Baba

I had once asked my father, with a lot of grief and angst in my heart and tone, "Why don't you ever talk to me like a friend, like Sunny's father does?" I was 14 then. Sunny was a friend of mine in school. His father seemed to us boys like the best "dad" in the world. Sunny's dad was always so nice to us, throwing us parties, taking us out to picnics, giving us chocolates and comics. We used to wonder, if this man was so nice to us, what a lucky guy Sunny must be! Whereas my Baba used to be strict with not only me but with my pals as well. He once scolded a good friend of mine for an extremely trivial reason. I used to suffer in silence at some times and rebel on some occasions. On one such occasion, I posted the aforementioned question to my father. I remember he didn't answer. I remember he spent a long time, a very long time indeed, sitting in his favourite chair in silence.

It was not that Baba couldn't be cool. He liked movies and himself came from a background of Theatre and Music. He was the son of a teacher and he was very close to his father, despite being one of ten children. Baba had a strange way of doing even the most ordinary things. He had, what I can best describe as, "ideas". For instance, if a light bulb would burst, he could, instantaneously and on-the-spot, create a short poem about it and make Maa and me laugh. He would always take me along when he used to go to the market. He used to tell me, "Look around you, so many people, accumulated at one place, to trade. People from different classes, with different budgets, with different problems and satisfactions, all gathered together at one place, all gathered as equals." Most of the times, I wouldn't pay attention, and would be peeping into the nearby kite-shop. On other times, I would actually listen, and be amazed. Baba used to go to work everyday, without fail. I have never seen him take a sick leave, EVER. When the Mahabharat was being telecast, Baba used to watch it closely, and used to tell me, "Imagine how powerful the story is, it's thousands of years old, but even today, it beats every movie and becomes a traffic-stopper."

We didn't live in an abundance of wealth, but were reasonably satisfied with whatever we had. My upbringing was soaked in literature, mythology, sports and music, and Baba, with his background, had a big part to play in it. We used to watch the movies of Satyajit Ray together, and we used to discuss and comment on a movie after having watched it. His favourite movie was "Bancharamer Bagan" by Tapan Sinha, and he could discuss the movie for hours. On Sundays, I used to watch He-Man. Baba used to look at it in disgust, but he never prohibited me from watching (I think Maa had something to do with that). He did, however, throw me out of the house when a book titled "The World's Most Notorious Women" was discovered from my possessions.

When I reached my teens, Baba suddenly changed. He became grumpy, unnecessarily strict and wasn't cool anymore. At first, I was clueless as to why that would happen. Later, I attributed it to problems at his work. He was so bitter, that I honestly didn't want to talk to him anymore. He had a scooter, which he used to park inside the house. Since there were two steps leading to the house, he had got a wooden plank made, which would act as an "inclined plane". When he used to return from office, I used to help him push the scooter up the plank and onto the veranda. When I reached 15, I stopped doing it. I found the job too lowly and embarrassing. A friend of mine had given me an amazing cassette of Rock music, and I used to listen to it day in and day out. And pausing the heightened crescendo of the music to come and push my father's bulky old scooter didn't seem like an attractive proposition to me. So, Baba used to do it alone.

One March morning a few years ago, when I had just come out of a lovely warm shower in a hotel in New York, I got a call from my wife that my father has passed away. I won't lie - I didn't weep. I even watched a movie (Aladdin) on the flight back home. Three hours after landing, I went to the hospital to claim Baba, and then took him to the cremation. After the cremation, my father-in-law and I drove to Srirangapatnam to immerse the remains, because there's no river in Bangalore. Then I came back, and sat down with Maa. Not once during those days did I weep. Months later, when I was sitting in silence during one of my "do-nothing" phases, I remembered the question I had asked my father. It was then that I wept. For I realized I was wrong. My father had always been nothing but a friend to me - checking me and stopping me and my pals when we were about to do something wrong, correcting me when I would swear, teaching me the amazing power which a simple market holds in equating people, educating me about the principles of our ancient culture, showing me the value of punctuality, educating me about the sincerity with which one should approach one's occupation. I may not have learnt half of what he taught me, but he tried. Last night, I dreamt of my father sitting in his favourite chair in silence, perhaps thinking about the piercing question I had put to him. I realize now the gravity of those moments of silence. I have nothing but awe and respect for those precious moments of silence. I realize now that it wasn't he who had changed when I reached my teens. The change had happened in me, and it had scared him. He could have answered that question that day, but perhaps he knew that I wouldn't understand. Perhaps he had left me with the question so that I can find an answer to it myself someday.

I think I'm gonna go now. I can hear my son crying in the other room. I think he needs me :-)