-- By Arulnambi K.

Happiness begets happiness.

My father understood that most human pursuits have the ultimate goal of attaining happiness. But he did not see happiness as just an end goal. He was an authority on relaxation techniques that could put one's mind and body in a relaxed state and help relieve stress, combat and prevent various ailments, and generally tackle the daily stresses and tensions of modern living. One of the techniques he practiced and taught was to use the recollection of the happy events in one's life, however big or small, as a method to relax, put one's mind at ease, and reinforce and relive the positive feelings stemming from those events.

He writes in an email titled 'Practices for Happiness':

I miss my grandson so much but many times recollect vividly and enjoy his joy of kuttikaranams(*), his falling on my body with laughter, etc. Do practice: The happiest occasions of your life should be often relived for a few minutes. It is the best relaxation.

[ (*) Kuttikaranams (Tamil) - somersaults]

There are many relaxation techniques but this is one of the easiest to practice and very pleasurable too. Who would not want to ponder the happy moments of their life? My father emphasized regular practice even when one is not particularly stressed or unhappy. This practice would make it easier to train one's mind to turn away from unhappy or unsettling thoughts and be drawn naturally to the positive and good feelings that result from the recollection of a happy occasion.

My father practiced the recollection of his happy moments regularly. It came naturally to him as he was a very positive-minded person. He never failed to share his happy moments with his family and friends. In his later years, he also recorded them in his diaries. Below are some of those moments.

In 2005, when he was 3-4 years old, my son spent a few months with my parents in India. My father's email recollects the experience of the first train ride they had with him:

Dear Kannus,             

Your Amma has never allowed me the window seat and nature watching. But my grandson snatched the seat, watched nature and enjoyed his first train journey. He even prevented her looking through the window. I ENJOYED, and she also enjoyed. Adhiban enjoyed his lollipop and gave half to his Aatha and made her eat it. We enjoyed as these are the happy moments of our life. Life gives lots of pleasures. Let us learn to recognize and enjoy them.

With love - Appa

[Tamil: Amma - Mom, Appa - Dad, Aatha - Grandma]

In an email to my wife in 2006, he writes:

Dear Pavikkannu , in my training programs, I used to ask the participants the happy occasions in their life. Individuals vary, hence there are many varied happy occasions. On 19th August, 2006, I  experienced one of the happiest occasions in my life as you so vividly described your thinking, attitudes and behaviors due to your self-learning based on life experiences. I am the happiest father-in-law today.

Subhash Meena is a young psychologist from Jodhpur, Rajasthan. My father started interacting with him in 2013 after being impressed by his research papers. Mr. Meena says that my father became his mentor and godfather within a very short period. They met for the first time during the IAAP (Indian Academy of Applied Psychology) Conference in 2014. From my father's notes on attending the conference:

My happiness during the 49th IAAP Conference (March 2-4, 2014):
1. Mr. Subhash Meena getting the Young Scientist Award.

My father met life's challenges with positive thinking, reinforcing himself with recollections of the happy occasions, however small. He was devastated when he lost his parents, but he recovered from those losses and emerged a stronger man by recollecting the happy memories of his life with them and the lessons he had learnt from them.

But there was one loss he could not recover from. My mother passing away after much suffering proved to be too much. Outwardly, he seemed to be starting to deal with the loss of his wife with his customary action-oriented and positive mindset. But death had already been stalking him in the form of an ignored danger signal to his health. On March 15, 2015, just over a month after the passing of my mother, my father - the eternal optimist who feared nothing, not even death - breathed his last, alone in his home. The way he died - unexpectedly, alone just during those last hours - haunts me daily. Was he in pain? What were his final thoughts, as his heart seized up and gave out? Such questions wander as shadows in my mind. But again, even in death, his message of happiness rings loud and clear, and I climb out of those dark recesses, holding onto the wealth of good thoughts he left behind, etched for posterity in my heart.

-- By Arulnambi K.

I have lost count of the number of times my father had me and other members of our family do a self-assessment by writing down each of our strengths and weaknesses (or areas for improvement). He would also ask us to assess each other, or rate ourselves in different areas. He strongly felt that such exercises would help us understand ourselves and understand others. This understanding would help develop our personalities and make progress in our careers, our relationships, and our life.

He always stressed the importance of understanding oneself. Awareness of one's own strengths and weaknesses illuminates one's path in life, opens doors, presents opportunities that one can recognize, and helps build self-esteem and self-confidence. 

There is a quote attributed to Swami Vivekananda, the philosopher who was a favorite of my father's. In an email titled 'Words of Wisdom', on January 12, 2007, my father writes:

Today is the birthday of Swami Vivekananda. He was the embodiment of courage, confidence and youth power. “Stand and die in your own strength, if there is any sin, it is weakness; avoid all weaknesses, for weakness is sin, weakness is death”. 

In another email titled 'Practices for Happiness', this one from March 31, 2005, he includes the same quote: 

Do practice: Cultivate logical thinking and develop self-esteem. Stand and die in your own strength. If there is any sin in the world, it is weakness; avoid all weaknesses, for weakness is sin, weakness is death.

"Stand and die in your own strength" - how is this possible without realizing what that strength is? Making people gain that understanding of their own selves was a life mission for my father. 

Understanding oneself is an age-old concept and has strong roots in psychology, my father's chosen field, but he developed the message of understanding others from his own life experiences. Some of these experiences were very painful to him, but ever the optimist and learner, he thought of that pain as a valuable lesson in itself. To him, understanding others, be it your friend, your colleague, your business associate, your child, your parent or your spouse, was the key to avoiding stress, building meaningful relationships, and ultimately being happy and spreading that happiness.

In an email titled 'Clarity of our condition', dated October 28, 2006, he writes:

Life is for better learning. Self-experiences, particularly bitter experiences, teach us better lessons. Avoid close interaction with narcissistic personalities. They will never have any true concern for you or your family. The personality deficiency will stay throughout their life. We will be free from stress and be happy if we understand them fully and be away from them.

He writes in an email dated July 22, 2013:

Patanjali, the greatest Personality Psychologist of the world, insists on understanding others as the first step in development.

My father, by his own admission, was wrong about some people in his life. His first instinct was to help anyone and everyone, sometimes without a full understanding of the person he was helping and without considering whether that person deserved his help. This caused him much pain and anguish, but he could not help himself and he would say that his core personality could not be changed. He reveals some of this in an email he sent on July 21, 2011, while thanking someone for the gratitude he had shown to him:

As a service-oriented personality, I have helped thousands and thousands of individuals, but only one in a thousand  is grateful to me. As an applied psychologist, I understand it as human nature. Some have even stabbed me in my back, but I cannot change my personality and its core value system. 

My father believed strongly in this message of understanding oneself and understanding others. But he also believed in the essential goodness of human beings, and reached out to help people, sometimes against his better judgment, and sometimes misunderstanding the true nature of those people. He would seem like a sheep among wolves, caught in his own idealistic world. He tried to learn from it, but did not always succeed. From those darker chapters of my father's life, from those times he was "stabbed in the back", his message of understanding resonates even stronger.

-- By Arulnambi K.

My father, Dr. K. V. Kaliappan, would have turned 73 on the 20th of this August. On this occasion of contemplation and recollection of his rich and full life, I mull over many of his memories, words, thoughts and deeds. Three of his messages stand out. He spoke to me often about each of these messages, and never failed to bring up at least one of them whenever he had a chance - during his counseling sessions, conversations with friends and family, and in public meetings when he was addressing many other people.

The first message is a big one and directed at parents, most of all. Here is a quote from one of my father's emails:

Give adequacy - You have to watch your child's talents and appreciate/reward/compliment so that he/she develops adequacy, which leads to self-confidence and self-esteem. Indian culture is very poor in this and many Indians never fully appreciate others, especially family members. Creative compliments have to be created and used appropriately in front of others. This is a learning process and we have to be near perfection.

My father stressed that the act of appreciating someone should not be reflexive and generic ("Good job", "Awesome", "Great"), but rather, it should be done with specific, targeted praise and compliments, and ideally done in the presence of others. This makes the appreciation more genuine, shows that you cared enough to notice the specifics of what you are appreciating, and heightens the good feeling of being recognized positively in front of others. He said that all humans crave appreciation and that the right appreciation, given at the right time and place, would have the best effect on a person's self-esteem and confidence.

Here is an example of how he practiced what he preached about appreciation. My father marked the occasion of my mother entering her 60th year by having the following published in the newspapers. He wanted to set a high bar for appreciating one's own family, especially one's spouse and life partner, and also wanted to highlight to the world what a wonderful woman my mother was. He felt that women are not fully appreciated for all that they do for their families, even in a family-centric culture like India's. 

Another example is the following email that he sent me on my birthday in 2013. On their birthdays, I had taken to sending my parents some sort of greeting card that I made myself, with my own message and often including pictures of my family. Here, he appreciates the creativity he saw in those greetings, with very specific examples, and chose the occasion of my own birthday to pay this targeted and specific compliment and give me a big jolt of good feeling that an ordinary birthday greeting would not have been able to convey.

Dear Kannu, Aug 1st is a landmark day in our life. Since morning, your mother is totally engrossed in thinking about you only. Motherhood is adorable and men are denied this.

On this occasion, our minds go to your creativity. On our birthdays, you sent highly creative greeting cards, which we have preserved.  

13-1-2012 - you and your Amma have very good memory - your greeting was:

"This day, we celebrate 
A mother who remembers vividly 
The first steps and the first words 
And everything since 
And whose love only gets stronger with time." 

Our grandson Adhi's photo is on the first page.

Your calendar gift with all our family members' photos, birthdays with individual photos, beautiful flowers and scenery is kept in our room and we use the beautiful flowers for relaxation.

Your greetings with our two grandsons within a bubble, and so many others - we love them and often feel happy about your creativity.

We greet you with immense happiness for a long, productive and happy life.

Appa and Amma 

Appa would say that he always told everyone that his sons were better than him in every way. This was the ultimate appreciation, but really, he was being very generous and modest. We can only aspire to be like him in so many aspects.

[If you have received appreciation in your life that made a big impact on you, we invite you to share them by submitting a comment through the comment form below. Be sure to use this website's comment system so that people who are not on social networks like Facebook can also read your comments.]

Dr. Latha Pillai is currently the director of the Rajiv Gandhi National Institute of Youth Development in Sriperumbudur near Chennai in India. She is the first woman director of the institute, which was started in 1993. She is a former pro-vice chancellor of the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU). She has more than three decades of experience in higher education and has held various other positions in educational administration, including advisor of the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) and deputy secretary and education officer at the University Grants Commission (UGC).

I had the opportunity to speak to Dr. Latha Pillai about her association with my father, Dr. K. V. Kaliappan, who was her teacher and doctorate guide (advisor) in the Department of Psychology at the University of Madras.

How did you come to know Dr. Kaliappan?

I first met Professor Kaliappan in 1980, when I had registered for my Master’s in Applied Psychology, with a second year specialization in industrial psychology at the University of Madras. There were about 11 or 12 students in my class, and many of us had direct access to the professor as his students. The first subject Dr. Kaliappan taught us was community psychology. It had to do with taking psychology to the community. That was his message and that was his life - really taking psychology to the grassroots and connecting. I got to know him and that message very well even during those early days as his student.

What were your first impressions of him?

He immediately struck me as a very down to earth person, affable, and could put anyone at ease. He had a calm and matter of fact approach to things.

How would you say you have benefited by your association with Dr. Kaliappan? How did he help you with your education and career?

I was kind of an introvert (still think I am!). I was hardly the kind of person who would speak out in class. He asked me to handle the first seminar in my class. I really didn’t know how I would do it. But I must say I really did a very good seminar. It was appreciated by everyone. Since then, I have really not stopped talking, I feel! That is because, professionally, in the last 20 years, my jobs required a lot of talking, advocacy and things like that. I am ever grateful to him for giving me that first push into talking. If you have to swim, you have to jump into the water sort of approach is what he had. It was a tremendous thing. Now, of course, I am appreciated everywhere for the kind of talks and speeches I give.

You knew Professor Kaliappan for over 30 years. What other highlights of your professional and educational connection with him can you tell us about?

I did my Ph.D. with him. So, I was in his Master's classes for two years and my Ph.D. work with him lasted four years. I did my Ph.D. on writer’s cramp and he believed that it was one of the disorders that were not really known and required to be publicized. As a student, I used to wonder why I was taking so long to complete my thesis as I took longer than other students did. But I fondly remember the many evenings I spent at your home in the veranda discussing my work with the professor. That’s something I can never forget. Subsequently, I also worked with him. He was in charge of the NSS (National Service Scheme) as NSS coordinator at the university and I was hired as a program executive to work with him. I worked on programs like personality development. He designed those programs to reach out to the masses and to the students. He created that position and I worked with him for more than a year.

He had a tremendous amount of faith in my abilities. At first, he wanted me to get a job as a teacher in the university department. The only vacant position was a reader. I knew I could not become a reader without becoming a lecturer first but he pushed me to interview for it. I went to the interview but did not get the position. Then I got married and moved away and could not go back to teaching. He thought I would be a great teacher. When I could not teach, I spent long hours discussing my next career steps with him. He had just created an organization called ISEL (International Society for Effective Living). He wanted me to run it. Some of the objectives of this organization were to conduct training and psychological assessments. My family required a steady source of income, so I could not make the decision to become an entrepreneur and did not join the ISEL.

Professor Kaliappan also entrusted me with working on many national and international conferences. I traveled with him to Calcutta, Varanasi and other places. I was associated with the IAAP (Indian Academy of Applied Psychology) and the MPS (Madras Psychology Society), professional bodies that the professor was very involved in. In retrospect, I realized that being involved in all those things helped me come out of my shell.

What do you think is Dr. Kaliappan's legacy? As his student, what would you do to carry on his legacy?

The legacy he left behind is that it is very important to take the subject to the people. To move beyond theory or put theory into practice. That’s one thing he really stood for. He believed in overall personality development, done in his own way. There were differences in opinion between diverse groups of people about how he went about that. He stood his ground on what he said about it. As his student, I do it (carry on his legacy) by propagating the same kind of philosophy of personality development. Beyond that, I would encourage us to look into the possibility of creating an endowment in his name to perhaps recognize a meritorious student every year or something along those lines. This would require more thought and I have recently discussed this with some of the professor's other students.

There are some other things I have done in my career in educational administration, which may not have been done directly in Dr. Kaliappan's honor, but I would say were somewhat influenced by my being his student and a student of psychology. IGNOU has a large number of distance learning programs but did not have a program in psychology, so I started it there. In my present institute, there is now an M.Sc. in Counseling Psychology.

Thank you so much for your time! Is there anything else you would like to share with us?

I was fortunate to have Professor Kaliappan as a mentor and role model. He gave me a tremendous amount of confidence. He motivated many of us. My good friend Dr. S. Karunanidhi  (the present head of the Department of Psychology at the University of Madras) was the only male student in our class. At that time, for various reasons, he wanted to quit the Master's program. Dr. Kaliappan really gave his support at that point of time. He cajoled and pushed Dr. Karunanidhi and saw to it that he did not quit doing his Master's in Psychology. He made his life with it.

Dr. Karunanidhi  also went on to hold several administrative posts like controller and registrar at the university. Maybe that was something that we took on from our professor - moving into administration. In any university, you would find any number of professors who stick to their department and just want to be good in their department and their subject. We made some choices to move beyond that.

(Interviewed by Arulnambi K.)