Memories are funny things. One can have a good memory, helping one tremendously while attempting an exam or one can have a terrible memory, practically guaranteeing a struggle in the aforesaid exam. And also one can have good memories or bad ones, depending on how fortunate one has been in life....These memories, especially the childhood ones, linger pleasantly or lurk malevolently in the recesses of one's mind, popping out, at times when prodded gently, at other times slowly, reluctantly uncoiling themselves, if one cares to delve a little deeper...
Today it has been a year since we lost our Dad and it is but natural for memories to flood our minds, at times, flooding our eyes, pooling in the crevices of our visages, a smile here, a tear there, a frown too because, of course. if it was always sugar and spice and all that's nice, it wouldn't be life...
My first memories of my Dad involve post dinner dessert sprees in various parts of India and I have penned these down earlier. So I'm going to dig deeper beyond my gustatory memory and see what crops up! The year was 1981, I was in Upper Kinder Garten in St.Patrick's Convent, Jodhpur, Rajasthan and I had excitedly come home and announced to my mother all the details of the picnic our class was going to go to the next day. But there was some issue with my water bottle and the heat of the Thar Desert meant no water bottle, no picnic! The very thought of it was upsetting me no end. These were the pre historic days when you could not simply buy bottled water in India! Given the chronic shortage of army housing, we lived in a rented bungalow in the back of beyond, as we waited to be allotted our house in the Army Housing Complex, and my Dad came home really late from office. On that particular day, he reached home after dark and my mother told him about the urgent need for a water bottle...He immediately rushed out to see what he could find, if anything at all. I remember feeling so guilty that he had had to leave home again just because of me...He must have hunted far and near (we had no shops in every vicinity like we do now...) but he finally came home with an oval shaped bright sunshiny yellow water bottle! He told me it was absolutely the last piece available in the shop and the little plastic cog which fits into the straw was already detached from the bottle, but it was the best he could do and it was better than not having a bottle for the picnic at all! I was so glad and grateful and even though I was only five years old, I think that was the day I realized that most parents do anything and everything they can to see their children smile again...
My first memory of Diwali is in Rajasthan too...we had finally moved into our designated house and my Dad tied long, parallel rows of string which began in our house, passed on through our front door, went across the staircase landing and continued straight into our neighbour's house! Folks brought up in the 70s and 80s in India will remember those "Burning Train" crackers, which then whizzed along those strings, powered by gun powder, until they ultimately fizzled out! What a fascinating sight it was, while it lasted...And my Dad had made it happen! What could be more wondrous for a six year old!
This past week has been hard for Bollywood, as two of India's top actors succumbed to cancer within twenty four hours of each other...So a couple of days ago, we decided to watch the movie "The Namesake" based on Jhumpa Lahiri's brilliant book of the same name, which had one of the deceased actors in the leading role. And the train accident shown in the movie, took me back to 1984, when my Dad too survived a train accident...My mother had moved to Pune with my sister and me, to help my paternal grandmother, after my grandfather's death and my Dad was on his way back to New Delhi, where he was posted, after attending my maternal Uncle's wedding. Our winter vacation was still going on but my mother was already back in school where she taught. Suddenly the postman was at our gate and he handed my grandmother a telegram which simply read, "I am safe." Ajay. Come on people, those were pre cell phone, practically pre telephone days, both good news and bad came via a physical telegram, not the app! My grandmother and I were completely flummoxed, as we could not make out head or tail of this message. My grandmother scanned the Marathi language newspaper but found nothing in it. Then she sent me to our dearest neighbours (after nearly forty five years of being neighbours, they are as precious as family!) across the lane and told me to ask them to look in the English newspaper...And sure enough, Naik Kaka (uncle) found the little news item, giving details of the train accident in The Times Of India.Thankfully there had been no casualties and it explained my Dad's mysterious telegram! That day my abiding trust in the Times began and it also explains my slight, make that strong, disdain for that particular Marathi paper...it had not covered the very important news of my Dad's train accident, an unforgivable sin in my eight year old mind! My Dad, of course, read the rather apolitical Indian Express until the end, a tad bland for my tastes...!
The following year, my Dad was posted to Pune and after a short stay in a temporary accommodation, ( it was actually a part of a palace!), we were safely ensconced in our colonial bungalow on Loop Road, off Nagar Road. Today this road is a very busy thoroughfare in my hometown, surrounded by infotech offices and posh residential buildings. In the mid eighties, it used to be deserted after 6:00 pm and we had no street lights either! We had attended a party in the Army Mess (yes located in the same palace where we had stayed earlier) and were on our way back home in our car. My sister and I had almost dozed off in the back seat,( pre seat belts, pre car seats days), though it wasn't later than 9:00 pm. Suddenly we saw a cyclist illuminated by the head lights of our car coming towards us, on our side of the road, not on the opposite side where he should have been, just before we heard a loud crash and the screech of the brakes, applied by my Dad. I can still hear my Dad's voice in my mind, telling my Mom that the fellow had come under the car. That day I knew what being sick to the stomach felt like...My Dad jumped down from the car, and peered beneath but called out to say he could only see the bicycle...then we heard a voice from the side of the road and realized the man had jumped off his bike in the nick of time...He apologized for driving on the wrong side of the dark road, but said he never thought anyone would be out and about that late! He admitted it was completely his fault but my Dad insisted on taking him to the hospital and then dropped him and his mangled cycle home...And he also paid him to get his bike repaired and explained to us when he finally came home, (my sister and I were wide awake with anxiety!) that the man was a labourer, so he really couldn't afford to get it done himself. That day I learnt how to be generous to another's fault and that human life is very fragile...
Then he got posted to Gauhati, Assam, and just before my 11th birthday, I declared that I did not want to celebrate my birthday and candidly admitted that I would rather just get gifts from my parents than have a full fledged birthday party...My parents agreed and my Dad drove twenty three kilometres to Gauhati city to shop for my gifts! I got almost as many gifts as I would have, had I invited my friends and they included among other sundry things, Swiss Rolls from Gauhati's famous bakery "Shaikh Brothers", books, a diary / planner for the brand new year 1987, along with a fancy pen and a wonderful birthday card which had a glass box painted with flowers, against a background of a deep midnight blue...I adore blue, wear blue often and am surrounded by blue in my house but my favourite shade of blue, to this day, matches the one on that card... It also said "To A Darling Daughter" and I wonder if that was the beginning of my love for alliterations, though I did not know the term then! Look at the title of this post, folks!
(If this picture would have been the Indian Government's prototype for the complete family pic, instead of the ridiculous one girl one boy pic, our population would have been so much lower! Hats off to our parents for showing the way, way back in the 70s... Two girls are also a complete family!)
From Gauhati, my parents moved to Jallandhar while I came back to Pune for High School...It was my Dad who encouraged me to travel alone by train as a thirteen year old, despite my grandmother's misgivings, across half of India, to spend every vacation with them, a journey that spanned two nights and nearly two days...Today I am immensely grateful for those experiences, for they filled me with unshakeable confidence, taught me to look out for myself during travel and to make friends with fellow travellers! And the bliss of eating pineapple ice cream, that my Dad would rush out to buy from the Jallandhar cantonment market post meals,while sprawled on chairs on our lawns, is unmatched to this day...No, Haagen-Dazs does not even come close...nor do Ben and Jerry, Vermont's finest though they may be...
It is hard to separate food from memories of my Dad...A chef par excellence, he gave me many tips and taught me many tricks, painstakingly wrote down basic recipes for me when I got married so I could easily follow them, as I was still busy studying. He bought all the cooking equipment I carried to Russia, where my husband was working then and personally bought and packed fresh spices, both whole and powdered, every time I came home, to take back with me. When he visited us in Kenya, he conducted Indian cooking classes for school mothers from other countries and they were wildly popular. I'm so glad one of his recipes is printed in the cook book compiled by the parent teacher fellowship...
He and I shared a common passion for car driving. And though a fast but skilled driver himself, he had stopped driving for the last few years. Whenever he and I went on the highway out of the city and I touched the speed limit for that particular stretch, he would always tell me to slow down, indicating it with his right hand, while gorgeous green eyes glared at me! I would always point out I was within the limit, and I never slowed down...but now I will because I have no one to indicate that I need to reduce speed, so I need to apply the brakes myself...when you lose a parent, you stop being a child to a large extent, no matter how old you are or whether you are already a parent yourself, when this sad day dawns in your life...
The other day I saw a Dennis The Menace WhatsApp forward and here is what it said:
