My father's shoes

My father’s shoes We all have a story to tell. But unless you’ve already set yourself up for greatness where others will tell your story, you better start writing out your own :). Writing has been therapeutic, even if badly written or expressed. I am not prone to having deep or prolonged conversations with most people, so the opacity of the internet has always been reassuring when I go into monologues and rants of personal accounts :) It’s almost weird what reminds me of him. It mostly is small, worn-out, badly (rather hurriedly) chosen shoes on a middle aged man. He had small feet and he wore shoes like that. Uncaring and apathetic to brands, fashion, style and disrepair. It was a ritual in the home, for Aai to force him into buying moderately expensive, well-fitted shoes and it always led to an argument about how he was made to splurge money. Never mind that we, the kids, spent more money on movies and eating out in a week than he had to on those shoes. It was spending on himself that always made him act like a debt-ridden man :). He never cared about appearances anyway. Any grooming apart from the daily shower was more of a social and professional compulsion for him. That haircut happened when it became too evident and the hair took more than 3 seconds to obey combing commands and fall in place. Shirts & trousers were selected inside of 2 seconds. The only vanity he allowed himself was a regimented, daily shave. Even in his days of prolonged hospitalization, he craved that shave and felt embarrassed when the doctors saw him with a little scruff on his face. He was after all, till his last breath a dignified doctor. I remember one exasperating occasion when having had another in a series of brushes with death, the first thing he asked me when I came down from Ghaziabad to the hospital was to help him shave. But that isn’t what reminded me of him today. It was a father son pair at the barbershop that made me long for him today. Growing up as a cripplingly shy kid, I never had mustered enough courage to get a haircut myself till very late in school life. (Now don’t go diagnosing me with one of those new age conditions that are in vogue. We Indian kids born in the 80s were immune to those ‘foreign’ afflictions like ADHD, autism, dyslexia and all. We were just shy, or stupid or just plain brats). The daunting task of walking up to a grown man, looking him in the eye, telling him what I wanted and then course correction in between was just beyond me. Most barbers tend to be too boisterous for my taste anyway, compulsively talking and socializing as if they sat, snipping with their scissors on every branch of my family tree. So for me, he was the communicator and the handler of tough situations like asking the barber to make it shorter than what had been done. But ironically, I loved keeping my hair minimal, so every 10 days, I would drag him along to sit and twiddle his thumbs while I looked at him and signaled him to intervene every now and then. Time passed and my shyness abated a little, the barber issue was resolved when teenage hit like a tornado and our haircut philosophies no longer matched. But till the end, he remained firmly in-charge of the house. So even though throughout my teenage, I continuously battled him for the alpha male position at home, demanding to be trusted, brandishing my bravado of having well connected friends and my ‘knowledge of the system’ (he remained too naïve and tended to get things done straightway, as per regulations, which I thought was boring), I was never really required to take any responsibility of doing menial tasks like paper work, government filings, etc. I still don’t. Living away from home meant Aai had to take up the baton, something she has done so well. Seeing that kid and his father at the barber today made me truly reminisce on the presence that he had in the home. An anchor, that was drawn up in January this year, and our lives took a sudden, unexpected course that none of us had imagined. Like every kid is of his/her father, I was in awe of him. The reverence with which people spoke to him, his uninterrupted sense of duty which made him treat patients who had come home even at 3 AM in the morning, the way he had built whatever we had right from scratch, getting no handouts from anyone and through a sheer sincerity of effort. It’s now I realize how little he enjoyed any of what he earned, but I do not remember a time now when I had to really give up anything because of finances. Yes, there was the one odd really expensive toy I wanted that he refused to buy, but then I was just being a brat. For what it counted, education, lifestyle, books, things that truly enriched us, we were never short. The only grudge I still hold against him today is never buying me an RC Helicopter. And I will never buy it on my own, just to hold up his end of that argument :). I digress. So what happens to kids who are in awe of the parent? One word. Teenage. For us, it unleashed a demon that unraveled the very fabric of our relationship. When I rebelled, I didn’t do it halfheartedly. And for his part, he was too consumed of worries about my future, my academics, etc. for us to sit down and talk. I would anyway have fought my way through, even if we had sat down to talk. But for whatever reasons, we never talked about it. Even later, there were no apologies. Maybe apologies weren’t needed and this was a rite of passage, a testing of boundaries, so to speak. And we never hugged it out because in our dictionary, that was just plain weird. I am still perplexed with these new kids, hugging their fathers and what not. All bad influence of western culture and aping of Hollywood movies :). What broke the ice between us was the realization of mortality of a human being. News of his cardiac surgery and the complications therein mediated an unspoken truce between us. At the same time, the quarter life crisis hit me, and in the hangover of that turbulent teenage, the smoke screen began to dissolve. Partly out of guilt for having done and said the things I had (and having not done and not said the things I should have) the thought of his mortality jolted us back into a time where I was almost sub-servient to him. And he deserved to be revered like that. Things seemed happy after the successful surgery. But that was short-lived. A couple of years down the line, all hell broke loose. I won’t go into the details of it. It’s unnerving to recount the horrors and moreover, now that it’s all over, the everyday details that I then thought were terrorizing have lost their sharp edges. Now, they seem more like a movie we all watched while in a deep state of exhaustion, floating through the days, deeply connected emotionally but somehow physically removed from the scene of the crime. What those three years did is more important now. It changed the meaning of a lot of things. It changed the meaning of Aai. From being a mother and a wife, she went on to be a selfless organ donor, never even questioning why she was doing it. From being a sister and her extended family, Renu, her husband and her in-laws went on to be generous, large hearted care takers that we shall forever be emotionally indebted to. For me, it changed the meaning of going home. Now in my vacations, I didn’t go home, I went to the hospital. Flying down from Ghaziabad stopped being a happy occasion and started being one long, tensed time-out. A phone call from Aai even a minute off from the usual time sent the heart leaping out of the throat and “Hello” changed to a panicked “What happened now?” The only place that felt eerily safe was the hospital premises, because having hospitalized him twice in an emergency, seeing his life almost ebb out in the car had left driving with him an unpleasant and scary suggestion. The hospital became our new home. The chores of sending home cooked food to the hospital and giving medicines and checking vitals every few hours almost became a routine. Again, had it not been for the sister, her husband and her in-laws, who turned their entire household machinery to suit our schedules, none of this would have happened. And what changed most was him. From being a fit, active man who bordered almost on an anxious restlessness, he waned away physically. He still remained mentally sharp, checking his own medical reports even while on a ventilator, but that flock of thick, dark black hair (that had survived at an age when most of his contemporaries had submitted to alopecia) went away. From being a man who sprang to his feet at the slightest sound even while in deep sleep, he had to be held while walking. And the displeasure of having to accept these physical changes was apparent on his face. After all, he still wanted to hold on to his position as head of the family. More than the condition that afflicts them, I think patients are more terrified with the prospect of being dependent on others. And for people who had built their life from ground up, it seemed almost like a cruel, insulting defeat at the hands of fate. Three years of running in and out of hospitals, misdiagnosis and mismanagement at Nagpur, shift to Pune, panicking, continuous and compulsively worrying, a transplant, almost made it. Wait. Something went wrong. No, ok, it’s treatable. Yay! Happy Diwali! Wait, again somethings not right. Uh oh, this might be serious. Ok, serious but treatable. Yaaay. Wait. Fracture. Ok healing well. Yaay again. We will pull through. Things will be back to normal. Let’s plan what all of us will do after Diwali. Go on a trip, start your practice again. Cough cough. Tch, damn cough. Let’s just be a normal family and start arguing again. Baba, you’ve lost it. You are immune compromised, can’t be around sick people anymore. Ok fine, but only 10 patients a day just to keep you busy. Cough cough. Wait. Doctor doesn’t look happy. Shit. Oh ok, not that serious, I read the report wrong. Doctor says it’s negative. Yaaaaay ok so back to planning. What the hell is partial lung resection? Honestly? Phew. Ok fine, doctor says it’s a pretty routine surgery. Ok, bye baba, I’ll wait here in the, well, waiting room LOL. Be back soon. Ah, all doctors are going in. Surgery must be over. But too soon, no? Why am I being called in? I know what a Myocardial Infraction is. I’ve become half a Wikipedia doctor myself. May pull through? Ok. He’s pulled through before. He will again. I’m confident. Heart stopped? Ok, restarted after 20 min? Yaaay? Ok. He’s unconscious, but can listen to me? Ok. Baba, got a good job, just like you always wanted. Will you come to my convocation? Baba? Ok I’ll wait. Wait. Wait. Wait………. Silence. So he didn’t pull through after all. I will never be able to faithfully express everything that happened and that we felt in those years, but then maybe some things aren’t meant to be faithfully expressed. Some thoughts, some moments of laughter, tears, anxiety, are best preserved in the mind as mementos given by those who left us. With him, our lives too set sail. Never had we thought that Nagpur will stop being our ‘home town’. It was a city where our lives happened. It was a city where I knew most of the lanes and where I had spent all of my formative years. It was a city, where even random shops on the road had a memory to share. It was a city where he raised his family. Tearing away from the hometown, with the collateral damage of a much loved dog has been the hardest decision to deal with after him. What I do vividly remember of Baba now is how in those few moments of remission, he never stopped putting up a brave face. He had been our go to guy for all medical queries. Now that he was on the other side, he had to hold the fort even now. And he still smiled. Worried as he always was, listening to stories of Nagpur and how stupid some people are, he gave his usual, easy laugh that came so naturally to him. I’ve kept a secret in this telling. That one person who provided us unending and untarnished amusement and warm cuddly happiness. Kabir. He beautifully completed the circle of life. The only thing that sends a wince through the heart is that Baba never got to fully enjoy being a grandpa. He would have been so good at it. Those shoes that I so nostalgically mentioned, had a metaphor in them too. We grow up with our idols. We try to be them, we fail, we shun them, we see them in a different light, then we try again. So we try to be a mutated version of them. I wear better shoes than what he did, but then, I can never fill his shoes anyway. They may have been small, odd, and in bad fashion, but in what they represented, a life lived for others and in worry of other, they were just too big for a man of my stature. Phew. So, kid at the barber shop. Be a brat. Love every moment of being a brat while your father caters to you. It’s how things happen. You too will grow up, you too will be at loggerheads with him. You too, will come back to him. I can tell you to be nice to him you will regret it later and blah blah blah, but the thing is, you won’t understand. I didn’t either. Maybe guilt isn’t a bad thing after all, if it ends up making you a better person than what you were yesterday. But don’t be too hard on yourself. Forgive yourself. Your baba will too. And hope the same for me. A slightly edited version of this appeared here: http://mommygolightly.com/2015/11/19/my-fathers-shoes/ . It was humbling to know that your thoughts can resonate with more people than you know.

Laika (1998 -2005)

Laika (1998 - 2005) First things first. If you don't love dogs, browse along, nothing to see here :). Not that I'm judging you, but you'll only scoff and jeer at things I speak about here.   On a writing spree today, dug this out from the archieves. Wrote it in 2007, the first long format I ever wrote, the amateurishness of the language was nostalgic. But nevertheless, as the first article that I wrote, and about someone unforgettable, its still one closest to my heart.   ________________________________________________________________________________________   Laika   I remember I had fallen asleep after an elongated tantrum. This wasn’t the first time. Neither was it the last. What my parents had written off as just a fondness for puppies, had grown into a full blown obsession. Ultimately, after countless tantrums and promises of performing well at school, they finally caved in. This is how Laika entered our lives. Don’t know why suddenly today I am writing about her. It’s been years since she passed away. But I had been carrying baggage from her death for a long time and finally decided to set it free and find some closure. Laika came to our family as a shabby little one month old pup who couldn’t even climb a flight of stairs without tumbling down a couple of times. Lapping up her milk was even messier. For a week, the house smelt like a dairy. Seeing her transform from this awkward, clumsy pup into a graceful German Shepherd was like a parenting experience. Right from cleaning her crap to staying up all night when she fell sick. And she bore into all our hearts. Even Aaji was not spared.   She became the constant companion to all of us. Every time you turned around, she was there, staring at you, tail wagging, and a strange anticipation in her eyes. It was her eyes that always caught my fancy. Maybe it was the fact that she was brought up with love and care, but her eyes never resembled those of other dogs. That fierce, guarding gaze was absent. It was a look of total submission. Sometimes it made me wonder, if by domesticating her, we had killed her wild spirit. Maybe what we thought of as obedience was actually a corroboration of the fact that she was absolutely dependent on us. But we never heard her complain.   That constant companionship was soon upgraded to a family membership. And a privileged one!! She became the undisputed queen of the house. Anyone who came in through the door had to meet her first. Then the rest of us. And not just meet, but shower a minimum of 5 minutes of admiration. It was always heartwarming to come back home even after just 10 minutes and be greeted like you just came back from prison after serving a life sentence. And with her, you always knew it was sheer love. No ulterior motives. Even Aaji, who dint particularly appreciate pets, came around. Usually Laika stayed out of Aaji's way. But when Aaji was alone at home, Laika took up the duty of not letting her feel alone. As if she knew that Aaji is old and may need help. Aaji later confessed that even just by hovering around her and following her around, Laika was a big moral support. The lupine instincts of protecting the pack had endeared Laika to a non-believer.   3 years later, we decided that her genes ought to be passed on. Laika became the proud mother of 7 pups. 3 boys, 4 girls. It was chaotic, to say the least. A team of 7 rambunctious pups, combined with a protective mother, and 4 family members, at the end of their nerves. The simple act of answering the doorbell started resembling a military exercise. It took clever strategizing to open the door, when at the sound of the doorbell, one big German Shepherd and 7 pups jolted towards it. Put 3 of them in the room and go out to gather the rest, and halfway to the room, you’d run into the aforementioned 3 pups who’d somehow figured out how to escape from their box. Their appetite was a no holds barred contest. One whole pack of Cerelac a day, with table manners taking a serious hit. Their motto: if you can’t get enough from standing outside the bowl, jump right in the bowl and eat around you. Add to that a mother who insisted that her pups remain spotlessly clean (by licking them in the position they were in) and dinner time became savage tumbling contest. So we had 7 pups, smothered in Cerelac running around trying to eat each others' limbs while being thrown around by a fastidious mother.   Soon, time came to bid them farewell as they all went to their new homes to start a life, like their mother did 3 years ago. However troublesome, giving away that last pup was awful. It was like we had betrayed Laika. She started gathering toys and placing them in the bed where the litter had been. I guess she was trying to fill the void. But that’s a dog’s fate. To be born to a mother. And then to be reborn as someone’s pet. I just hope all those little Laikas are keeping up their mothers reputation.   A couple of years later, Laika’s health started degrading. She suffered from stomach blockages and was operated twice. The third time, she kind of gave up. I saw her; motionless, lying on the operating table with her stomach being stitched, and saw the gleam in her eyes fade. She felt no pain even without an anesthetic. Or maybe she did, but dint show. Laika never complained. The decision had to be taken. What is termed as humane death, or "putting her to sleep". No matter how much you round the edges off the name, it still stings. And it stung badly. A decision about letting someone live in pain or die in peace is never easy. Because nobody asked Laika what she wanted. In the end, it was her pain filled whine that tipped me to make my decision. I decided to let her go. I could not keep her in pain for my personal gratification of making the right decision. A tearful goodbye later, Laika drifted off to sleep. Everyone feared going back home, knowing the fact that there will be no greetings at the door now. No wagging tail drumming the door. No playing fetch till your hand hurt. No wet nose searching bags for goodies. No muddy paw prints anymore. No Laika anymore.   I still doubt whether I did right. Just by being their human, do we get a veto over their lives? What if she would have made it through? I guess these are questions Laika should have answered. But I guess it is in their muteness, their silent companionship, that dog’s leave such matters of conscience to us lesser mortals. A dog’s emotions may be governed by baser instincts, but in what they leave us with, an intense feeling of ownership, that they teach us the philosophies of life. I buried her favorite tennis ball in her grave. I hope wherever she is, somebody’s playing fetch with her. Because she loved it when you threw something, and she brought it back. I had to throw her life away. Laika, fetch.   Her shattering four-legged silence finally made us move on and bring a new life into the house. Sarah. Once you’ve lived with a dog, the house feels empty without one. I won’t tell you if Sarah’s better or worse than Laika. That would be unfair to both of them. But I do hope that Laika, wherever she is, doesn’t get too jealous of Sarah. But as I said, Laika never complained.     Photo taken in simpler times :)