Father, I don’t miss you anymore…

The diary fell with a heavy thud. As if calling for my attention, which i was saving for a poetry book, lost somewhere deep in that dusty shelf. It was my father’s diary which had his writings and scribbling for which he had found time even on the last day of his life. It had come to me at the least expected moment, as if telling me its time to return to its true owner.

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My growing up years were spent missing my father. Everything that belonged to him, belonged to me. His diary, wristwatch, books, umbrella, camera...all the memories of eight years jammed into a slice of my brain where I allowed none. I believed nobody loved him the way I did and nobody missed him the way I suffered. While no tears had left my eyes on the day of his death, it kept welling up for years on end.

His last day is etched in my mind like no other. Exactly two years after Indira Gandhi was shot dead. I was seated on his lap, he explaining the game of cricket to me as if he knew there was no other time. I left him and went out to play with my brother. On returning, I found him lying on his bed, my mother gently pressing his chest. I remember her telling him to consult a doctor.

On leaving the house to the hospital, he stopped at the steps, turned to me and said, `be with your mother.’ Nothing significant for an eight year old but too prophetic the words sounded ever after. He returned lifeless. Cardiac arrest.

He wasnt cremated but buried. Maybe his being an atheist mattered in his final journey. I didnt cry but watched helplessly as my mother embraced her better half, unwilling to let him go. At 35, she was a widow with two little kids. I have often watched my mother visiting the grave, plucking out the overgrown grass and cleaning the mud over it with bare hands. He was buried in his native place and she was two hours away in her hometown. I have sensed her longing to see his resting place as if he still lay there waiting for her.

As years passed, she grew strong. Tears stopped when she saw us around. But something in me was snapped. Changed forever. As I crossed my childhood, I began missing his big presence. My pillow soaked with grief, poured out at nights. I do not remember the exact reason why I mourned for him so deeply but I was in black whatever I wore. I asked for all his belongings from mother and kept it with me. I kept a safe distance from her and loved her from what remained of my love for the invisible parent. I considered myself an orphan. I spoke, thought and even stared  like my father at times, many would say. That would make me happy. I tried vegetables that he liked and detested ones that he did not eat, I liked to read Indian Express because he read only that. I kept him alive, though he was gone before I even learned to think.

It went on till I met the love of my life. In the years that followed, my love gently filled the vacuum, telling me that I should let go of my father. More so, because an astrologer had `found' out that I was the cause my father’s soul had not found peace even after many years. There were atonement done. I was asked not to pray or talk to my father on a daily basis, not to attach any sort of divinity to the departed soul. I would laugh hearing this. And cry later. But I didn’t even share him with my mother.

Then, I got married. We had a son. There came moments in life when I realized how it could be to miss your soulmate one fine day. How terrible it is to see him go out cheerfully and come back lifeless two hours back. How difficult it is to fill the space of a father and be a mother all at the same time. It hit me what my mother would have gone through, my strange behavior making it probably all the more worse for her.

Gradually, I stopped talking to my father, instead called up Amma whenever I felt like opening up. Now that we both were mothers, the silence was filled. Except for the inner fear that my father’s death has sown in me, I have overcome his absence. When people tell on your face that everything is for good, I have often wondered what good the death of a parent has brought to me. After all these years, I think I have  the answer. It is to learn to love a person whole heartedly when he is around. To realize that each passing day with him is a blessing from above. That our children tie us together even if the strings are invisible. For her, all of Achan’s belongings did not matter as long as she saw us around her. Her eternal bond to her partner.

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As I returned his belongings to Amma the other day, her smile said it all. When she sat there silently with the diary for sometime in the reclining chair, I saw my father in her. I realized what a fool I have been to search for him and avoid her when all the while he WAS her. Not a day passes by without making a call to her, no occasions without a visit to her place and no worries when she is around. I have finally got both my parents.

Ends…