Dad, Jude and Tagore - The hopeless case and the genius

I have a younger brother called Jude Tagore David. He was named after St Jude and Rabindranath Tagore. St Jude was the patron Saint of Hopeless Cases and Tagore was a well renowned Indian poet and writer from the early 1900s. He was given a knighthood by the British but renounced due to a massacre incident by the British and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. I used to tease my brother that he was an enigma because he was a hopeless case but strongly principled and cultured! Yeah, he didn't enjoy that! One wonders why.

My dad loved to read and he used to read Tagore's works at one time. I think we got our love for reading from him and we loved general knowledge, history and foreign culture in particular. My dad was an amazingly generous person and he would bring poor people he met on the streets home for meals. It will infuriate my mom and worry us because I would come home and find strangers in my house. Thank God they weren't psychos or serial killers. They can't be robbers because we were so poor, we would have robbed the thief!!

He was very logical and his reasonings were more often than not, fair. Importantly also that he was not very traditional. Indian fathers tend to take the dictatorial approach. You-follow-whatever-I-say-no-questions-or-I-will-kick-your-ass style. He was very democratic and very fair. I realize now how much I look to him in life and try to follow him. He truly was a real beacon for me. He absolutely adored his grandchildren and would spoil them silly by giving them Coke, sweets and whatever that drives my kids on a sugar high. There were many people we have never met at his funeral and they would we weeping and crying! My family would be wondering who the heck are these people??? That is the kind of blessings he had. I miss him so.

My brother Jude is an amazing character. He is one of the laziest crazies I have met but also a freaking genius!! He is one of those people you want to kill in school. He will goof off, sleep a lot and still do well in exams. He has an amazing talent for languages as he picked up Tamil in school and now he speaks Thai because of his wife. He taught himself to play the drums and not only to play but to play WELL!! He is in a band that plays at night spots around KL. That's SOOOO cool! If he learned notes, he would be playing professionally now.

He was always kind of huge, now and as a kid. You could always pick him out in any school photo as he will be twice the size of everyone. I remember when he was 9, he ate 8 char siew pau in one sitting! I can't even eat 2. Once also around 8 or 9 years of age, he tried a can of Guinness, without us knowing of course, and fell asleep for 9 hours on the bedroom floor. Typical drunkard!!! He is like a Sequoia tree trunk now and could make me into a cheap tosai. So every beginning of the school year, I will ask him to accompany my kids to school. My kids never gets bullied!!!

We didn't always get along when we were kids. He irritated me to no end and could always get away with murder with my parents. We did have our moments though. Once when bathing (as kids not now!!!!), we got into the bath tub and turned the water grey. We were in there for 30mins and when we opened the bathroom door, there was our mom with the cane. She whacked the daylights, night time and our puberty out of us...and we were wet and naked!!!! Despite our fightings, he never left me alone when it came to punishment by our mom.

He is my best friend, I love him dearly and wouldn't have it any other way.