Nagu, RIP

A part of my past has died.

Dear old Nagu, a tea vendor opposite the gate of REC Trichy apparently passed away some time ago. The present batches don’t even know he existed. I have met some alumni who used to come to campus much after they had passed out and would also make sure they did visit him. He must have been around for atleast a decade or more.

Anyone who had tea at his ‘kadai’ (shop in Tamil) would acknowledge his contribution to our lives in those days. Nagu was the first to know about our exams since we would proceed to gate after yet another exam down the drain. On some rare day, we would actually sit there relieved that the exam went better than expected. I must have spent a lot of time during those four glorious years at Nagu’s. I used it as my sulking point, meeting point, “leave me to myself-point”, “let me a give you guys a little treat-point,”etc.

I went to Nagu’s almost every day from my second semester in engineering for a little over three years. I was one of the few who got to meet seniors (Partially because, I went there with the seniors that I had already gotten to know!) at the tea shop in the first year itself (Those were the days of ragging). In fact, I got to know most of my seniors and juniors at the outlet. And he stayed open, well beyond midnight. There were several occasions on which I used to wake him up and ask for tea sometime beyond 3 am! Only when there would be no milk would Nagu say no. In fact whenever I went to Bangalore on the weekend and returned, Nagu would eagerly greet me like a batchmate and ask if I had gone home. There were a few occasions when I would be out of campus for some fest or some other work and not make it to Nagu’s. He would ask when I returned, “ye tambi varle? (Almost translating to, “Why didn’t you come, brother?” Even on the rare occasion when it rained, I did manage to sneak in a visit to his outlet. I used to have around half a dozen teas or more in those days (started mostly due to the lousy coffee around on campus and the need for some release) In fact, that was the only time when I was almost a pure tea drinker.

There was this really black period during our time when some students died in several different incidents. Nagu was equally upset by all these as much as the student community. In fact during one of them, when the body of the unfortunate guy involved didn’t arrive, Nagu also kept an overnight vigil waiting for some information to arrive.

He had this son called Lingam who made better tea, but had a drinking problem – thus blowing away all his earnings in no time. Nagu thus ended up taking care of his grand children as well.

When I left college, I had given most of my worldly possessions of any value to Nagu, since he could have found some use for them.

Two days ago, I was in Trichy after a gap of nearly 7 years and had hoped to catch up with him, among others. First, to my disappointment, there was some other hut in the place of Nagu’s kadai. Next, there was some structure in the place where Lingam’s kadai used to exist. After some investigation, it turned out that Nagu died some time ago. I didn’t have the heart to ask any further questions.

Life goes on.