WHERE WERE YOU, DAD…?
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Dear Dad,
I have always looked up to you, smart in your OG uniform,
a uniform that had been earned with much effort and dedication. I remember the whiff
of Brasso every time I hugged you, even as your medals sparkled in the
sunshine.
Do you recall the two years I spent with your parents, my
Achachan and Achamma, away from you, Mom and my little sisters? I huffed and
puffed and almost brought the roof down because I wanted to stay with you all. You,
Dad, asked me why I was reluctant to live with them, and I answered that I
hated waking up early in the morning, your father being the headmaster of the
school he had founded, a strict and upright person. You had a tete-a-tete with your
father, and I spent two years with my grandparents, and never once did I have
to wake up at dawn, like the rest of the household did.
Dear Dad, do you even realise how wonderful those two
years were? Achachan painted my room a
special shade of pink so that I would feel at home. Achamma would sit by me
before every exam, while I burnt the midnight oil. Often, she would yawn and
fall asleep, but she would never leave me alone.
Achachan helped me to memorise Mark Antony’s speech,
listening to me patiently, correcting my lapses, till I had it word perfect. When
I lost my nerve on stage and froze, he did not chide me. “Don’t worry! Everyone
gets nervous. You’ll do better next time!” This from a martinet who could blow
up his students with a few well-aimed words made me feel warm and forgiven.
Dad, every afternoon, when I would get back from school,
there Achamma would be, Scrabble board laid out, waiting for me to finish my
tea and delicious snacks. The snacks were from a bakery that served the best
tea cakes, savouries and other Kerala ‘bites’. Achamma had a bunch of giant
keys, and she would open the wooden larder. Out would drift the most appetising
aromas, and I was given the pick of all the snacks I wanted.
Everyday Achamma and I played Scrabble. Maybe that is one
reason why I turned into a writer. After all, I had to make use of the huge bag
of new words which I picked up, playing with her.
Two years when I felt cherished, as I had when I was with
you and Mom! I knew I was the apple of their eye, the eldest born of their
eldest born. You made those years happen, Dad. Your trips down would make the
big house come alive, and I still remember the Mills and Boons that Mom would
always bring me as a gift.
Do you remember, Dad, how excited we would both get when
we located the latest stamps to add to our collections? You had yours with you
and I had mine here, and you would make it a point to send me an extra stamp
which I would use in my letters to you. That way, we both had our special
stamps to add to our collections, along with our match label collections as
well.
Dad, I still have all your letters, tied up with a
ribbon, and kept in a special drawer in which all my most precious possessions nestle.
I recall your beautiful handwriting and your nuggets of wisdom which helped me
in my daily life. I savour the congratulatory messages you sent me every time I
won a prize or did something special.
One letter that has stayed in my memory is when my best friend’s
father passed away after a heart attack. I was shocked and had no idea how to
console her. Dad, you wrote to me after, explaining that parents are the
mainstay of our lives and when they go, it is one of the most tragic events in
life. You urged me to be with my friend, and to make her feel that she had
someone to open up to, if required.
Words that I remembered four years later when…
Dad, where were you when I finished class twelve? Why
were you not around when I got married to a dashing Army Captain with whom you
would have hit it off perfectly? When my little sisters found their partners, it
was still Mom giving them away on her own. Maybe, the Almighty had His own plan
in place after taking you away, because Mom acquired three amazing sons-in-love
without having to lift a little finger.
Mom’s parents, my Ammamma and Muthassan, also played a
crucial role in our lives. Mom had to be the man of the house, running her
school single-handedly. Ammamma, along with Parvathy amma, who was like a third
grandmother to us, held the home and hearth together, making sure that we
wanted for nothing. Muthassan would tell us stories from the Bible and the classics.
He could quote from the Gita and recite poetry from English literature. My love
for literature blossomed further after reading through his books, in which he
wrote comments which were discerning and often humorous as well. I cannot
imagine home without the three of them.
When the grandchildren made their appearance, one by one,
we told them stories of their grandfather, bringing you back into all our
lives. You would have loved them all, with their disparate personalities, each
one adding to the fun and confusion at home. Your eldest grandchild is married,
and the others are growing up, each unfolding facets of their personality. All
of them, without fail, have something of you in them, maybe the sense of
humour, the kind heart, the sociable nature and the love of family.
Today, you also have two great grandchildren, (can you
believe it?) one, a long-legged Missy, and the other a little bolt of lightning,
both of whom also know of you, because their mother, our daughter who has a
wise head on her shoulders, loves and cherishes what she knows of you (as do all your other grandchildren as well). The
little bolt of lightning, I hope, will inherit a few of your traits because he
was born just a day after you, a proper little Gemini.
Dad, I wish we had been with you on that day in Mumbai when you felt uneasy and went to the hospital. You were writing a letter to Mom, who was in Kerala with us, a ritual that the two of you followed every single day. Those letters were so precious, but we did not know it then. Your last letter remained incomplete...
We did not envisage a future without you, especially Mom
who had broken tradition and defied convention to marry you, against the wishes
of her grandmother. Eighteen years of togetherness, of life within the Indian
Army, of little money but much happiness, of friends galore and places visited…
the best life we could have ever had. You were planning to retire, and Mumbai
was your final posting before you retired.
So many plans, Dad, so many castles in the air – a dairy farm for you, a school for Mom… the latter did happen, as the foundation you laid for her just before you left turned into her entire life. The beginning of a life without you!
Dad, so many things remind us of you… birthdays, anniversaries,
rice, sambar and ghee mixed in the perfect proportion, raw eggs, the colour OG,
the smell of cigarette smoke, the fragrance of books; sometimes, a raspy laugh
in the distance brings a whiff of nostalgia along with tears.
Dad, I knew you best. My sisters were so much younger.
They were only seven and ten when you went away, and retain only hazy memories
of the person you were, something that they regret till date. At seventeen, I
was almost an adult. I had more memories stowed away, more keepsakes that keep
you alive in my heart even today.
If we could turn back the clock, how wonderful it would be
to have you with us still, to pamper us all and be pampered, in turn. Mom is
still delightfully spirited, but of late, she has been missing you more.
Dad, where are you now? In a world where there are no
worries, or in a realm that strips you of your memories? Onam has just got over.
King Mahabali has visited his land and returned to his kingdom. If only you
could also come down to us, even if it were once a year to meet us all. Forty
years after you left, there is a whole host of us here. So many faces have
disappeared from our lives, and so many more have come into the family. As
Tennyson put it so aptly,
The old order changeth, yielding place to new…”
It’s time to stop, Dad! I know that I will not receive a reply
to this long letter of mine, but let me tell you a secret. Every year, around
the 29th of January, which is the day you left us, something good
happens to our family. We look at one another, and then Mom says, without fail,
every year, “That’s Achan (Dad) taking care of us.”
We love you. You are always in our hearts.
If only…
Deepti
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