To talk about a filial relationship in terms of time may appear odd. However, it is important to keep the time in perspective because it played a significant role in the relationship between me and father.
Our life together on earth spanned a mere three decades. I was about thirty one when he passed away. In the first decade he was at the peak of his journalistic career. He was a prominent journalist of his time, a thorough professional with great regard for the work he did and with a keen sense of responsibility towards his profession. In matters of sartorial taste and correctness for the occasion, he was impeccable. He was punctual in his appointments. He did his home work before he went to meetings. His work was considered outstanding; the number of drafts that preceded every time he wrote a story for the newspaper attested to his diligence and professionalism. He was also at this time immured in the work related to the journalists' union, which he steered adroitly giving direction and momentum to its activities. This period of ten years of my boyhood had been to him a chapter of high significance to him not just professionally. In his personal life also, he was equally busy arranging matters of importance such as taking in the children of his dead sister and raise them on par with his own. He was also a mentor to the children of two other sisters, who sought his help in providing avuncular guidance and support to them. Uncle Sarma was also sharing home with his family of a wife and two kids. I came at a time in his life which clamoured for his attention in myriad ways, and so I grew up largely in an atmosphere of a herd. Father had little time for me alone, for obvious reasons, which drove me closer to mother and into myself. This decade did not help bring father and son close to each other.
The second decade saw me in a big school and I found myself, a small fry from a small school, thrown into a sea of foreign faces and teachers in long white gowns who wielded authority with a cane. Father and I never spoke about school or discussed my subjects and the fact that I felt lost in an alien world did little to alter the filial relationship. On the contrary, it became worse and alienated me further. The gap between father and son grew gradually. Although I passed out of primary school with distinction from the small school closer home, the new big school did not acknowledge my genius and kept me below par. Naturally, it infuriated father, who had to deal with it as only a busy and beleaguered man would do: he threw the report card in my face accompanied by acerbic remarks. I trembled to go near him. When he spoke I never looked at his face, leave alone into his eyes. My miserable performance at school drove him to despair and the gulf between father and son widened. I finished school and entered the University. I spent time with books, friends and studies. This decade too went without a meaningful or memorable relationship between father and son.
The last decade sent me packing from home. My first job, which I got through father's help (for I was fearful of people and never felt at ease in interviews), took me places across India, far from home. Father to me as a background image, and so was I to him. We had nothing to talk to - there was nothing that I could share with him and likewise he did not relate with me socially. We were poles apart. I never had to oppose him, or defy him in any way. We just never crossed paths - our worlds orbited independently of each other. When he fell ill from a heart attack and was hospitalized, I came down 700 KM to visit him. He had asked me to pray, but I could not. No words of prayer came to my mind. After a silent struggle within myself to recall a prayer, I gave up. I don't know how he felt about it, but he never asked me again. I saw him during my flying visits home. His health deteriorated, he became frail and bony, the charm in his face was gone and the cheer which once brought laughter in his company disappeared completely. He was going away, far away where we could not reach him. The gulf became a continental divide, an unassailable chasm which nothing could bridge at this late hour. He became weaker by the day and for a man of intense outer activity he must have found it extremely difficult to stay at home and do nothing. One day when I was travelling cross-country from east to west, the train halted at the Secunderabad railway station. Mother and father came to see me off. He had come to see me, ignoring mother's protests on account of his feeble health. He sat close to me on that railway platform, giving his entire attention to me. I sensed his presence acutely, there was no mistaking it. He was there for me, to be with me, to listen to me as I spoke to mother, for I felt uncomfortable in his presence and exchanged only customary talk. After I left him and mother and continued on my journey, I saw an old man, quite aged compared to father, a fellow passenger. He appeared to be in good health as he began to eat from a food packet. All of a sudden I felt a stab of pain for my ailing father, I think I envied the old man before me his sound constitution and tears welled up in my eyes and suffered for father who I left behind on that bleak platform frail and beyond help, beyond all possible reach and comfort, and aid and succour. There was no way we could come together again. The relationship ended. The divide increased to planetary proportion. He died within days of that encounter on a January afternoon when I headed west and the Sun had set on his life.
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