Dear Daddy

Dear Daddy

Dear Daddy, It is five months now, exactly on the 28^th of June, at around 12.30 I was at my happiest best (you do know little things about life make me happy), but that changed too soon. I was happy because I so much wanted to call you as I was driving to work, to let you know I had found my true calling of the heart – to be a therapist to people who are the most vulnerable, distressed, beaten and who cry alone. Especially children.  I was happy because I thought this conviction would make you proud. I also thought that afternoon, as I was sitting in the car, that I would want to specialize in grief therapy. My heart told me I’d be good at it! A few weeks earlier, I recall, telling a friend of mine, that I would want to work in a hospice to listen for the dying, to hold their hands, and look at them with nurturing eyes as they leave beyond this fallible world.

Little did I know I’d have lost the chance to be next to you, at that moment of liberation.

~~~

Dear Daddy, I would have called you, tucking my phone into my seat belt, putting you on speaker and cheerily calling you out “ Hey Daddddyyyy”, knowing I loved to prolong the sound of dadiiieeeeeeee. I had the joys of a little child just learning to play with sounds and think it was the best note of music uttered.

~~~

That was not to be. I did not call. Instead, I let the rush of work take the better of me. I had a social Investigation report to be delivered to the Child Welfare Committee (CWC) where a father was taking custody of his daughter (now 15), after the mother had abandoned the child when merely three years old. Tracing the father of the child after 13 long years was a stroke of miracle. I could not finish the report, because I got a call from Uncle Sudha.

~~~

Dear Daddy, it is always the call from Sudha that makes me numb. I know he was your favorite brother-in-law. A tough, no nonsense man. People around him talk to him like as if they were talking to a Lion King, in subdued tone of great respect, and yes off course sometimes with fear. When I saw the phone beeping with his name, why did I feel this call would be about death? I stumped him, daddy! I asked him “ is everything alright? What’s the matter”. He did not know what to say. He asked me to leave to Mangalore immediately. I knew I had to hear your voice. He skirted around the topic. I asked him “is daddy dead?”  I could not take any in-betweens. It is a different matter that I was not told about your going away until I was being driven to the airport. Your youngest son, Manoj had to tell me in clear no-in-between manner. We choked together, and allowed the phone to go dead.

~~~

Dear Daddy, its five months now. I have a lot to tell you. I do. When I am about to fall off to sleep, in my dreams that are surreal, and when I want to scream out your name when I am stuck in long traffic signals. Instead today I catch myself exposing my tears, when driving. The cars, you would know do not have the UV shields anymore.  Emotions are see-through. When driving in cramped roads.

~~~

Dear Daddy, I am left with many, in fact plenty, no, countless things to tell you. I will. I’ll post letters to you here. I want to go through the catharsis of grief, sorrow, pain, and loss to find you close to me. You were my bestest friend. You knew some of my darkest secrets, that typically a daughter would never think of sharing with her dad. I did. You took the information in your stoic, seemingly unmoved charisma. I would cry like a baby to you, through a broken heart, or a failure in my vision of myself, or a hope that I would want to share. Everything made me teary.  You understood it.

I blame you for this acute sensitivity. You taught me the love of literature. You introduced me to the word Dickens and the Pickwick Paper, when I had no clue of how to spell literature. I went on to study Literature, and then teach Literature.  I can tell you, I felt so proud of myself that this gift of Literature and its appreciation came from you. You tutored Literature to the BA students of St. Aloysius College in the early 1960s. The irony is that I never saw you reading any literature anymore than you reading the sports page from the first word to the last. I know that for your boys reading the newspaper meant reading the sports page!

~~~

Dear Daddy, how many fathers introduce their children to appreciate classic Hindi movies, in this time and age of pulp, cheap and crass art .  You did that. Remember the movies we watched together: Saigal’s legendary movie Devdas. The movie, you said played the role that would come to define Saighals acting career: that of the drunken title character in Devdas, based on Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay's novel. You shared the name of the protagonist, and a few quirks of his flawed personality. 

How can I not remember watching the most inspiring movie Anuradha, with Balraj Sahani in the lead role with Leela Naidu. The simple love story of Anuradha Roy, a noted radio singer, dancer and daughter of a rich man, who falls in love with an idealistic doctor, and how she follows her husband to serve the rustics in the village. Anuradha has to decide between her love for husband and music. The clinching moment in the movie occurs when  Dr. Nirmal concedes to her desire to leave her husband whom she loved for the same reasons that she now wants to go away and restart her life in the city. At this point of break-away, she asks him: "Can't you ask me to stay back?", and then decides to stay back with her husband and what does she do, she takes a broom to sweep the front yard. I fell in love with Balraj Sahani then. Oh what a handsome man he was!!

But, little did you know that the stereotypes of the romantic movies would be questioned by your daughter as she grew to understanding constructs in language and culture. You saw that coming, in your great fortitude.  

That was also the time we watched the movies of Guru Datt, and the likes. I began to enjoy the songs of Manna Dey, Mukesh, Rafi, Talat mahmood, Geetha Dutt and all the new singers who gave a voice in the 70s.

~~~

Dear Daddy, I listen to some of the songs – the classical numbers of Rafi, Manna Dey and only wish our old Aiwa cassette player would play some of the tapes I have collected – a legacy to the memory of the richness of art and appreciation of black and white Hindi movie that you taught me.

~~~

Dear Daddy, you always told me to look at people who are less than us – the deprived, the poor, the people who suffer injustice, who have missed opportunities. You always said take your lesson from them. As hard as it was for you to see me leave the IT world of Big Money and grand positions, you saw your Bitte Maye (the only pet name you gave me that translates to Little one) choose a world that you in your heart felt I was doing my bit to follow the aspirations of touching people’s lives in ways that touches mine, too.

Did you know Daddy, that it was when reading the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, three years ago, I told myself that not one day will be wasted in the mindless ways of living, without a purpose of holding, giving, compassion, love and nurturing. I have found my spiritual voyage. Your life, your message is intertwined to my living. 

Parents live through their children.  You do every single moment. 

A part of you is in me.

~~~

Dear Daddy, I have re-picked the Book of Living and Dying.  Again. This time to derive insights into my own mortality. Trying to make sense of it all, in slow motion. I’ll wait until I come to it. Mindful.  When we really look at ourselves, then, and the things around us that we take to be so solid, so stable, and so lasting, we find they have no more reality than a dream.

Daddy, did you know the Buddha said:

Know all things to be like this:

A mirage, a cloud castle,

A dream, an apparition,

Without essence, but with qualities that can be seen.

Know all things to be like this:

As the moon in a bright sky

In some clear lake reflected, 
Though to that lake the moon has never moved.

Know all things to be like this:

As an echo that derives

From music, sounds, and weeping,

Yet in that echo is no melody

Know all things to be like this:

As a magician makes illusions

Of horses, oxen, carts and other things,

Nothing is as it appears.

~~~*~~~