Sometimes the mere thought of rekindling a lost connection can spark a series of events in life.
Recently, a man from India shared how the search for his father’s final resting place had led him to travel all the way to Malaysia in the search for answers.
In a report shared by the BBC, the man named Thirumaran who is an activist and runs a school for children rescued from bonded labour in Tamil Nadu’s Tirunelveli district, decided to go and look for his father’s grave back in November.
His father K Ramasundaram who was a schoolteacher in Malaysia, died of pneumonia in 1967, just 6 months after his son’s birth.
Thirumaran and his mother returned to the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu that same year. Then in 1987, when he was 22, his mother too died.
For years, he held on to some musty old letters, written by his father and passed down by his mother, who had told him his father was a “great humanitarian” and a “good singer”.
She also shared the location of his grave in Malaysia, which is in the town of Kerling, where he’d lived and died.
“I would often think that I must visit my father, but I hadn’t given it a serious thought. Until now.”
The Google search that sparked it all
Thirumaran started his search by trying to locate his father’s school, however, apart from the name, he knew nothing about the institute.
Ramasundaram had taught English at Thotta Thesiya Vakai Tamil Palli, a small school run by the Tamil community in Kerling.
As he wasn’t exactly the best with computers, Thirumaran asked his students to search for the school on Google.
“I don’t know how to operate computers. So my students looked it up and showed me a picture of it (the school). I was amazed.”
He then found that the school had been moved to another location, so he emailed its principal for help. Fortunately, through the school administration, he got contacts of his father’s former students and reached out to them.
Over the next few days, several of them responded to his queries and offered to go look for the grave.
Thirumaran said he was surprised to see how fondly the students, most of whom are now in their 80s, spoke of his father.
“One of them told me how my father bought him a bicycle to go to school and college. Another said that when he trailed in studies, my father helped him perform well,” he said.
“When I heard all this, I realised what I had lost in my own life.”
The end goal
After his father’s former students had located the grave, they informed him and he eventually travelled to Malaysia on November 8.
He was then able to locate his father’s grave at an old cemetery in Kerling.
“The grave was a little worn out and overgrown with wild grass, but the gravestone had a photo of him, as well as his name and birth and death dates.”
Before that point, he had never seen a photo of his father and had no idea what he looked like.
When Thirumaran’s mother had returned to India, she had brought back with her a handful of earth from her husband’s grave, which he said, he had sprinkled on his mother’s grave.
“This time, I took a handful of earth from my mother’s resting place and put it on my father’s grave,” he said.
“It was as if through me they were sharing their love, even after death.”
He then cleaned up the grave with help from his father’s former students, lit candles and prayed several times before returning to India on November 16.
Thirumaran said that the trip gave him “more than he had imagined” in the form of priceless memories and souvenirs, including old pictures of his father.
“His students told me that I look like him. For a boy who grew up without his father, this was life coming full circle,” he said emotionally.
We’re glad that he was able to finally rekindle his connection and find out more about his wonderful well-loved father!
