A Brother's Letter

Dada,

Forgive me for being extremely nostalgic, do you remember the Barasaat days? When you were giving your boards or something and i started playing cricket with your group in the ground below? I just remembered this one evening out of a sudden today. 
That evening i was playing with Yogesh & others and you were sitting in the balcony. Its funny how i exclaim them as Yogesh and others! Anyway, i was in the side bowling first. I got to bowl a couple of overs, only because i was your younger brother. These guys were absolutely smitten by your left arm 'god knows what' bowling, and never had a clue whether it would swing or it would spin once the ball came out of your thin left arm and stick like fingers. I, on the contrary, as you know had a very conventional right arm bowling talent, without much guile and variation, but would bowl wicket to wicket and had a good yorker. Hence, in a match within friends in a colony park, i was an useful bowler, but never the talisman you were. The two overs i bowled that day, i don't remember much, but what happened after we started to bat is what i remember clearly.

We were chasing a huge total since Yogesh had made the ball vanish quite a few times with his monstrous hits while we bowled to him. In our side too, we had these lanky boys who could hit long sixes, almost as if they were playing golf, but this evening it almost seemed as if the match was fixed. None of the hitters from our side could put bat to ball, instead, the wickets were far more consistent in connecting with the ball that evening.The ball got lost when i finally got to bat and hit the ball in the bushes. No one could find it since it was almost dark, the ball's light green outer cover had already gotten peeled and only the dark grey colored rubber had survived, thanks to Yogesh's ruthless hammering earlier in the evening and the numerous times the ball got wet due to falling in the drain next to the park. It hence became almost impossible to spot the dark grey ball in the bushes in paucity of light.

I came back & you asked me in the balcony- "They didn't allow you to bat, right? "
I replied- " No, they did, but the ball got lost.."

I did not feel like answering or explaining anymore. I felt more enraged with your question, since it was true. I was asked to bat only at the end after everyone else was dismissed, and if i had been given a chance to bat a little earlier, i would have batted longer, if not won it for my team.

I still remember the way you looked at me after asking me. I know that look, of pity, concern, love, and genuine sadness for your brother's insignificance to our playing group. And i know it wasn't only because i was your younger brother, it was also because you knew i was better than a lot of players in the ground, and that i deserved an equal chance. I know it was also because of the way you looked at the game, the way a civil engineer looks at a flyover, because you believed a good player should get a fair opportunity, and it was intolerable to you if it didn't happen.

After almost 15 years today i write about this to you, to thank you for that question. A question which gave me respect, an identity, atleast in your eyes. Sometimes, that's all it needs...

From your ignorant younger brother,
Love

Death of a thought!

“Your dad is no more with us!”

The voice, or rather the person from the other side of the telephonic conversation broke down. I kept the receiver down, not managing to put it at its correct place. I lied down on the single mattress, not thinking of the bed bugs this time, and faced the ceiling with my eyes wide open. The visual slowly became hazy, as water from my tear glands made their place just in front of my eye balls! As I shut my eyes slowly, the tears fell on the pillow via my earlobes due to gravitational force, rather than a more cinematic rolling down the cheeks! I rose after a few minutes, deciding to leave for my home town and being present for the cremation!

My father was a man of arrogance! Throughout my childhood and teens, my mother was the person I felt being with. Dad was always someone I loved to avoid! I always felt and believed that he was too harsh on me, being his kid. Only after my teens, did I start finding a person beneath his layer of rudeness and arrogance, who was genuine and soft! This was the time when I got through the Govt. Art college in Kolkata and shifted base to Kolkata, whereas my parents continued staying in Vardhaman!

I was 15 when in school once I had scored poorly in Sanskrit. Sanskrit was the only subject my mother taught me, everything else was from my father. Hence somehow scoring less in Sanskrit seemed none of my father's business. He remained extremely calm and composed, but there was the other parent. For a change, my mother found all the rudeness, after years of marriage with a rude man! She shouted at me and hit my head with her knuckles. I was too old to cry, instead I revolted, and insisted that it wasn't my fault. After some time, she gave up on me, and came to the living room, where my father was reading a newspaper so relaxed as if nothing had happened. She came to him and complained, “our son has become impossibly stubborn, its difficult to tell him anything!” I remained at the door of my bedroom, watching and listening to this. My father replied to her in the most nonchalant way possible, “let him remain stubborn, it will help him if he uses it in the right things...”.

I used it. In the right things. I became an artist and a creative designer in an ad agency, earning much more than my academically brilliant brother, who went on to become an architect. I needed to be stubborn to reach here. My father's stubbornness didn't pay him. He couldn't be stubborn when he needed to be the most. And he knew it more than anyone else. He possibly didn't even know that I overheard him that day from the bedroom, that how he unknowingly said something that remained with me all these years and helped me achieve what I wanted.

In the living room, lay my father's body, wrapped in a cold white cloth. His abdominal part had expanded and become bigger. It was strange to see him lying like that, not reacting to so many people around. He was not fond of public gatherings, avoided crowded trains and buses in his mid life before owning a car. Both his sons worked in different cities, so it was quite natural that they would take time to reach here. I had reached earlier than my elder brother. Once my brother arrived, and after he touched dad's white and stiff feet, people started hurrying the proceedings. I was asked to pick my father from his legs, along with my brother. My two other cousins picked him up from the shoulders. The wooden ply seemed unusually heavy for a single man's weight. The position of dad's left leg was next to my right shoulder, and vice versa for my brother. It was a difficult walk till we put him in a car. I decided to stay at home with my mother, who also chose not to go to the cremation ground.

A speeding ambulance killed my father. He was on his way back from office, unusually on a scooter that day, leaving behind his car for servicing. The ambulance with a patient inside it, needed to reach the hospital as quickly as possible. In order to do that, it landed up on the wrong side of the road, honking and moving at a good speed. My father, with his glasses and in his not so attentive age, must have missed the sight or sound of it. He crashed head on to the ambulance, a vehicle that is supposed to save lives! I'm not sure about the patient inside the ambulance, but my father was declared spot dead. He couldn't remain stubborn enough to live a little longer, to reach a hospital, to get treated.