in broad strokes is our statement of intent:

• Establishment of a non-profit entity to serve as the official front for the work to be done.
  
  
• Our vision is to keep alive the wisdom and ideals of our immortal parents, Dr. Kaliappan and Dr. Kanthimathi, for the greater benefit of society and future generations.
  
  
• Our mission is to effect positive change at the individual level for the betterment of all of humanity.
  
  
• Our guiding values are empathy, honesty, respect, creativity, curiosity and diligence.
  
  
• Our focus areas: Parenting, Gender Equality, Health and Women's Health, Nutrition, Education, Personality Development, Leadership Development and Mental Health.
  
  
• Some of our methods: Advocacy, personalized training, coaching, counselling and financial support.

The general approach, again inspired by my father, is not to throw money at a problem. Money is a key enabler for many solutions, but the real, all-important enabler is time, and the willingness to give it freely for a greater good. Our focus areas and methods dictate the need to engage professionals in various ways to advance our mission. For this, we look to the students and friends of our parents for their guidance, and their time, that most precious thing of all.

So, here is the point of it all. The wisdom and ideals of our elders need not die with them. If we stay committed to them in our lives and strive to pass them on, they can live on forever and help everyone, as all precious and good things should.

Look for more communications from us as we work to give more concrete shape to our plans. 

Indrajal comics - with the Phantom, Mandrake the Magician and Bahadur, Tarzan comics, Asterix, Tintin and so many others were devoured by all of us. Thambi and I got started on novels too, English and Tamil alike. We discovered many comics and novels by ourselves too. Both our parents did not hesitate to purchase whatever books we wanted to own, and we built a tidy collection over time. Appa used book binding services to get our comic collection bound into several volumes that survive to this day.

For the longest time, even well into my adulthood, Appa's favorite way to kick back and relax would be to grab one of our bound comic book collections and read something. There was one comic that was close to his heart and a bigger favorite than others. It was the Mandrake comic in which it was revealed that Theron, Mandrake's magic teacher and headmaster of the College of Magic, was Mandrake's actual father. Mandrake already had the greatest respect and love for Theron, and this revelation would elevate their relationship even further. Appa would read and reread the scenes with Mandrake and Theron's initial interactions as father and son, and share his enjoyment of the human aspects of that story with us. Even while diving into the fiction and imagination of those comic book worlds, Appa's deep humanism always connected him more to the relationships, emotions and motivations of those characters.

​As much as I enjoyed the comics and other fiction introduced to me by Appa, he always remained my real-life superhero - the impregnable rock in the face of the greatest difficulties. His confidence and courage were truly defining traits, and something I always looked up to. I never saw him be afraid of anything. He had little respect for man-made conventions and norms and always looked for "out of the box" solutions to any problem. In my final year of college at the College of Engineering, Anna University, my classmates compiled a booklet self-profiling each of us. One of the facts we had to fill in about ourselves was who we secretly admired. For the first time in my life, when faced with that question, it became immediately apparent to me. It was something I had hardly realized until then. I secretly admire: My father - my Theron, my superhero. 

Caesar: Who is it in the press that calls on me?
      I hear a tongue, shriller than all the music, 
      Cry 'Caesar!' Speak; Caesar is turn'd to hear.

Soothsayer: Beware the ides of March.

Caesar: What man is that?

Brutus: A soothsayer bids you beware the ides of March.

Caesar: Set him before me; let me see his face.

​Cassius: Fellow, come from the throng; look upon Caesar.

Caesar: What say'st thou to me now? speak once again.

Soothsayer: Beware the ides of March.

Caesar: He is a dreamer; let us leave him: pass.

​    -- William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act 1, Scene 2

​In 44 BC, on the Ides of March, a day on the Roman calendar that corresponds to March 15, Julius Caesar was betrayed and assassinated by his friend Brutus and other conspirators. Caesar chose to ignore the warnings of a seer who had foretold that harm would come to Caesar by that day.

My father always drew lessons from everything that happened in and around his life. He firmly believed that experience is the best teacher. After my mother's passing on February 9, 2015, he decided to organize a memorial meeting and invited friends, family, relatives and students to attend. His primary purpose for this meeting was to draw lessons from all the good things in my mother's life and the way she had lived it, and share it with people close to him. Before the meeting, he wrote to his students and former colleagues, "As psychologists, what can we learn and convey through this meeting?"

On March 15, 2015, just over a month after my mother's passing, it was my father's turn. His end came unbidden, unexpectedly, abruptly, and all too soon for someone who had been extremely active and busy even until the previous day, and had seemed at least outwardly healthy and strong. Like his life, with its many experiences and lessons, both lived and taught, my father's death holds lessons too.

Since childhood, I don't remember my father being ill or even mildly sick more than a handful of times. He ate healthy, and managed stress well with all the techniques he knew as a psychologist. As he grew older, he developed high cholesterol (a family trait) and high blood pressure, both well-known risk factors for heart disease. He used to take medication for them about 10 years ago, and even used to consult with a cardiologist. Over the intervening years, he stopped taking regular medication for the conditions, and only got himself checked by a doctor a few times. He had gotten busier over the last five years or so of his life, and my mother's illness also occurred during that period. Call it the implacable advance of fate, but seemingly in the blink of an eye, events occurred which culminated on the Ides of March, 2015.

That day, my father woke up with a feeling of unease. I could only gather these details from the people he had interacted with during that day. He spoke to a relative, wanting to see an acupuncturist as he felt that his blood pressure was a bit too high. Later that morning, he spoke to a student and a friend, complaining of heartburn and back pain. They were concerned, and offered to accompany him to a doctor. He brushed aside their concerns, saying he would be fine and "live to be 150 years". He even walked to a nearby pharmacy and got some Gelusil, the commonly used heartburn relief medication. More people visited, and suggested that he should go with them to see a doctor. He turned down their offers, saying that he was feeling better. Sometime between 4 and 6 PM that evening, my father passed away, alone in his home.

My father was quite aware of the beginning signs of a heart attack. I remember exchanging emails forwarded to us about such symptoms. But, like Julius Caesar on that same day thousands of years ago, he chose to ignore the warnings. And these were warnings from his own body, the best judge of such things, as well as the warnings projected in the concern shown by his friends and students that day. He had also chosen not to get conventional and proven treatment for the extremely high blood pressure readings he had been observing over the previous months.

To carry Caesar's Ides of March analogy forward once more, Caesar had been betrayed by his friend. My father was betrayed by his own thinking. Some of that thinking was due to almost lifelong opinions held by him, and some of it could be attributed to the overwhelming grief he was experiencing but not acknowledging to the extent he could have. My father liked to quote his mentor and guide, Professor T. E. Shanmugam: "Your personality is your fate." How true. Not just for him, but for all of us.

The overconfidence in matters concerning his own health, an extreme prejudice against modern (allopathic) medicine, perhaps heightened by seeing my mother suffer due to her illness and its treatment, and a strong bias toward more naturalistic, even if unproven, systems of medicine, all conspired to lead him to an end that nobody expected at that point in his life. He had felt that he had much more to contribute to society and his family, but it was not to be. Instead, what we are left with is that all too common lament: "If only he had…"

One could say that we cannot change fate, and it was my father's time. While that may be true, there are still things to learn from even the most tragic and unstoppable events. Life is worth fighting for, always, and that is something a number of older people in a country like India forget once they reach a certain point in their lives.

So, what are those lessons? Listen to your body, especially as you grow older. Prevention is better than cure. Make an effort to understand the science behind health issues and their medical treatments. Do your own research about health matters. There is a wealth of information available, but watch out for misinformation. And as my father would say, everything should be in moderation, even your biases.

​In the end, we did not get an opportunity to even say, "Goodbye, Appa." But, no matter, he did not fall ill and suffer for a prolonged period, and that in itself is a blessing denied to many. And for those of us who knew him well, his ever positive outlook was infectious, making it impossible to keep mourning the past and instead forcing us to look toward the future. So, on this first anniversary of my father's passing, his spirit of ceaseless learning and desire for changing lives for the better still roams this earth, searching for kindred spirits to carry on his work and uphold the ideals and values dear to him and his wife. Stay tuned for our plans.