His father, Kannan Nair, worked in the TD Devasom (temple) in Cochin. He had excellent math skills and was often called upon to help with planning construction projects. Whenever he saw a vendor pass by hawking math textbooks, he would buy them and tell his young son, who had still not started school, that one day he would study them. He also wanted his son (nicknamed "Kuttan" (the little one) by his loving family) to master Gujarati, as all the rich businessmen in that area were Gujaratis, and his father hoped he would become an accountant with one of them. Unfortunately, Kannan Nair passed away when "Kuttan" was just nine. While "Kuttan" never mastered Gujarati though he attended classes as a young child, he did study every math book his father had bought for him years before and topped the Madras state in Mathematics in the high school exams. Though he lost his father at a very young age, he credited him for his lifelong love of mathematics. And through the years, he shared that love with generations of children in the Appakate family as well as others in the community.