Goodbye, Dear Father. (Part-IV)

Part- IV

“A book must be an ice axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul.” -Franz Kafka

I was born in a house full of books. Books of all kinds, stacked in neat bookshelves or waiting for a new bookshelf to be built to get accommodated. Books were a big chunk of my father’s life. Books on varied topics, History, Science, Literature, Fiction, Mythology, Religious Philosophy and Mathematics . Books in various languages, ranging from Hindi, English, Marathi, Urdu and Bengali. There are many books in Urdu, which now none of us could read. Those fine calligraphic letters, make absolute no sense to me. What a pity!!  Reading for him was an extensive exercise, which required extreme concentration up-to a limit that he could read even in an atmosphere of complete chaos around him.  Even if someone called out to him, he never replied. The only way to bring him out of it was to shake him, the way someone is taken out of a sleep. He used to keep a newspaper or a novel in the toilet, which was a completely alien concept for that time, compared to today when book shelves in a toilet are a normal routine. He encouraged us to buy more books, and gifted us many every year. Autographed by him, many of my books still bear his signature, gifted to an awkward name “Chungi Pungi”, which was his version of a pet name for me.

Vasalisa the Beautiful: Sketch by Ivan Bilibin

In Gwalior Mela, there used to be stall of books which came from Russia. Later I came to know that there was a huge stock of literature from Communist Russia that was stacked with this shopkeeper, who used to sell it during the fair. Every year this stall occupied the same place, with same set of books, but always something new to pick up at the cheapest price possible. There used to be the literature on development of Russia under the communist rule, a lot of picturesque propaganda which seemed true for that time. This memory of Russian literature can’t be said as complete, without mentioning a strange Russian novel by Alexander Afanasyev called Vasalisa the Beautiful, with a scary character, a witch called Baba Yaga. He somehow loved that fable, which had its roots in ancient Russia. A book called “Nanhe Munno ke liye Bhautiki” (Physics for Children) which was again a hindi translation of a russian book, and a complete collection of Ukrainian folk tales are few of my childhood reads, which I would never be able to forget. He loved a book store called Kitaab Ghar in Gwalior, and most of our books were bought from there.

One part of his life was completely Marxist. That is what i came to know when a sudden discovery revealed posters of Lenin, Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels. A lot of books written by Karl Marx and Frederick Angels are still part of our book collection. He theorized that all learned people turn Marxist, as there is nothing more practical than that. Others remain illiterate all their lives. A lot of such literature was bought and read in my home. The most memorable was “Teen Mote” (The three fat men) by Yuri Olesha. Since then, little concepts like fat kings eating poor people’s money, wander around me. Today when I read Marxist theories, I remember those books again, and those memories open to me a world of all those stories which I read during my childhood. His contribution of Marxist ideas to me is huge, and this could be a major reason why my political views are so leftist all the time.

Khanjan Nayan

It is not necessary that he loved everything he read. He read many books just to criticise certain concepts. He firmly believed that nothing could be criticized without achieving knowledge about it. This is proven by many books in our collection which he read just to learn new concepts. We have this huge collection consisting of 9 volumes of “Chaurasi Vaishnavan kee Vaarta”. He read those books like funny comic strips, and laughed at every sentence. No-one knows what was in them, so hilarious, but whenever i see those books again I remember his laughing face. We also have few volumes of “Taha” an islamic digest in both HIndi and Urdu, which may be a result of a sudden interest in islam. Books from Aurobindo Ashram, Osho commune, Ramkrishna Ashram and some Christian Missionaries are also there in his collection, which are a proof of his study on religions and sects. He also tried hand in Vedic Mathematics, and more books came. Books of various kinds kept coming, Mahabharata written by Rajkumar Bhramar, in small novellas, Hindi translations of bengali authors like Sharatchandra Bankinchandra and Ravindranath Thakur, Books by writers like Manto, Amritlal Nagar, Chatursen and Premchand, Hindi Translations of James Headly Chase, whose covers he used to tear on bookshops due to printed nudity on them, English books ranging from Mills and Boon to Perry Mason novels and the most unusual, a biography of Charles De Gaulle.

Mahasamar, Bandhan

His taste was so varied that it is almost impossible to cover it up, without writing a complete bibliography of books, which my sisters also did many years ago, putting tags of author’s names on books and numbering them for him. He got all his books hard bound in one manner, and we had a small library of our own, which he loved as an asset. There were many other hobbies which came and went like seasons. His scrap book called “Chand Katranein” (Few Cuttings), didn’t work for many days. He got a huge booklet spiral bound with butter sheet separators, but nothing except one or two newspaper cuttings actually went into it, and it remained blank. His enthusiasm of book-keeping, cleaning and maintaining was also short-lived. He used to take out all the books from shelves, to clean them, and then used to vanish. My mother completely baffled over this attitude, used to then clean everything up and put books back in shelves. He used to come back after a few hours and said, “Are waah sab theek kar diya” (Good, that everything is done). He almost said those words with a feeling, that some magic had happened in his absence, without any remorse of leaving a pile up of useless work for my mother in her already busy holidays or festival days.

He was a good orator. He spoke only when in mood, but the discussions he joined always became most scintillating. He had an impressive Hindi and English handwriting. The inscription on the wedding card for my elder sister's marriage in which just one marathi word "Saptapadi" (Seven steps) was written, was a scan of his handwriting. His signatures consisting of hindi alphabets and Bengali writing pattern were so impressive, that i have copied the same pattern, for my own signatures. He also wrote smaller pieces in Hindi, all the time, which none of us ever read. He wrote random, in many diaries which he bought in love of good stationary or in yellow paged govt. diaries which came every year.

He started writing his auto-biography, called the “Halafnama” in late 90’s. He wrote some 20 pages of it, of which very few I remember now. He was struck by a terrible attack of paralysis in 2001, making him unable to write. Alphabets left him, alone to wander. His speech left him without any other means to communicate. That ocean of knowledge never got an escape, words never came out. Within few months, he burnt all his official documents including all his writings in my mother’s absence. I became a silent spectator, to desecration of a written identity. The masterpiece kept burning, turning into tearful smoke and ashes. I was able to save few pages of a brown diary, which are now last pieces of his handwriting. The irony is, the page i have saved says that,

“आत्मकथा लेखन बहुत हिम्मत का काम है जिसमे कलम को पैनी तलवार की तरह बनाकर, अपने अस्तित्व और भूतकाल को चीरना होता है.”

“Autobiography writing is a work of extreme courage, in which the pen has to be used like a sword to desecrate one’s existence and the past."

I hope he understands that while I write these pieces about him, I am rather using a blunt knife in the darkness, cutting bits and pieces of memories and joining them to create a sketch, a sketch which is completely my view of his life. It is said that “Franz Kafka” the legendary german writer wanted all his written manuscripts, sketches and letters burnt unread after his death. We will never know, if there was a Kafka in him, but what I surely know is that he had complete potential of being someone memorable. He lives with us now in those innumerable books he left us, and the natural love and respect of varied subjects which his daily endeavours successfully created in us, and for which I am most thankful. This is the reason, that I am going to sign off this post with my signature, in which his reflection is still visible.