The need for solitude amidst nature burns inside all the time but due to work and other distractions it is not always possible. I’ve made it a habit to drop in at Necklace Road early in the mornings one Sunday a month to get some much needed solitude and try calm down. It had been nearly a month and half since I was last at Necklace Road. In the monsoon reason one is not sure of watching the sunrise what with the skies being covered with clouds. Last Sunday surprisingly a clear sky welcomed me when I reached Necklace Road. The other surprise was that there wasn’t a single soul around for quite a long time, at least not until the sun began to come over the horizon. Usually, there are morning walkers and exercisers crowding the place but this Sunday I was alone. I had only the chirping and cooing birds for company. A lone, dark duck waded into the frame just when I clicked the rising sun with my digital camera as if to make the picture complete.
I sat for over three quarters of an hour at the trying to get over a minor heartache and found some of the tumult in my heart began to recede. I had been overlooked for a trip to Chennai to attend a four day training session. Earlier in the month I was overlooked in favour of someone else for a five training session at Pune. It had been so long since I had been out of Hyderabad that I was dying to get out somewhere. However when the opportunity came I was passed over. It rankled in my heart and left me uncharacteristically aloof at work.
After sitting at the lakeside alone watching the sun I was able to get over the disappointment completely. I also figured out what to do with my novel that I am revising probably for the hundredth time. I resolved to finish it by the end of July at any cost and with that decision I left for the second phase of the Necklace Road routine- the paper reading session at Adarsh Café.
I bought the Sunday papers and settled down at one of the tables in the Irani with the intention of spending a long time sipping chai and reading the two newspapers. When I opened them I realized it was Father’s Day. I read the accounts of many celebrities recounting how their fathers helped them in life. I am a father myself now but even after twenty three years I still cannot get over my father’s death.
My mother used to say, and still says, that I am the unluckiest member of the family. I did not know how unlucky I was until that fateful day in August 1988. I was the only one in my family who did not get to take a last look at my father. That day by some curious coincidence two of my brothers were in Delhi and I was in a train on my way to Delhi. When I reached Delhi in the morning when my closest friend came to the railway station to receive me I was a bit surprised. He gave me the news that my father was seriously ill. I was so naïve and did not realize he was already dead. My two brothers had already left Delhi the previous day. I have no idea how I got to the small town where my father was born and where his body was taken for the last rites. By the time I reached it was all over. I was too late. All I got to see were the dying embers on the funeral pyre.
I still don’t understand what made my father persuade me to take the test at Delhi when I was totally against it. He let us all do our own thing and did not bother much about what we did. But that day he actually came along to the railway station to see me off. He never dropped any of us at school or come to pick us up. He did not accompany us on the first day of college or on graduation day. So it was a big mystery why he did what he did. But why I agreed to go was one decision I cannot come to terms with. I’m almost every day tormented by the thought- what if I had said no and refused to make the trip to Delhi?
No comments:
Post a Comment