My dear Appu,
Today is the 20th day since your appaappan, my father, has passed away. I wanted to write to you a note a day after his demise, but something or the other kept me from it.
To be honest, I don’t have many fond memories of your grandpa. The very first memory I have of him is from my childhood. One day, I was lying down on my mother’s lap after the evening prayer. Those were the days without electricity in our house and we all would soon get to sleep after the dinner. The about-an-hour-long evening prayer session, the night and the dim light from the kerosene lamp that filled the room altogether created the right atmosphere to feel sleepy and I was just about to fall asleep when someone kicked my butt. It was my father. He did not like it that I was enjoying the warmth of my mother’s love. I remember that my aunt, your grandpa’s elder sister, was angry at him for this.
The second memory is from my school days (when I was in 3rd or 4th standard). One day, I came home from school complaining to my mom that one of my classmates bullied me. Your grandpa overheard the conversation and was so angry at me that I did not ‘straighten out’ the other boy, but came home complaining.
These two incidents show the two faces of your grandpa. The first shows that he did not like us children loving our mother. He hated my mother, who had obeyed him all through out her life and bore all the physical and mental torture from him. Obviously, we, the children, loved and cared for our mom more. We stood by her. This made him even more furious, which resulted in his extended hatred towards us which also lead to physical torture at times. He showed no mercy in these torturing sessions. I remember once when I had slept in between the evening prayer and he took some mud from the courtyard, spread it around me in the room and made me kneel on top of it with both hands widespread to the sides. I was supposed to stand like that throughout the prayer and if either of the hands had bent down, he would hit me on the back with a thick broom. It is perhaps my memory, but I don’t have many good memories of him from all my childhood, teenage and adulthood. Or perhaps there might have been moments that he showed his love (like, for one, he gave me money to buy sweets to celebrate the victory of KSU in my school – he was a staunch Congress party supporter), but nothing that I now remember of. It was fear that came to my mind when he was at home.
But he had his positives. He loved his mother and his two sisters. He did not impose any restrictions on us from going out and coming back home late (all the value implants were my mother’s department). Reading about his hatred, you might think that he was a drunkard. But the only time in a year that I’ve seen him drinking was during the parish festival and that too only a couple of drinks and he never seemed ‘drunk’. He smoked though, and that gave him some serious respiratory problems till the end.
They say a boy’s first hero is his father and I truly wished your grandpa was a hero to me. When I heard my friends talking about their fathers and their stories of love and support, sometimes with a sense of pride, I wished I could tell them a similar story. In my childhood, if somebody told me that I had my father’s features, I would frown and resist that I looked like my mother. People also said that I got my singing skills from him. In the evenings, he would sing old Tamil and Hindi songs aloud. That is how I first heard Rafi’s “Kya Hua Tera Wada” and some old MGR film songs.
He had mellowed down in his last years. And I took good care of him. I can say this with pride, with a sense of duty and love (yes) as a son, that I took good care of him to the end. I occasionally took him for a drive and the last one was just two weeks before he died. He was so happy in all those drive-arounds because he had not gone out much since he turned 79 and once fell on the road. Sometimes nursing him could get so frustrating and when I raised my voice he would softly ask, “why are you so angry today? this is unusual of you” which would melt my anger instantly. One day, after bathing him, I was lifting him to the bed and my muscles pained at one point. He noticed the pain on my face and asked, “did it hurt?“. In his last days, he was being the father I so eagerly wanted to love in my childhood.
And he loved you so much! Your mother was the luckiest one among the daughter-in-laws in the family because she had his hands-on-head blessings (which he has never done before and actually surprised everyone who were present) before she left to her home in the 7th month of pregnancy. When your grandpa heard the news of your birth, he was all smiles and commented, “am glad it all went well“. Then you both became good friends. You would laugh aloud if he just waved his hands at you. You would cry if I’d stopped you from entering his room. And when I go near him and if you were not around, he would ask me, “is your son here?” or “is he sleeping now?” or “is someone with him upstairs? he shouldn’t be left alone” and such. When I was cleaning his room just a couple of weeks before his death, he told me “your son likes me so much“. I smiled. Then shortly afterwards, he fell ill and he couldn’t smile at you when you looked at him. He would just stare at you.
At the end of it all, I wish people gave chances a chance. As early as possible in their lives. To reconcile, to love, to understand one another. I don’t know if I will ever be your hero, though I would very much be pleased if I heard you saying, “my father is my hero“. But I know I have to live up to that. What I would suggest to you is to be your own hero. Grow up yourself to be the hero you wanted to adore or model after, Appu. Or you know, you could even be my hero. Keep your heart, my son.