In August 2006 a twin tragedy struck my family. My younger brother Kitchu’s wife Pankajam who was also my uncle’s daughter passed away. She had shifted to Secunderabad along with my brother to stay with her last daughter who was working there. She was not enjoying good health for a long time and upon her desire to come back to Bangalore where her daughters Jothika and Beena were staying she returned to Bangalore in August. But unfortunately she did not survive for long and died at the residence of her daughter Beena. A few days later my cousin Sethu Anna (elder brother of my childhood ‘hero’ Kunjan) also passed away suddenly in Bangalore at the ripe old age of 83. He had come down from Madras to attend the funeral of Pankajam but was not fated to return there. He died of a heart attack.

In November 2006 I had to be hospitalized again. I had a niggling pain in the heart region and I had a pain on the left hand from shoulder down too. Having read about such indications as sure sign of an impending heart trouble I thought (after a lot of pressure from Ambika) to see Dr.Rao the consulting cardiologist. I talked to Nimmi to get an appointment with Dr.Rao for immediate consultation. We saw Dr.Rao and he asked me to do an angiogram to see if there was any block in the artery immediately. He found out there were two blocks in the main artery leading to the heart and suggested that an immediate angioplasty was to be performed. There was no choice but the cost of around Rs.2 lakhs was prohibitive. And I didn’t know where to raise the money as I had already exhausted the medical relief provided by the Bank of about Rs.2 lakhs on the Pacemaker two years ago. Nimmi talked to Sriram and he immediately arranged for that. The operation lasted less than an hour and the block removed. I was to rest for a couple of months. I was also asked not to climb stairs. This started all sorts of problems for the next few months. The house at No.111, NHCS Layout was vacated as it was on the first floor. A new house close to Nimmi’s residence was found. It was on the ground level and was set in a peaceful locality facing a beautiful garden. After we shited to this house we found that there were numerous disadvantages and no one was happy with the new house. As I was still recovering from the surgery I could not exert too much and things more or less drifted. We were all pleasantly surprised to welcome Supriya who made a surprise visit to us all the way from UK concerned about my health. She traveled alone as Sundar could not accompany her. She had a harrowing time traveling via Colombo by an Air Lanka flight as she could not get a direct flight by British Airways. But the brave girl that she was, she faced the ordeal bravely. We spent some of the best moments for a fortnight and I forgot all the pain of the surgery, the change of residence as a result thereof and the permanent suspense of where we would finally settle down. Supriya tried to help finding a better house for us but nothing fructified. By now we had more or less decided to move to Chennai as Raji had wanted us to do so for quite some time although I was personally not very enthusiastic about the idea. After spending two weeks with us Supriya left for home by the middle of December.