It is strange how one holds on to the pieces of past while trying to live one’s today, while being accepted in one’s designated roles and need of the hour, while trying to fit in and not just get squeezed in. Often, I look back at myself many sun lights ago sitting in the front yard of my family home doing practically nothing …my knees on the lush green grass feeling the March morning dewdrops but observing the quiet morning while Daddy made breakfast in our sunny little kitchen before school days and weekends. A quiet March morning did not mean that nothing was happening…the soil open to the blue skies lavishly soaked the warm sun rays, the feasting earthworms tunneled along, aerating the soil and preparing it to welcome the seeds and bare roots to come and slowly ready and blossom our little garden patch with fragrant flowers of all kinds… while I went to school, and Daddy cooked and went to work…everyday!

Not accepting no one’s definition of my life is a skill that my belated father taught me. Silly little ritual that I performed throughout my elementary school years almost every night before falling asleep was to kiss my pillow seven times and then quietly ask my guardian angels to bring my mother in my dreams. Sure enough that hardly ever happened but at least I tried… I tried year after year after year. Many friends
in neighbourhood and school would often burst out in crazy laughter at my fairy tale kind of a technique and I knew through and through that mom was nowhere to be found, she had simply moved on into the next world, and has left a daughter behind who unconsciously yet surely developed many arts of survival. She left me a toddler in my father’s arm and rested in peace while the little girl in me who had no memories of her mother sure had many questions. At the age of five, six seven, eight and even eighteen it did not make any sense when dad would go on and on about life so normally while ironing my school uniform, while braiding my thick black log of coarse hair patiently and while giving me a cold compress on my fevered forehead sometimes. Didn’t he have any questions, I would wonder! Now being the mother of a eleven and half year old child I look back and see how slick my father was at seeing things from the odd bits and ends. The odd end of telescope that daddy looked from at life was magic charm that kept out family going. Mom’s sudden death left dad lonely but his sense of acceptance and moving on was pragmatically divine. Often he would opine that the essence of optimism is that it takes no account of the present, or past but it is a source of inspiration, of vitality and hope where some would resign; it enables some to hold the head high, to claim the future and not to abandon it to adversity. Daddy expected me to hold my head high up too.

Grade nine was a tough call for me, there were many bright students in my class that year who excelled in Math. I was petrified of Math, numbers did not make any sense to me and my father had to try many strategies to somehow keep me focused on the matrix of number sciences, it was challenging for both of us, he was gifted with both languages and Arithmetic but not his daughter. Between my disinterest, silly excuses and his limited time due to his professional commitments and household duties the stress was immense. I tried everything to avoid the crucial one and a half hour math time with daddy… that included an everyday tummy ache, detailed explanation of classroom episodes and hiding under my late grandfather’s antique bed were some of the devotional acts that I put out almost always just to kill time. My exams were just round the corner, but the last thing I wanted to do was sit down and concentrate on Math while father explained strategies again and again very patiently. Then one fine day he showed the right cards at the right time…”if you work hard and score a hundred percent in Math I am taking you to Mysore for a nice little vacation, just daddy and daughter…”. “Really, you mean it with your heart and soul daddy”? My eyes widened. “Really, we will go to the Amba Vilas Palace, Lalitha Mahal that I drew daddy in grade four and won the third price in an on the spot art competition, while there can we also visit the Regional Museum of Natural History of Mysore…the one you bought me a book about last year…. you remember daddy, can I please buy some souvenirs for my class fellows too”? My wishes were endless, I could not sleep that night, I was a typical child. I had only seen beautiful Mysore, the City of Palaces in post cards that
 daddy’s dear friend sent us, and I had seen Mysore only on small screen… of course in Bollywood sing and dance numbers. That trick worked like a charm and I started paying attention as he taught me every evening from then on. He was somewhat relieved and I was working hard in anticipation of our upcoming trip. Things were just about to fall smoothly in their proper places, my final Math exam was hardly a two week away when all of a sudden my father had a serious accident and ended up in emergency and the an ICU where he struggled for his life for a couple of nights and passed away. The reason to focus on Math for a grade nine student was compromised all of a sudden because she felt that she was wronged and let down at a very crucial time. The reason to concentrate on math almost lost it’s meaning and as my hero has moved on all of a sudden and the urge to shine in his eyes felt befooled with and mocked at. The elements of shock and grief were appalling. Our plans to take a trip after my exams to Mysore felt trivial in front of the sudden divine arrangements. My math time with daddy ended forever, our trip could not materialize and daddy was no more… three big blows, I was thrice as shattered.

His funeral ceremony I remember with such fine details. I made many excuses to touch his ice cold face while he laid peacefully on the pyre… the Holy combustible materials helped daddy’s cold body spirit away seemingly very peacefully. We as human pay so much attention to the bigger picture sometimes that we lose touch with the tiny pixels that we are made out of. At daddy’s funeral no camera could have captured what I witnessed with my naked eye of a young girl that gloomy cold afternoon… very little particles of his being floated upwards along the furious sparkles of holy fire in many different colours towards the dim sunbeams on that cloudy day, every pixel of daddy’s being moved and withered away carrying it’s own weight, dearth and significance within a given divine orbit, holy fire was crackling with all it’s might… many attending people watched respectfully, some cried… I stood by quietly on wild grasses under a thick bunch of poplar trees and some out of place weeping willows on the funeral grounds fighting an emotional upheaval within myself. By the time all the fire extinguished it was dusk… but dusk was more than an illusion that day, with my welled up eyes it was hard to tell if the fading sun was above or below the horizon, but one thing was very clear to me that day, a lesson of my life I learned in grade nine that out of a very few things that can not be without the other yet they can not exist at the same time… like day and night, life and death!!! Daddy rested in peace while I came back home with everyone else feeling defeated and small… tired and exhausted I tried to block out my math exam and trip to Mysore since destiny pulled a fast one!

It was hard to concentrate on studies until I forced myself to look at life the way my father would have. “You can avoid reality but you can not avoid the consequences of avoiding the reality”, he would have simply expressed in a worldly-wise manner. Hence, I studied hard for the last three or four days before my final exam and surprised myself and my father in heaven with a one hundred percent score in math that year. I am sure daddy was happy with my newly developed moral sense of duty and a dignified self interest… with or without a holiday trip or any other perks. I am thankful for his genes in my, for instilling a temperament for moving on rather than lingering on. On a much superficial level my father may have just taught me language and number skills on a pieces of paper and through his words, but what he did not speak or reciprocated just simply acted out had a better impact on my life. The words my father did not ever speak were more influential as they taught me the most, and prepared me well for life. The world is after all a very subjective creation; there are choices to be made from an abundance of selections of elements.

Often I net surf to see various beautiful historic palaces of Mysore, if nothing else I like to read about the people, religions, government, traditions, fashions, arts and crafts, infrastructure or just anything about the City of Mysore, I guess more so on the occasions when I think of my father and his promise or when I miss him dearly and like to communicate with him. I have not had a chance to visit Mysore till date… well purely because life falls in my way all the time and the plan does not take a realistic flight very painfully and ironically speaking. I still hold precious the long expired railway tickets for two that my late father had reserved for us many years ago. They are my bookmarks, my tokens of survival after his untimely demise and more than anything else an evidence of my father’s promise that he meant to keep! Whenever I feel weak or not so grounded those white glazed paper tickets, now pale and faded yet intact remind me to reassure myself in my own strengths and capacities beyond limits up and above all odds. However, I hope to visit the city with the love of my life my daughter Mehar, one day. I hope my late father’s words of praise for the city resonate alive and fresh in my ears when I happen to actually see, feel and breath in Majestic Mysore like they always do in my subconscious. I hope to keep and fulfill the promise one day with my daughter that my father made with me! I am going to keep you word daddy, I promise! Amen!!!

– Anoop Kaur Babra