Hariharan's obituary
Hariharan Narayanan Iyer (“Veeran”)
Jan 23 1933 - July 29, 2022
The year was 1946, and a 13 year “Veeran” had experienced the spirit of giving, exemplified by his mother Echchi-ammai up close. Born in a family with 7 children and little means, his mother would often go hungry, while feeding the kids and everyone who showed up. His father K V Narayanan was a school clerk in the village of Ettumanoor in Kerala. Veeran used to enjoy swimming in the river, loved the idea of “Krishi” (agriculture), and was exceptional at school. However, despite top scoring in the state in the 12th grade, he could not join engineering as his family did not have the money to pay the tuition.
Seeking opportunities, he moved to Bombay, and took odds-and-ends jobs while pursuing studies in cost accounting & company law in parallel. After years of strife, at the age of 25, he finally got a foothold with a government job in UPSC. The success of landing a stable job would come hand-in-hand with an extreme trauma of losing his mother at the age of 52, and left a deep scar: the last memory of his mother was wearing a torn saree, and a regret he carried all his life is that he could not even buy her a good saree. My dad would occassionally burst out in tears remembering this, even a few months before his demise; indeed his mom had the biggest role in shaping his core values of humility, service and giving.
My dad was loyal to the govt and stayed with them for 25 years, even if his company law degree could have paid far better in the private sector. At the age of 30 he got married to beautiful Saroja, his companion for 59 years, and the family had expanded with 2 kids. Despite his limited means, helping people in dire need came naturally. Among the hundreds of people he helped directly, the story of a young Ravi in Ambernath is worth a mention. Ravi was a 20 yr old boy from Kerala and my dad helped him buy his auto rickshaw and continued to advise him over the years. With Ravi’s hard work, and enterprising nature he made it big, now owner of many businesses in Ambernath. To this day, Ravi remains grateful to my dad for his tutelage to his path to success. There were many such “Ravis” in the journey, and some even cheated my dad – but he had this admirable quality of holding zero grudges and easily letting go of the past.
Early retirement from the government at the age of 50, changed his economic outlook through a string of successful runs in private companies starting with a role in Mafatlal, and ending finally as the top company law expert for Vivek Goenka, the CEO of Indian Express. But the improved economic situation was only a means to advance a new agenda that was taking shape around the time when he experienced up close the last few years of his dad’s life. The notion of serving old people in need became a driving passion that would consume him for the next 25-30 years until the very end.
His brainchild was born in 1996 – Vanaprastha Ashram, a non-profit organization, built with a vision to provide a holistic service to elders including their physical, emotional and spiritual needs, at an extremely affordable price. For the following years, he was involved with all details of the project from fund-raising, fighting with govt red-tape, operational minutiae and donating a vast majority of his own life savings into the project over time. After 15 yrs of strife, the home in Sringeri was inaugurated in 2001, a 5-acre fertile land next to the Tunga River and close to the Sringeri Mutt. The gratitude and happiness among the elders who occupied the property brought him immense joy, as did the opportunity to pursue his childhood passion for agriculture. The productive soil even today delivers a large number of coconuts and jackfruits which bring in significant revenues, to pay for all the costs while keeping the fees low as always.
His passion, after the success of Sringeri was to build many such homes starting with Bangalore and then Mumbai. The not-for-profit home in Bangalore, a 1.25 acre property was built with seemingly unending challenges fighting govt redtape, fundraising, and investing his own life savings of more than 2.5 crore rupees to cover the funding gap. Sadly, despite the significant infrastructure that was put in place, this project never took off, due to Covid and other circ*mstances. This failure did not deter him even by a bit and even during the last days of his life, he was extremely passionate about a home in Mumbai, and was in advanced stages of discussions with multiple sites. Indeed, how my dad dealt with failures such as this was a life lesson more profound than his reaction to successes, which was always low key, and unassuming, qualities he had naturally imbibed from his mother.
Through the years of strife serving people and not caring a bit for his personal wellbeing and comfort, took a significant toll on his health. With his mind so absorbed in social service, he would not even take his pills on time, or be compliant with physician visits. My mother’s undeterred attention to his health is what kept him active for the last 20 years of his life. But despite the strong spirit of service wanting to do more, the body was breaking down by the age of 89. About 21 days ago, we learnt that he was taken to the ICU with a stroke.
After he left his body early morning on July 29th, the prayer and mantras at home and crematorium lent a unique sense of calm and contentment in my heart that Appa is now free of earthly impediments of pain, suffering and attachments, and merged with infinite consciousness. Words from Nirvana Shatakam, Adi Shankara's poetry seem apt in this trying moment
"Mano buddhi ahankara chittani naaham
Na cha shrotravjihve na cha ghraana netre
Na cha vyoma bhumir na tejo na vaayuhu
Chidananda rupah shivo'ham shivo'ham"
(I am not the mind, the intellect, the ego or the memory, I am not the ears, the skin, the nose or the eyes, I am not space, not earth, not fire, water or wind, I am the form of consciousness and bliss, I am the eternal Shiva…)
