I knew my grandfather had lost his father—my great-grandfather—when he was less than a year old, in 1917-18.
Origin Story
His orthodox Brahmin family disinherited my great-grandmother with infant and threw them out on the street.
She leveraged her caste status to cook meals for orthodox Brahmin families who insisted only another Brahmin touch their food.
It was/is family history I knew.
Mortality
It wasn’t until recently that I learned that the reason my great-grandfather died was because of the Spanish Flu, whose mortality indexed higher for people of prime family formation years, those in their 20-40’s—he was “old” for a new father in his early 30’s—and that he’d likely contracted the flu while riding horseback around villages, in his function as an Ayurvedic practitioner.
Hard to Kill
We’re all survivors of the planet, Sky Fathers, snakes, and evil, wicked people trying to kill us.
