Days with Dad

My dad was only 14 when he took charge of his family. Just before his father took his last breath, he had handed over his purse to my dad, and the family accepted this as a symbolic gesture. From this point on, my dad would be the Man of the house.

As soon as Dad finished high school, he got himself enlisted. He was only 17 and was accepted in the Indian Army on humanitarian grounds. This made him the chief breadwinner of the family and he could now send money home to his widowed mother to help take care of his six siblings.

In his early years in the army, Dad sent his entire salary home. He would not spend on himself, not even to buy himself a good set of civilian clothes. This meant he didn’t socialize; he didn’t indulge in free time activities and he remained focused at work.

To him none of this came under the term ‘sacrifice’. The young man was just deeply rooted in Dharma or Duty and he did what he did happily. To provide for his mother and siblings, to ensure that they were fed, clothed and educated to the extent that was possible, was part of his duty.

That’s how he got married as well. He was 32 and most of his siblings were settled and all were educated. My dad decided that he would get married as part of an exchange deal. He married my mother while his sister Sreedevi was married off to my mother’s brother. My mother’s brother or Ammavan as we called him asked my dad to choose a bride from among his 5 unmarried sisters. The youngest two were better educated than my mother on number three. My dad was clear, “the oldest unmarried girl in your home who is younger than me.” The sister on number two on the list was younger than my dad but had a government job. My mother on the other hand was 29, a school drop-out, with no specialized skills that were going to help her get on in life and Ammavan in his wisdom decided that my mother was the right match. My dad was fine with the choice and committed to it far before he had seen my mother. He went to Kerala for the wedding and happened to see his bride for the first time six days before their marriage.

I was in my late twenties when I first heard this story and my jaw hit the ground. “What!” I exploded. “What would have happened if you hadn’t liked what you saw?” I didn’t ask that of my mother. She had had no choice. For her my dad was like a knight in shining armor who had walked up to rescue her from a life of anger, bitterness and frustration as one of many sisters who lived a cloistered life, complete with poverty and deprivation. Then there was my dad, a dashing young man in uniform who had agreed to marry her. She remained eternally grateful for this stroke of good luck that life had brought her. But I needed to know what my dad would have done, had he not been happy with the match. My dad’s reply was so typically him. “I’d have done what I had committed to do. Married your mother and lived with her as well as I could have, for the rest of our lives.” “What if you didn’t like the way she looked?” I persisted.” He joked. “I had seen your grandmother. I knew she couldn’t have looked worse than that. I knew I’d be okay.” 

Once married, Dad’s duty now became his wife and children. We lived in London for four years and my mother took very ill. The damp London weather did her health no good and well wishers suggested that my dad stay on in London and send the rest of us back to India. He decided otherwise. He was aware that he had already started his married life late by most standards and was adamant on being with the family and there for us. “We will manage with less in life if it comes to that.”  With that mindset we came to Mumbai in 1973 and settled down here.

Dad took up smoking when he moved to London to work for the Indian High Commission there. His motivation was extremely simple and straightforward. The salary he was going to draw was to be 80 pounds and smokers could claim an additional 70 pounds as a smoking allowance. For someone who had grown up on very little, this was a huge amount and he was definitely not one to give it up easily.

Dad was also a truly honest man and a man who made the most of the present moment. There was no way he would wrongfully claim the money and once he started smoking, he did full justice to it. He enjoyed his pack of cigarettes a day and was truly grateful for the extra money it brought in. There was nothing negative for him in the act of smoking and he derived immense pleasure from it.

That is why I was very surprised when I heard how easy it had been for Dad to give it up. I knew smokers who were having a hard time kicking the habit. Not so for Dad. When he finished his four-year stint in the UK and decided to head back to India, he knew that the time had come for him to relinquish this pleasure and he did so without giving it a second thought. Dad had known no joy in life greater than doing things for his family and as such no personal pleasure was worth spending his money on. He could no longer afford to smoke and so he stopped. One would have expected the man to feel deprived or surmise that he was short changing himself, but no. There was never a hint of the term ‘sacrifice’ in his vocabulary. He was duty bound and doing what he thought of as his duty, gave him more of a high than any substance ever could. So, as soon as he returned to India, his cigarette packets and all his smoking paraphernalia were gifted to a cousin, who could not believe this stroke of good luck.

It's not as if Dad never touched a cigarette again. He could have an occasional puff, if one was offered to him but it was not something that he would spend on. There was not a trace of attachment in his body or mind either to the chemical, the act or even the pleasure it gave him. He was a great example for us of how one could be completely invested and yet totally detached all at the same time.

When I walked into our home that evening, I knew that I was in deep trouble. There was nothing visibly out of place at home except the silence that hung heavy in the air. My dad lying down and apparently relaxing, seemed to be distant and there was nobody else in the front room of our one-room apartment. The rest of the family were huddled in the inner room, leaving Dad, I figured, with the space to talk to me. I can't honestly say that I was totally unprepared. I had an inkling of what was to come, given the fact that my older brother Raj had ridden past me that evening, at the very same time that my boyfriend, placed his hand on my shoulder and drew me away from the "gentleman's side" of the street to have me let him walk on the "correct side". It didn't help that my boyfriend had never ever touched me in public before this. I knew that for my very conservative brother this “public display of affection" was proof that I was having an affair and I knew that he would go home and tell Daddy.

"You know mollu.” I didn’t miss the Malayalam endearment for daughter. “I have always given you a lot of freedom," he said as he finally broke the sharp, painful silence. "I'm just worried that one day you'll turn around and say because I gave you freedom, your life got spoilt. I don't think that you know what you are doing or where your life is going and I don't want it to be my fault, that your life turned out the way it will. I don’t want you to turn around and say that I should have stopped you in time." My dad was calm and his voice was controlled. There was absolutely no anger in what he said and I knew without an iota of doubt, that this was a heartfelt plea and in no way an attempt to chide or control his wayward daughter.

I hadn’t always been considered wayward. In fact, I had never been a rebel. Up until then, I had been the typical 'good’ daughter. My ultimate goal in life growing up, had been for my parents to find me a suitable husband and get me married off at 18. I had had my life planned out in great detail. I had even chosen names for the four children I planned to have and to add to it Dad had told me that were I to ever fall in love with someone, he would be more than happy for me to marry the man. It would help though; he had added, for me to fall in love with a Hindu. Well Murphy's law was still very much a thing back then and so just before I turned all of 18, I fell head-over-heels in love with a totally ‘unsuitable’ man. 

Everything was wrong about my choice and considering that my parents came from orthodox, middle-class backgrounds, I understood them. I didn’t believe I had a choice though; I loved the man to utter madness. Yes, he wasn't a Hindu, he was 11 years older than me, he had just shut down his business and had very little to his name. Even if all this could have passed muster with my parents, there was no question of taking him home. To introduce him to my family would mean they'd try to get us married off and the one thing this man was certain off in this lifetime was that he was a confirmed bachelor. He'd never get married and he would never have kids! Well, what choice did I have but to just hang around him like a lovestruck fawn and hope that life would sort itself out.

I turned to face my dad as he spoke to me that evening. I must have been around 20 years old then and have no clue where my response came from. “You can’t ‘give’ someone freedom. You don’t get to decide who gets to exercise their freedom. People are either free or not free.” Then more calmly I added, “and with all the freedom you have given me, I have anyway only done things that you like. I do things that make you proud. You approve of my friends and my activities. I don’t need freedom to do these things. Let me do one thing that you don’t like and then tell me that I am a free person and can do what I wish. People draw lines for their daughters, you’ve drawn a box. But the lines are very much there, so don’t fool yourself.”

A dense silence filled the air thicker than before. My dad was absolutely quiet for what seemed to me, like an eternity. I was getting nervous now and even as I started to feel that this would, in all likelihood, end badly, Daddy broke into a smile. “You are right. I didn’t think of it like that.” Then he called Raj and told him, “Look she’s an adult. Not only can she do or get what she wants in life but because she’s my daughter, I’ll help her get it. If you know what you want, go and get it. If you need advice, come to me but henceforth, I’ll not live any of my children’s lives for them.” That was that, I was a free person and Dad lived up to his word till the very end.