Daddykins

by Kalpana Mohan

  ‘This wedding trip is so not happening’ my sixteen-year-old daughter said, with teenage concision, her arms akimbo.

  Urmila’s lips grew thicker. As the self-appointed matriarch of the family, she often worried about self-preservation in the face of jeering relatives. ’I asked to look at the ticket yesterday. This would not have happened had you only shown it to me,’ Urmila said to Daddykins. ‘What is everyone at the wedding going to think?’ she continued. ‘They’ll laugh their heads off when they find out that we, the perfectionist family, missed our train.’ Thalaivar had decided to jet into Kochi and was luxuriating at a five-star property by the Arabian Sea before driving up to the wedding venue. ‘And my husband is going to snicker the loudest,’ she said

  We discovered that the only available tickets on the next and last train bound for Kerala were in a third class compartment.

  ‘Third class?’ I asked. ‘We can’t get something better?’ I sighed. We didn’t travel third. Not even second. ‘Our mother would never have let this happen,’ my sister grumbled, as we finally boarded a grotty wagon in a third class section of the train teeming with families and crying babies. She told me how our mother would have reacted. ‘Nothing would escape her eye. Had she been around now, she would have pounced on Dad like a tigress.’ She turned to look at me. ‘He deserves that sometimes.’

  Now there was no one but us left to carp at my father when our plans were derailed. But there was no one but us to console him too. I remembered something my father told me the year we lost my mother. ‘There were things that I could tell only my wife and no one else.’ He missed her for more practical reasons too—for things as trite as pulling down his vest in the back where he couldn’t reach anymore. We were travelling now as the updated family attempting to be whole—with a Brobdingnagian hole blown in the centre of it.

  We sat down on cold hard metal seats, pining for the cushioned comfort of a private, air-conditioned cabin outfitted with Aquafina water bottles, fresh pillows and hermetically sealed blankets. Urmila and I had forgotten that we too had travelled in this class on every summer sojourn in Kerala. That was all Daddykins had been able to afford in the 60s and 70s.

  At the start of our holidays every April, my mother, Urmila and I would climb into the train bound for Parur. On the return to Chennai, we would have exactly two minutes at the railway station. Besides our luggage that would be spread across three metal trunks, we carted back an aluminum tin of salty plantain chips, a tin of sweetened banana chips, at least two jackfruits from my mother’s home, a sack of mangoes from my grandfather’s orchard and several brass koojas of water inside wired bags. In two minutes, Vaithy, my mother’s cousin, would shove us into the railway coach and then, he would run along with the gently moving train, and toss in the tins, the coconut reef broom and the trunks, while we grabbed them from inside the jostling train in which our seats were cold and hard, like the seats the five of us sat on now, forty years later.

  We spent the next twelve hours writhing, guarding the compartment’s two toilets from which emanated the anesthetising scent of fermenting pee. We glowered at one another. The night grew longer, our sentences shorter.

  Daddykins sat sandwiched between two angry daughters. He told us we had grown cosseted. ‘You have both been spoilt by marrying men who could afford more than I ever could,’ he said, putting his feet up on the seat across from him. ‘I am just a retired class I officer from the government of India and I get a paltry sum as pension. You both have hang-ups. And so do both your children.’ He shrank morosely into the seat for the remainder of the journey. His two daughters—myself, the Bacchanalian lover of a fine cocktail and my sister, the Grande Dame of luxury travel on Singapore Airlines—sat up through the night, stiff as empresses on a five-layer Simmons mattress atop a split-pea. My sister vowed to not drink water so she would not have to take a leak. My bladder, unfortunately, wasn’t made of reinforced steel.

  Soon I found myself squatting over a toilet and pondering the fragility of the human condition over a stained, stainless steel hole above the moving ground. I contemplated our bone china egos. Had affluence warped our minds? I thought of something Urmila had said to me many times in the recent years. ‘Now that I can afford it, I cannot settle for anything less.’ But why couldn’t we settle for less? What had we traded it for? When we had not known comfort, our universe had seemed larger somehow, filled with people and conversations. The Alleppey Express was sashaying through country tracks at 60 mph. So was my derriere, which had presently come unhinged from my torso. One of my hands held up the two cotton legs of my pants bunched up at the knees while the other clung to the metallic handle up above, a handle placed strategically so that bodies like mine may not be suctioned out from a speeding train by way of toilet holes.

  In the morning, Samyuktha’s husband, our uncle Dorai, entered the train at Palakkad, a newspaper tucked in his armpit and a dripping black umbrella in hand. ‘Welcome to Kerala, God’s own country!’ he cried, beaming at the kids. He told them to behold how beautiful Kerala was in the rain. He bade them hurry, and open the shutters, and inhale the green. Through the thinning rain, we saw that the sun had just risen over the paddy fields. Somewhere, between the hot chai he bought us, and our giggles over the misadventures of the previous night and the subsequent delay in arriving at the wedding, was the revelation that it had not been such a terrible ordeal after all.

  As we headed back home to Chennai in air-conditioned comfort, I reasoned that journeys were attempts to make memories and that in our moments of jarring discomfort we were always discovering something about ourselves and about those close to us. That grand meeting in 2006 would be the last time Daddykins would see five of his siblings and their spouses; Anandan would have a fatal collapse in 2008. Dorai’s heart would shut down overnight just a few weeks later. Babu would begin buckling to cancer in the summer of 2010. By January 2012, Daddykins would be the sole surviving son and, along with his brother-in-law, who was four years his junior, one of only two men in his extended family shipwrecked on the island of dotage.

  23

  The Creator, The Preserver, The Destroyer

  In 1973, I was barely 12 years old and beginning my second year of life in Dar-es-Salaam. One afternoon, right after school, my father dropped me off at the local library. I was returning a book a few days late. I ran into the building and handed the book to the clerk at the counter.

  The local Tanzanian rifled through the pages, looking for the tag with due dates. He looked up and told me that I was late and that I would need to pay a fine. I nodded, ready to pay.

  ‘You Indians,’ he said, his eyes piercing mine. ‘You’re all thieves.’

  I was frazzled as I got back into the car to tell my father about what had happened. He was livid. But as he drove out of the parking lot, he told me that I should just let the insult glide off my back, that he simply couldn’t change the world.

  ~~~

  Politics. Caste. Privilege. Money. They snuck around like lizards behind the door hinges of our home. Sometimes, behind closed doors, they flicked their tongues and lashed around on the cool marble floor.

  One afternoon, after we had fired yet another cook because of her poor work ethic and subpar culinary skills, my father and I argued over why he still insisted on hiring a Brahmin cook. It did not matter, I told Daddykins, whether a non-Brahmin entered our kitchen to cook as long as he or she only cooked vegetarian food inside our premises and met the qualifications critical to the profession: skill, hygiene, honesty, punctuality and loyalty.

  Daddykins motioned to me from his rust-orange sofa in the living room. ‘I don’t relish your pushing me on the subject of Brahmins versus non-Brahmins,’ he said in a low voice, his chin taut. ‘Especially in front of that fellow.’

  I told my father non-Brahmin cooks were more easily available in Chennai. After all, I pointed out, Vinayagam, a non-Brahmin, had been cooking his soup and porridge and his prayer offering every morning. Why couldn’t he
relax his rules for the hiring of a cook?

  ‘No, you don’t understand, baby,’ Daddykins said. ‘Vinayagam is different. He is cleaner than any Brahmin man or woman I know. He lives by my rules. He follows my etiquette. He runs the kitchen exactly the way your mother did. He has been here for so long that he has evolved with me. He’s different.’ Daddykins reached out to touch my forearm. ‘No. Don’t foist your ideas on me. Please.’ He paused. ‘In any case, baby, I want a Brahmin to cook in my kitchen because that is what my wife, your late mother, would have wanted.’ He looked away. ‘Also, when my sisters visit, I have to please them too, you know.’ His voice tapered off. The justification he had just given me was as tepid as a pot of day-old tea.

  I accused my father of hypocrisy. He remained silent. I knew that the Three Roses could be as antediluvian as Daddykins in some of their beliefs. But I also knew that old age had tempered their own expectations, of themselves and of others.

  Later that evening, when Daddykins was resting in his room, Vinayagam cautioned me to stop pushing my ideals down my father’s throat. ‘It’s simply what your father is used to, Amma. It’s not any prejudice at all.’

  Vinayagam told me that everyone in India, not just Daddykins, was conscious of the parameter called caste. People used it to stratify, exemplify, justify and vilify. I had heard how, when socially expedient, Christians and Muslims in India still flaunted their family’s caste affiliations from centuries ago when they were Hindus. I was saddened that Vinagayam too had also been brainwashed by the system, by that same mindset that made Indians ‘look up’ to white people decades after the Raj. I realised what Vinayagam was driving at, that at this late stage in my father’s life it was simply not a battle worth having. I was now nursing a deep disappointment in a father whom I held in high regard. He was a compassionate, thoughtful human being, a father I’d always been proud of. But now, months away from death’s door, he was unable to shake off his prejudices. The longer I lived with Daddykins, the more I realised that he had changed in other ways as well. His political sensibilities had also altered during the decades I had been away.

  On a September morning, when Daddykins was finished with his prayer and seated in front of the television, I broached the topic of his political leanings. He balked, warning me that it would shake the equilibrium of the house. He pointed towards the kitchen where Vinayagam was busy. ‘I never bring up politics in that fellow’s presence. He and I don’t agree on anything.’

  ‘I get it,’ I said. ‘But you can tell me. Whom did you vote for in the last election?’

  ‘I don’t need to tell you,’ Daddykins said, scowling. And while I glared back at him in astonishment, he continued. ‘Because politics is a private affair.’

  Vinayagam came out of the kitchen. ‘Amma, your father votes for BJP. Has for a long time now.’

  I turned to Daddykins. ‘You defected?’ I know my voice rose several decibels. ‘Daddykins, the Indian Congress was behind our independence. That was the party of Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Patel and all the people you and your late father revered in our home for all those years.’

  Vinayagam emitted a snort. The television screen closed up on a Carnatic violinist playing a raga. Daddykins increased the volume, while justifying his choice with a growl that always accompanied a discussion of politics.

  I remember how late one night in Dar-es-Salaam, when my father’s chest was racked with pain, I ran down Ocean Road to fetch Dr. Akhtar, a Pakistani. The Muslim doctor refused to charge us for his house call. My father was moved by the gesture and he praised the hospitality and warmth of people influenced by Persian culture and told me of their largesse as compared to the parochial minds of the Tamil Brahmin community of Madras. But in the last many decades, while watching acts of terrorism on Indian soil, however, he had begun blaming an entire community of Muslims for the viciousness of a handful. Over the Kashmir issue, he chastised the Indian government for soft-pedaling, even as I reminded him that both nations now had nuclear warheads. He never imagined how he might feel if geographies—of north and south, of Kashmir and Tamil Nadu, respectively—were somehow reversed. I was shocked at how a father who used to see nuance had now adopted a brittle stance.

  ‘What has Manmohan Singh done in ten years for our country?’ Daddykins asked, pressing the remote again. I snatched it from his hands and lowered the volume. Daddykins continued to sit in grim resignation. ‘He’s a bobblehead for Sonia Gandhi.’

  Vinayagam walked up to me looking sheepish. ‘Listen, Amma, all Brahmins in this state vote for BJP. Don’t you understand? Because Brahmins here in Tamil Nadu do not like Karunanidhi.’

  That was true. Daddykins admired the DMK leader’s intellect and oratory but he would bite into a piece of chicken before he pledged a half paisa on Karunanidhi. From the corner of my eyes, I noticed that Vinayagam had lowered himself on the floor behind Daddykins’ leather recliner.

  ‘Madman. That Karunanidhi,’ Daddykins said, grunting in agreement, now that his affiliations were out in the open. ‘He wants college admissions based on caste. Why would I support him?’

  I handed the remote back to my father after setting the TV on mute. ‘So you do vote for AIADMK?’

  ‘Yes!’ he shouted, looking at me squarely in the face.

  ‘You, of all the people in the world, approve of Chief Minister Jayalalitha.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So she doesn’t bribe by giving away money and saris in exchange for votes?’

  ‘No,’ Daddykins said. He turned his gaze to the television screen on which the violin played a soundless melody. Laughter erupted behind the tall recliner. Vinayagam’s head popped up.

  ‘Amma, all parties bribe. Come election time, all these parties shower saris and money in exchange for votes.’ He drew himself up by my father’s side. ‘Your father does not know what’s happening in the real world, Amma.’

  Daddykins increased the volume on his remote as Vinayagam launched his spiel. ‘Saar is living in this wealthy area where politicians don’t need to go out and campaign. Here they have set views. Where folks like me and Saravanan live, things actually happen, Amma.’

  Vinayagam made his way back into the kitchen saying he had to get Daddykins’ lunch ready. ‘Come to where I live, Amma. If you really want to see things, that is.’

  I shuffled behind him. ‘Like what things?’

  ‘Amma, people come to us supplying, you know, drinks,’ he explained, dipping the Bosch’s steel hand blender into the cup of cooked rice and lentils. ‘They bribe us with drinks. Do you know that come election time, about five days before election, all the TASMAC wine shops are closed here in Tamil Nadu?’ He let the blender run for a few seconds. ‘Amma, people beat each other up when drunk. To maintain some semblance of normalcy, they close all the liquor shops in town.’ He quickly tested the puree with his spoon. ‘But what do you think happens then? These politicians simply supply the alcohol under the table, Amma.’ He let the blender whir longer a second time. I peeped into the living room. My father sat in stiff silence, the volume turned on high to the NDTV channel. Sometimes noise brought peace.

  I could see why, on some topics that reared their ugly heads, Daddykins and his man Friday had agreed to disagree. That was also why Daddykins yo-yoed between expressing affection and anger towards those of us closest to him. Vinayagam’s attitude towards many things that Daddykins valued rattled the harmony of his existence.

  My father failed to realise, however, especially as illness chewed away his vitality, just how Vinayagam was the daily preserver of his sanity. For over nine months, he had been helping Daddykins in the bathroom right after he cleaned his prayer alcove; every two days, he dropped off clothes to be ironed or he ironed them himself; he dashed down every morning to the store on Ramarao Street to pick up milk or vegetables. When a gas cylinder needed replacing in the kitchen, he called the gas company after he wheeled the old gas cylinder out into the balcony and connected the replacement to our stove. Ev
ery two weeks, he carried a 50-pound water can up the stairs and into the apartment. He kept an eye on the depletion of milk, homemade yoghurt, sugar, salt, lentils, coffee and tea and replenished them.

  The young man had subsumed every chore of my mother’s and, later, of my father’s. Still, on some days, Daddykins seemed ungrateful. He maintained that his chauffeur was not indispensable. The monthly chores had begun as duties assigned by my mother for which my father paid a nominal amount as a tip, an issue which, I discovered, was a bone of contention.

  It began with what sounded like the staccato of gunfire outside my bedroom one afternoon. The coir rope Vinayagam had used to tie the newspapers with had frayed under the weight. The bundle had cascaded around him as he tried to lift it over his left shoulder. He cursed. He knelt down to begin the process over.

  As we drove towards the office to pick up Daddykins, Vinayagam told me about the tip. ‘Saar gives me 20 rupees to thank me at the end of this.’ For fifteen years the tip had been the same. Vinayagam elaborated. ‘I’ve never asked him for a raise. You can verify this with him.’

  Later, inside the car, Vinayagam handed him the 300 rupees he had earned from recycling the papers. As he drove towards home, Daddykins fished out a 20-rupee-note from his wallet and handed it to Vinayagam.

  I asked my father why he paid Vinayagam so poorly for the newspaper chore. I told him that Vinayagam had mentioned that the rate hadn’t changed in fifteen years.

  ‘Amma, why would you do this?’ Vinayagam asked, looking at me in the mirror, aghast that I had elected to bring this up.

  ‘Did you say that?’ Daddykins asked, tapping his driver on the shoulder.

  ‘Aiyo, Saar, I never said that.’ He stopped himself. ‘At least not in that way, Saar.’