My father’s face creased into a smile. ‘Yes, your mother was an inspiration, but many times she was a source of my perspiration,’ he said, as he stood by the collage crumbling in toothless glee, his late wife frowning behind him. Physio-Saar laughed aloud. Then Daddykins turned around, doddering, his crooked lips careening on his chin.
On days like that, my father seemed rooted somehow. He seemed to listen to the heartbeat of the city and the nation. On another similar day, while seated next to me, my father realised, all of a sudden, that it was almost the last day of the month of January.
‘You mean it is January 30th today?’ he asked. He burst into tears. Bindu rushed to his side by the rust-orange sofa. I stroked his head. Daddykins said he felt just as he had on that same day many decades ago. That same feeling of intense sadness. Of a helplessness about people and the cruelty of one man towards another.
‘I didn’t feel so bad when Jawaharlal Nehru went. But Gandhi’s passing…’ he said, poking a bony hollow in front of his heart. ‘It still hurts me here.’ And Daddykins sat there, his face puckered in like a drawstring purse pulled all the way. And Bindu hugged him and pulled his pale left hand to her chin. ‘Thatha, you mustn’t cry.’ She called out to me. ‘Auntie, look, he’s still weeping.’ Daddykins motioned for Kleenex. Bindu fished one out from the box on the coffee table. She wiped his nose.
‘I’m going to miss this girl so much when she leaves,’ Daddykins said to me. He turned to Bindu. ‘When you get married, I will attend. I promise.’ Whenever Bindu described her village near Mayavaram to Daddykins and to me, her eyes sparkled and through those two points of light, I saw rice stalks swaying in the breeze and cows ambling, their painted horns fading in the blitz of sun and rain. I doubted that Daddykins would live to see her wedded. Bindu blinked away her tears. She kissed his limp hand.
Vinayagam, who sat by the television, snickered and wondered aloud, in his crass way, about who was going to accompany my father to the hinterlands of Bindu’s village. ‘Not me, Amma,’ he said. ‘I guarantee you.’ As far as Vinayagam was concerned, the only trip he would accompany my father on was a trip to Palakkad in February. ‘After which I think your daddy will have to think of packing up in the direction of Yamalokpatam.’ He pointed to the heavens and gave me a wicked grin.
28
The Remainder
Daddykins was pacing the width of the house with Physio-Saar on his tail. He braked, suddenly, just as his valet dashed out from the kitchen into the dining hall en route to the fridge.
Vinayagam shouted out a warning. ‘Saar, steady! Why is your truck keeling over?’
‘Another big truck came in my way, that’s why!’ Daddykins shot back, torching his underling with his incinerator eyes.
Vinayagam laughed out loud. ‘As I always say…maadu yelachaalum kombu yelakkadhu, Amma!’
Vinayagam’s Tamil proverb on bovine resilience defined my father’s spirit: ‘The cow may waste away. But its horns never die.’
~~~
Daddykins told Thalaivar that when he began walking without assistance he would travel 300 miles west to Palakkad to stay five days with Samyuktha. There he would greet his deity, Lord Gopalakrishna, at his village temple; with Thalaivar’s help—and here he looked pointedly at Thalaivar who returned his gaze—he would defray one day’s cost during the week of Ther, the annual chariot procession down the streets of his village.
Thalaivar held Daddykins’ hand and smiled. He told him he would hire a helicopter to fly him in if needed. I wondered if Thalaivar knew that a Eurocopter EC135 went at the rate of $4000 per hour. Daddykins’ forte once was to audit and control Thalaivar’s expenses; now he wouldn’t give a fig if Thalaivar had to rent a jumbo jet to fly him to Palakkad. My brother-in-law was now dealing with an accountant who had lost the ability to count.
One morning, Daddykins gave Vinayagam 2,800 rupees and insisted he had handed him 28,000 rupees. On telephone calls to his sisters, Daddykins approximated all costs to imaginary inflated sums.
In late January, tripping over words while talking into the phone, he commanded Vijaya and Saroja to join him at Samyuktha’s home in Palakkad in early February. I sensed an urgency in his voice.
Perhaps he believed he would be whole again in the salubrious air that had once nourished him. Lord Gopalakrishna would clear his gullet, snip the pancreatic tumour, pump blood back into his veins and puff up his furrowed skin, leaving him once again a ruddy young boy.
I worried that Daddykins would not be able to withstand the five-day trip to Palakkad. Vinayagam theorised that unhappy ghosts wandered the earth when they had unfinished business in the mortal world. ‘Amma, do you want your father’s ghost roaming about on earth and haunting you?’
In the countdown to February, Daddykins made innumerable plans. He told Vinayagam that en route to Palakkad, he would sip fresh coconut water sold on the road. Vinayagam informed him he would fly, not go by road. On another morning, he said he would order Samyuktha’s caterer to fry hot appam for him. ‘You haven’t eaten solids in over six months,’ I reminded him gently hoping to appeal to his rational side. He turned away. ‘But an appam is different,’ he countered not wanting to accept that he couldn’t even wear his dentures following the stroke. ‘Fine, deprive me of that too!’ he said, sullenly. It broke my heart that my father could not eat that favourite food, a sphere of sweetened rice exploding with the flavour of banana, coconut, cardamom and ghee.
Every day, Daddykins talked about experiencing Ther—the chariot festival—again. It was a grand spectacle at the temple of Lord Gopalakrishna: the intricately carved wooden chariot, that inch-thick, braided coir rope, the crazy crowds, the cacophony of drums, the cymbals punching the air, the chanting and the peals of laughter, the cloying sweetness of mango and jackfruit trees pendulous with fruit. We reminded my father that Ther was not in February but much later, in the first week of May. However, in my father’s brain, time had collapsed.
One evening in early February 2014, Daddykins, Urmila and I touched down at Coimbatore airport. Vinayagam and Saravanan reached by car from Chennai. Together, we drove for ninety minutes through coconut orchards and unmapped villages on a 25-mile wide mountain pass called the Palakkad Gap.
The first morning in Palakkad, Daddykins flung a pillow at Urmila when she didn’t bring him his coffee soon after he awoke. He had been unable to swallow water that morning and Vinayagam and Saravanan had sat him down on the bed and explained to him that we had to wait and watch before we deluged his system again with more fluid.
His sisters watched their brother’s petulance and rage in silence. Out of earshot, they lamented the change in their stable, logical brother, their anchor for decades. He had been a good man. Why was he being tested this way? Why this hardship? The Three Roses wept. Urmila wiped her tears. My eyes welled up. Saravanan stared at the floor. Vinayagam stepped out into the porch.
A few hours later, we escorted him to the stone entrance of the temple to Lord Gopalakrishna. Bare-chested, clad in a starched white dhoti, Daddykins was as willowy as a rice sapling. The manager of the temple led him to the wooden chariot behind the temple. My father felt the smoothness of the wood, the carved yalis, the elephants with their legs punching the air as if in a march, the brass bells marking each consecutive level of the pyramidal chariot. He beamed through his tears. Daddykins told the manager and his siblings that he was waiting for the chariot festivities later that evening. When he was informed, once again, that Ther was three months later, in May, Daddykins’ face fell. He returned home, fraught with disappointment.
During our stay in Palakkad, food had a natural tendency to factor into every family discussion. One evening, the conversation swung to idi chakkai, the raw young jackfruit that I had just bought at the farmer’s market which I longed to eat steamed and seasoned with coconut flakes.
‘I haven’t eaten it in so long,’ Daddykins said. A hush fell over us. ‘Can’t I have some?’ my father asked, sucking in his breath, his fa
ce scanning the blank expressions of his sisters. Then he looked at Urmila. She answered in the negative again, shaking her head in slow motion. ‘You have to stay healthy so you can fly back home in one piece,’ she said.
All three days, Daddykins stole glances at us as we ate breakfast, lunch and dinner, averting his eyes if anyone looked up. His eyes also followed the trail of a bag that was set on the table at teatime: bondas and bajjis, a Palakkad specialty fried at many street corners that Samyuktha wanted us to taste. To Daddykins we offered a formulaic menu with the safe constants: coffee, milk and biscuit puree, clear vegetable soup, Ensure, coffee, buttermilk, tea and then Ensure again.
We steered him outside so he sat in the verandah while we ate. But the aroma of food swirled about him and us as the caterers sailed into the house. They carried short, gourd-shaped steel vessels with curved handles that opened up to freshly seasoned pumpkin sambar. Tall cylindrical containers arrived with steaming hot rice. Rasam flowed out of a one-foot thooku; inside, cylindrical bits of coriander stem floated in a spicy gruel; the drift of pepper, tomato and curry leaves stung my eyes. The third evening, lemon sevai, my father’s boyhood favourite, made its way into the kitchen. The cook had soaked, ground and steamed parboiled rice, pushing balls of it through a minuscule noodle maker. The curly ball of noodles she had steamed and seasoned with juice of lime, green chillies, curry leaves, mustard seeds, pigeon peas, powdered fenugreek and asafetida. It was eaten dipped in coconut chutney. I sensed then how my father’s inability to explore those nostalgic textures had tumefied into a lump in his throat. He seemed tense one evening as he sat in front of the television. I put an arm around him and held him close. I asked him why he was glum.
‘I have not accomplished what I wanted,’ he said. His voice was low and raspy. ‘The people I had relied on have disappointed me.’ He wouldn’t state their names. But it dawned on me right then that more than anything in the world, he was desperate to eat and had hoped that the Three Roses and Palakkad would effect a magical transformation in him. But in the village of his boyhood, he had finally discovered that it would not be so. The only person who could console him that night was Urmila.
The following morning, we drove down a straight path that my father had walked in his childhood, past bungalows flushed with hibiscus plants, mango clusters and billowing coconut fronds, past the Toddy Shop, past the ladies walking by in wet saris clinging to damp blouses. The path ended at the Bharathapuzha where Daddykins had once almost lost his life among the water hyacinths and lotuses.
We listened to crickets and crows. We heard the thrash of wet clothes on rock, the gurgle of water flowing around river plants. As we drove back, tires crunching over gravel, I imagined a youthful Daddykins hurrying back from the river after his bath, a dry, crinkled dhoti around his waist and the old wet dhoti draped around his neck like a garland.
In the evening, we drove my father to the Bhagavathi temple, which was nestled between paddy fields that had once belonged to my grandfather. The goddess had met all our ancestors for many hundred years. She had saved Daddykins many a time. My father sat down on the temple’s stone bench, shirtless, as was customary, while praying to the deity, his chest lined with holy ash, and forehead spotted with sandalwood and vermilion. That evening, Daddykins seemed lighter, as if at least one of his wishes had been fulfilled.
On the last day of our trip, Daddykins visited the temple of Lord Gopalakrishna again where the manager accepted his contribution and reassured him that he would dedicate a part of a day to his name every year.
‘Everything is now resolved,’ Daddykins said, his crooked smile lighting up his eyes. ‘I’ll be back in May for the festival.’ Then he turned to Urmila and Vinayagam. ‘Won’t I?’
And Vinayagam, who was always threatening to give him a different kind of farewell, giggled and said that it all depended on what The Absolute Being had planned for him. Urmila hastily swung around to Daddykins and said, ‘But of course, we’ll see. If you’re in good health, why not?’
Four days after we returned from Palakkad, Daddykins insisted on being taken to the office. Vinayagam and I escorted him there and stayed with him, while he reported for a few hours of duty. He faltered as he descended the stairs outside his apartment. Inside the office, I saw how difficult it was for him to focus on a task. He couldn’t wipe his mouth without help. He needed assistance walking to the car, and getting in and out of it.
The following morning, my father asked me if I would be accompanying him to the office again that day. “No,” I said, looking him squarely in the eye. I told him that I didn’t think it was right for him to work anymore. He was furious. As he sat down to drink his Ensure, I told him that it was time to acknowledge the reality of his frailty; I asked him if he felt it was in his or the company’s best interests to tax himself in this way. He listened quietly. I left the house on an errand. When I returned two hours later, my father sent for me. As he dictated seamlessly, I typed up a letter addressed to his chairman—his own son-in-law.
Chennai
Feb 11, 2014
Subject: Resignation from the post of Director
Dear Chairman:
In lieu of the recent and protracted illness, I feel drained in strength and energy. I therefore desire to submit my resignation to your company with effect from the forenoon of 1 March 2014. Please accept my resignation.
I take this opportunity to thank you for your kindness in appointing me as a director in April 1993 and allowing me to continue for the last twenty years.
I enjoyed my work and I hope you too feel that I was useful to your organisation. I wish you all the best in all your endeavors.
Thanking you,
Yours truly,
L. V. Anantram
My father practiced his signature three times on an old newspaper. Then he signed the letter. He never talked about the office again.
Shortly thereafter, I had to return to the United States. Daddykins’ body shrivelled with Chennai’s rising mercury. Bindu was assigned to another patient. Nameless nurses began trooping through our home. In the closing days of May, his throat sealed itself shut. Now, Daddykins could not drink water.
29
The End of a Beginning
Veedu varai uravu
Veedhi varai manaivi
Kaadu varai pillai
Kadaisi varai yaro?
~ Tamil Poet Kannadasan, 1962
All relationships end with the home
Your wife sees you off at the gate of your home
Your son bids you farewell at the crematorium
But in the end of all ends, who will be with you?
~~~
I returned to Chennai on a June morning. Daddykins wanted to go home that day and every day after that.
‘This is your home,’ we said.
‘Take me home.’
‘This is your home, Daddykins.’
He wanted his valet by his side. ‘Vinayagam!’ The young man did not hear. He pretended to not hear sometimes. All of us did. Life leaks out of those who care for a dying man.
I sat by my father’s side in the middle of the bed. ‘Baby,’ Daddykins said to me, touching my arm. ‘Why won’t you take me home? Please.’
‘Because this is your home. This is your bedroom, Daddykins,’ I said. I pointed to his almirah. ‘Remember, this is where you stood all these years, writing your accounts.’
He followed my finger. Then he turned to the door where sunlight streamed in.
‘Saravanan!’ A feeble call. But Saravanan always heard. He responded every single time. At night he ran in when Daddykins shifted slightly in bed.
‘Yes, Saar.’
‘Let’s go. We need to leave this building.’
‘We’ll go, Saar,’ Saravanan said. ‘When Vinayagam shows up this morning, I promise you we’ll go.’
Daddykins closed his eyes.
‘How about you sleep now for a bit?’ He turned my father over gently onto his right side. Daddykins lay in
silence.
A while later, the hospice nurse on duty fiddled with the tube that snaked out of his belly as she started his feed. ‘I want to go home,’ Daddykins told her. She must have heard him. She went back to her chair a few feet away. She fished out her cell phone.
The day after, Urmila asked Daddykins where ‘home’ was. ‘Parthasarathypuram?’
A light seemed to flicker. ‘Yes.’
‘But remember you sold our bungalow twenty years ago?’ she said, pulling his hand to her cheek. ‘And then you bought this flat right next to Jeeva Park.’
He pulled his hand away. ‘Let’s go. I’m tired.’
Later, Vinayagam brought a quarter cup of warm milk ‘Feed your dad a little something,’ he said to Urmila. ‘Something before you fly out, Amma. Who knows?’ She wetted Daddykins’ tongue with a little milk. ‘No sugar?’ Daddykins asked. Everyone laughed. She sweetened the milk and tried again. Urmila told him she was flying to Singapore to see her newborn grandson who would take Daddykins’ name. Daddykins wished her bon voyage. He rested his hand on her shoulder. ‘Best wishes.’ She took leave of him. He took leave of her.
The next day, he looked towards the bedroom door as he lay in a stupor. ‘Let’s go home,’ he said, again. Mid-morning, Vinayagam held him on one side, Saravanan on the other. Daddykins panted to the living room and back, dragging both his feet. A slip of a man swollen in his stomach, his feet, his legs, his hands.
‘Please write letters to my three sisters in Coimbatore. Their father will not last long. He’ll be breathing his last tomorrow.’ Who was brother? Who was father? But the love? That was the same. He seemed to lapse into his world of darkness. I believe, however, that for the briefest moment, he entered mine. ‘My brothers are no more,’ he said.
‘Yes, I know, Daddykins.’
‘Carry me.’
‘Where are you? In Chennai or in Palakkad?’
Daddykins Page 17