“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.
