Goodbye,Dear Father. (Part-II)

PART-II

Within me, 

the silence of derailed trains

distant rumble of a gathering storm

foreboding of unsettling winds

traces of unmarked wanderings

-Deepti Naval

Who says a man can chose what he wants to be? He was born in an era where events of life shaped a person and his destiny. He was born in a house full of children, a house with ten siblings. He always remained sick as a child is what I have heard from my grandmother. He was abandoned, to live with his grandparents, as my grandmother was unable to take care of so many children. This was a normal procedure for that time, but the impact of living with old people was too much evident in his entire life. My great grandfather as far as the stories in my family are told, was a strict, short tempered disciplinarian. My great grandfather had no interest in children at that age of his life, and his motto was to just finance some portion of his grandchildren’s childhood. His Grandfather left a mark on his life. In his old age he looked completely like him, and even behaved like him in many ways.

I have no doubt in saying that childhood was not like other children. He hated to go to school, many a times stayed at home. Actually he read all the course books at home even before the school started, and then used to get bored in classrooms. Specially he hated the way literature was taught in classrooms, and was very vocal about it. He ended up getting a degree in Economics, and as the time demanded, went into a government job. He started working in the revenue department and started his life as a bureaucrat as Asisstant Superintendent Land Revenue (ASLR) and grew upto Class-I cadre. He served as SDM, ADM, Dy. Commissioner Land Records and finally got retired as a Joint Collector in the year 2000.

He kept roaming to places and got many transfers in his lifetime. He was not the stationary kinds. There were two reasons behind his nomadic life, first were his staunch principles, which kept him away from the good books of politicians and higher officials and second was his own thirst to wander and see new places. Many of his transfers were initiated by himself, without considering family which was anyways living separately, unable to cope up with his frequent change in cities. Wherever he went there used to be a lobby which was completely in awe with him, and others simply hated him. Still he got all the challenging and important works, because he was the only person who had confidence in himself and the skill to get the work done. He always said that in government systems, there are very few people who work, and those who work are liable to get more work. The only incentive of good work is more work. 

He loved his life as a bureaucrat. Whatever his views were, but he simply loved his job. His sincerity and zeal towards his work was admirable. The only missing link was undoubtedly better time management. His ignorance towards social matters and even the matters of home, was sometimes annoying. He was an ignorant father, who sometimes even forgot in which class his son or daughter is studying. An incident which I will always remember is when he was sent to receive my report card for the first time, he stood in the wrong line, came back and sincerely announced that no boy of my name studies in the school. We realized that he didn’t know in which class I studied, so the report card was collected afterwards. This realization was more than shocking that he had complete disinterest in family matters. Still, he had huge expectations from all of us.

All the family responsibilities were of my mother, our education, well being, savings , family matters and almost everything under the umbrella for which either he had no time or he chose to have no time. She constantly coped up with all these things with a job. Living a separate life from that of his. As the time passed I simply realized, that he was not a family man. He was always a loner, who wanted to live in his own world. His complete disinterest in family functions, was one of the most visible aspects. He loved to lock himself in a room and read, rather than talking or socializing. 

Everyday he would declare frustrated, “I will leave this job and go to Himalayas.” I kept wondering, why Himalayas? There are better places where he could go. The answer suddenly hit me, on my 10 week stay in Leh, Ladakh. Himalayas was the only place probable where he would be cut off of from the world, possibly will not see any other face,other than his own for years. It was a place easy to be lost, and never to be found. He was not much of social anyways, and trusted all the wrong people. Most of his friends, were a complete wrong selection, who never came to become part of any of his griefs, but took full advantage of his naivety. Friends came in his life, stayed till they got what they wanted, money, recommendations and connections and drifted away, never to come back.

“Zindagi yun hui basar tanha, Kaafila Saath aur Safar Tanha”, there was no other person, I could have remembered listening to these touching lyrics by Gulzar. There were many other things in his crowded yet lonely life. He was an avid reader and writer, loved sketching, was a music connoisseur and played sitar, loved travelling. He kept passing on all these interests to us, in small parcels. There was something more stunning about him. Even after living away from his mother in the childhood, he never lost faith and respect in her. My grandmother came to live with us, and never went back. In her old age, she made the right selection, and he took complete care of her without any hard feelings. As I look more deeper into his life, doors open, bundles are sorted, meanings appear. I feel lighter, everyday, every moment. The storm gets silenced and the silences speak.