52 Weeks Later: The Lessons My Father Left Behind

 The 26th of August marked the first death anniversary of my father.

In the months leading up to this date, I was filled with an inexplicable grief. Every month this year, I relived the corresponding month of last year. The hospital stays. The uncertainty. The small moments of hope. The things we celebrated despite everything that was happening. And as the 26th of August drew closer, the weight of it all seemed harder to carry.

The last few months were, in many ways, more difficult than even the first few weeks after Appa passed away. In those initial days, I had a misplaced belief in my own inner strength and my ability to deal with loss. I thought I was holding up well. I didn't quite understand then that grief doesn't necessarily arrive all at once. Sometimes, it waits.

I wanted to ease the pain by writing, and I thought, what better subject to write about than grief? After all, hadn't grief been a constant companion for the last 52 weeks?

And then came the 26th of August 2026. Fifty-two weeks since Appa passed away.  I woke up that morning having dreamt of him, and I smiled. Instinctively I knew what he would want me to write about. Not about grief, but about the life he lived and the lessons he passed along the way. So here they go.

1)      “Failure is the stepping stone to success.”

This was Appa's favourite quote, and he didn't just say it—he lived it.

At the age of 65, Appa decided that he wanted to become an Energy Auditor. This meant appearing for seven written technical exams and, if he qualified, a viva after that. He diligently prepared for almost a year.

The results came out, and he discovered that he had not passed two of the seven papers. Which meant that at his next attempt, he would have to write all seven papers again.

I approached him very gently, with the ulterior motive of telling him to chillax and perhaps give up on this particular ambition. After all, he was 65. He had already had a long and successful career. Surely, he didn't need to put himself through this all over again?

My jaw dropped when, upon some gentle prodding about how he felt, he said, “It's been two days. I am done grieving. I have already started preparing for my next attempt.”

That was Appa.

Failure was disappointing, yes. But it was never final. You grieved, you picked yourself up, and you got back to work. And often, when I faced my own failures and setbacks, he would stand by me and repeat his favourite words: “Failure is the stepping stone to success.”

2)      “Be comfortable in your skin.”

Appa came from very humble beginnings, but he was never embarrassed by where he came from or by the life he had lived. If anything, he wore his past as a badge of honour.

He was completely comfortable being himself, even when everyone around him might have thought he was being ridiculous.

When he was 53, Appa decided that he wanted to get a black belt in Taekwondo. So he joined a class where the combined age of some of the children wasn't even equal to his!

A few of my friends from school went to the same class and would come back amused, telling me that some old man had joined their Taekwondo class.

When I brought this up to Appa, expecting him to perhaps feel a little self-conscious, he simply said, “How does it matter when I enjoy what I'm doing? Don't care about what people say.”

That was Appa.

He had absolutely no interest in living his life according to what other people thought was age-appropriate, impressive or embarrassing.

When my sister and I were teenagers, there were many occasions when our huge, bulky Ambassador car would break down in the middle of the road. Appa would then calmly ask both of us girls to get out and push the car.

We would look at him in horror.

“How can you expect us to push such a huge car? How embarrassing! We won't even be able to move it a centimetre!”

And he would respond, “Is it not your car? What's the shame in pushing it? When people see your effort, they will come and join you.”

And, of course, he was right.

But looking back, I realise he was teaching us something far bigger than how to get a broken-down Ambassador moving.

There is dignity in making an effort. There is no shame in doing what needs to be done. And you don't have to worry about how you look while doing it.

Be comfortable with who you are. Be proud of where you come from. And don't let the imagined judgement of other people stop you from living the life you want to live.

Appa lived that message every single day.

 

3)      “Where there is truth and integrity, there is no room for fear.”

Appa was fearless in ways that could sometimes be extreme. He often said, “If you stand on the side of truth, then what is the need for fear?”

On one of his mining engineering assignments in Walayar, Kerala, he stumbled upon extreme levels of malpractice and corruption. Never one to look away, he began putting measures in place that would bring an end to the practices that had been allowed to continue for years.

This, quite naturally, met with resistance.

There were threats, warnings and intimidation. My mother still shudders when she remembers how she felt after one of the staff casually mentioned, “Sir often drives late at night on the hills to fix issues with machines. How easy would it be to loosen the brakes of the jeep and just end it there?”

None of this deterred my father. He stood by what he believed was right, while my mother stayed awake at night with two young children, wondering whether her husband was safe.

His conscience wouldn’t allow him to continue, he eventually quit the job and was unemployed for almost six months. But he refused to compromise his principles or become part of something he believed was wrong.

His belief was simple: if you were standing on the side of truth, fear had no place there.

 

4)      “When there is no road ahead –carve yourself a new road “

Appa was diagnosed with clogged arteries in the 90s—at a time when he had to travel outside Bhubaneswar even for a proper diagnosis, and when bypass surgery was the only solution the doctors offered him.

Appa decided that a couple of clogged arteries were not going to stand in the way of his living a full and healthy life.

He took matters into his own hands.

He pored over books—there was no internet in those days—and articles and medical journals, trying to understand how the heart worked and why arteries became clogged. He read about nutrition, exercise, fitness and yoga, and gradually devised a diet, an exercise regime and, eventually, a whole new way of living.

For the next two decades, he followed the path he had chosen.

We, as daughters, never really acknowledged that perhaps he had been right all along. But Appa never sought our validation. He had made his choice and lived by what he believed in. When there was no road ahead, he carved one for himself.

 

5)       “Mind over body.”

During those days of his new way of living, Appa took his philosophy to extremes. For a while, he ate food with zero salt and zero oil. Sambar, rasam, dal, vegetables, idli, dosa—all consumed without a drop of oil or a grain of salt.

Over the years, he reduced the extremities of this, but his philosophy towards food remained the same. His plate would look like a rainbow—vegetables of different colours, vitamin-rich foods, protein and very few carbs. Long before Instagram made everyone an expert on high-protein, high-fibre and balanced diets, Appa was already experimenting with them.

I would often ask him how on earth he managed to eat such insipid food.

His answer would always be the same: “Because I have conquered the mind. Taste is in your mind and not your mouth.”

And that, I think, was really the philosophy behind the way he lived.

Towards the end, his body went through a lot. There were hospital stays, procedures and pain. But I never once saw him pity himself. He rarely acknowledged the pain he was in, let alone complain about it.

On one such hospital stay, he casually told the doctor, “Hey Doc, I was bored of watching TV at home, so I thought I would come to the resort hospital and watch instead.”

That was Appa. Even when his body was failing him, his mind refused to give in.

6)      “Swim against the tide. Go out of your comfort zone.”

Appa had a stable job at Neyveli Lignite Corporation after completing his diploma in Mechanical Engineering. For many, that would have been enough—a secure job, a predictable career and a life close to home.

But Appa was always restless for more.

While working there, he decided to upskill and applied for the Associate Member of the Institution of Engineers (India) qualification, which was equivalent to an engineering degree. And then, at a time when many people rarely moved beyond their home states, he began researching where the opportunities of the future lay.

His research led him to the mining industry.

So, he made another bold decision. He studied Mining Engineering and moved away from the familiar, sometimes to some of the remotest parts of India—Goa, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh, among others. These were days when travelling back home could take days, sometimes even weeks. There were no quick flights to book and no video calls to make the distance disappear.

But I don't think Appa ever saw discomfort as a reason not to do something.

Every move exposed him to a new culture, language and way of life. Every move took him further away from what was familiar and closer to something new. Professionally, those decisions were rewarding. Over the years, his shelves filled with certifications, awards and accolades.

But what I remember most about Appa is that he never seemed to believe that life had to follow one straight, predictable path.

Even after retirement, he continued to reinvent himself. He experimented with multiple careers and ideas—insurance, the PC business, teaching assignments and more. Some worked better than others, but that was never really the point. For Appa, retirement was not the end of a career. It was simply another opportunity to try something new.