Lessons From a Father

To paraphrase Raj Thackeray, when parents decide to raise their children with saṃskāras, it is usually not the case that they decide on a particular saṃskāra on a particular day. Instead, the child emulates the example of his parents case-by-case, and imbibes the lessons they impart. He may not remember them verbatim, but their essence lurks in his subconscious.

My father is an interesting sort. He is not particularly expressive, except when my younger brother and I turn up in his room to scheme against my grandmother’s groove of making curry every evening. When we discuss recipes, when while surfing through cooking channels on YouTube we note the quirks of the many chefs, there prevails a lighter mood. Sometimes, browsing through stuff on Amazon which we may never purchase also results in such a mood.

But otherwise a whole day may pass without interaction. Dad is busy with work, my younger brother is busy with games or his friends, and I am a stolid and brooding presence.

My father’s decent sociability in the outside world belies his general silence at home.

So it is that he is unlikely to string the essentials of any precept into a memorable sentence. And yet basic observation would yield that there are two values on which he never compromises.

In November 2016, my mother took ill. The morning of 30th December seemed to bring promise as she showed signs of recovery. She collapsed a few minutes past noon the same day, and she breathed her last, and the promise paved way to dazzling darkness. Nearly every detail after her fall is a memory that stands out starkly, though not all of these followed in strict order:

• I texted my tuition teachers of my inability to attend classes that day.
• They turned up at home and consoled me; they encouraged me to appear for my 12th pre-board exams that were to be held two weeks thence, and I unequivocally agreed with them.
• I walked to the house of a friend where my younger brother was playing to inform him that he was needed at home. He came home with me, he froze on seeing my mother’s final repose in the living room but walked on to the inmost bedroom as I prodded him. There my father informed him of what befell, and my younger brother spent a few short minutes of crying.
• An aunt and uncle of mine turned up — this uncle being an Air Force officer — as did a few more members of the extended family soon after.
• My father rang up my maternal uncle and maternal grandmother. It was a video call. They saw my mother, and forthwith shed tears, crushed. My maternal grandmother had already lost a son long years ago, and my maternal grandfather followed suit shortly thereafter. Now, my mama was her only surviving child.
• We laid my mother on the ground floor of our building that evening, as we awaited the van that was to take her to the electric crematorium. Thither my father and I went, as did my Air Force uncle, and we returned without comment or expression after the flames freed her from this woe-drenched world.
• An aunt of mine asked me to take a shower as soon as we returned, and I complied. I do not remember having dinner.
• Thanks to the inevitable change in sleeping arrangements, my younger brother and I turned in for the night in my father’s bedroom. As for the others, who slept where I do not recall. A question and an answer intruded into my mind simultaneously before I closed my eyes: “what if this was all a bad dream and I would awaken to find things normal? No, I would not; this had indeed happened.”
• Hitherto stoic, I broke down privately in the bathroom on the evening of New Year, 2017; when the tragedy was already day-before-yesterday.
• For the next few months, my transparently affected younger brother would display tightening amplitudes of feelings.

My father’s was not an arranged marriage, which, though not outlandish for someone born in 1972, was not all that common, either. Nor was there any opposition from either side despite different states of origin (Maharashtra for my father, Gujarat for my mother). Both knew Marathi, both had met at their workplace, both did not know of the other knowing Marathi and struck up converse in Hindi, and continued with that habit despite the unfolding revelations. It could have been the stuff of fairytales.

My mother left us when I was still mostly hot-headed and very angry at the world. From the high of a star pupil until tenth grade, I had sunk to abundant mediocrity. I was experiencing the slow distancing of my friends from me. From my perspective, few and far between are genuine friendships in those crucial years. One academic trough, and the distancing begins. I could not deal with it in a mature manner. It would take years for my hot temper to anneal into equanimity. Perhaps the annealing went too far; I relapsed into my childhood introversion, although I am not as extremely shy as I was in those tender years.

And my younger brother, all of eleven years old when the tragedy befell, would soon begin struggling with grades and feelings alike.

Amid this uniform gloom, my father bore it all with exemplary strength. Nary a blast of a private anguish; never straying from his resilience. The understanding of ‘love’ and ‘romance’ has finally begun stirring in me after years of having disdained it. For I never really understood it before; I was wont to dismiss it all as treacly nonsense. I now realize that I cannot begin to imagine the enormity of loss my father must have felt.

His first lesson to us: forbearance.

His second lesson has to do with his unabating professionalism. Hardly ever has he taken a day off from work. Never has he missed a meeting. Never does he miss a phone call. Never has he complained of being tired. Compared to him, even my usually stolid self would appear gripey.

Forbearance and a solid work ethic; two simple lessons meeting in a powerful blend. Time will be the arbiter of whether I measure up to him.