"God is Great"

Father looked frail, his face was lined with creases and his eyes opened fully behind his spotless spectacles. He sat beside me on an iron bench with his lean frame huddled together and listened intently to what I was saying. Mother sat next to me on the other side.
"I told him not to accompany me," Mother said, "but he insisted."
I looked at father and he looked back at me unsmiling, but with a fatherly affection that conveyed much to me that I cannot put in words.
"He even threatened to go by himself, if I refused to let him come. You know how weak he is; it is too much of an ordeal for him to travel on these broken, congested streets."
I said something to the effect that he could have spared himself the trouble. Typical of a man of few words, he said simply, "God is great."
I was on my way to Bombay from Visakhapatnam on an official journey and the train had halted in Secunderabad station, when my parents came to meet me and see me off. Mother had packed something for me for the journey ahead and father wanted to see me, in spite of his failing health, overruling mother's remonstrations.
Whenever I remember that late January afternoon when I met father and mother together on that railway platform, I feel glad that he came to see me. It is the most cherished moment for me that he should come for me, regardless of the fact that he was extremely ill. He came and sat by my side and gave himself up completely in my presence.
I spoke mostly with my mother, for father was not a man with whom one could speak easily. I had always felt uncomfortable in his presence and his natural disposition towards reticence created a gulf that I could never cross.
The brief encounter left an indelible imprint on my mind, which I did not realize as I bid good bye to my parents and continued my journey. The image of father sitting on that bench on the crowded platform raising his slender arm in a farewell evoked in me the picture of a defenseless man struggling against the harsh vicissitudes of life. A strange quietude enveloped me after the train left the station.
One of the passengers was a man who looked much older than my father. He sat erect and appeared quite healthy. Scarcely a couple of hours passed, when this old man took out a steel tiffin box and began to eat chapattis. All of a sudden I felt
a rush of emotion well up in me and tears sprang in my eyes. I looked away. I think I envied that old man his good health in spite of his advanced age. I remembered the sorry figure of my father and couldn't help feeling immensely sad for him.
A few days later I received the message of my father's demise.
I was on a pipe-laying barge off Bombay High oil fields when the news came. It was a bright February morning. The sea appeared calm. I reclined on the helipad reading 'Notes to Myself' by Hugh Prather. A colleague came up to me and asked me to come to the cabin: he had apparently something to say to me in private. In the cabin he told me that he had received a radio message from the base: it was from my home.
Was it the look of gravity on his face or the manner in which he informed me, I couldn't be sure, but I remember asking him: "Is it about my father?" He nodded and added, "this morning."
I broke down and cried uncontrollably. I felt something leave me for good. Irrevocably.
On a pleasant February morning after a routine checkup at the Osmania General Hospital in Hyderabad, mother stepped out to purchase some medicines, waiting until father slept on the hospital couch after consultation with the doctor.
The end (date and time) came sometime when mother was out; he was alone when he died; none of his four children was present at the time of death. It was Uttarayan, a period in the diurnal movement of planet Earth when the Sun heads toward the Northern hemisphere, also known as the winter solstice, a period considered auspicious by the Hindus.
I flew from the high sea to Ville Parle heliport the same day and took the night train home. Relatives, friends, acquaintances and scores of journalists came and went in a steady stream, paying their tribute and last respects to the man
who had been a freedom fighter and veteran journalist for over four decades. He was sixty-two and survived by his selfless service to journalism, and a close-knit family of wife and four children.
One person, who later rose to be Prime Minister, deserves mention at this time. The late Shri P V Narashimha Rao, the then leader of the state congress (?) and future Chief Minister, shared the sad event by exchanging a few words with my
mother on that day I came home for the funeral.
About five years after his demise (?), during the time of the then Chief Minister CHandrababu Naidu, an award was instituted in father's name, called the B Nageswara Rao Best Journalist Award, and given away every year.

[needs to be edited and refined for accuracy]