An Ordinary Man With An Extraordinary Will Power

When it started raining buckets out of the blue, I realised that I was badly stuck inside the supermarket since I had stepped out of my house without an umbrella. As I stared at the downpour from the glass panel in front of me, waiting for the rain to clear, a memory of another such day from the past came flooding into my mind.

That day too, it had started raining cats and dogs without notice, forcing me to take shelter underneath an awning of a nearby shop. That was when he saw me from the shop across the road where he usually spent some time every evening chatting with his friend who owned the shop. Wading through the puddles, he crossed the road with an extra umbrella borrowed from his friend to give it to me. This rarest of rare incidents moved me so much that it stood etched in my memory.

Whenever I spot a senior citizen in white clothes with a small rim of grey hair around his bald head, it reminds me of my father. He always wore his trademark spotless white jubba and dhoti. As he walked ramrod straight, even with a walking stick in his old age, he was a sight to behold. Walking became his favourite pastime as he aged, and his long walks would become the talk of the town.

Though like everyone around me I respected him, my relationship with him was complicated. He was a dominating presence in my life during my childhood and my adolescent years during which time I hardly spoke to him beyond monosyllables. Most of my requests were routed through the proper channel to him i.e., through my mother. 

However, when he spoke, we listened.

When he entered the room, we exited.

When he took a nap, a graveyard silence prevailed in the house.

All our neighbours were full of praise for him. They would let us know his acts of bravado – how he dared to walk the streets, despite some threats to his life when he started his restaurant business in that small town way back in the fifties; how sharp his business acumen was; how he rose from rags to riches and made a name and place for himself in that shanty little town in Telangana, hundreds of miles away from his native village Kota in Karnataka. They said like Arjuna, he only had his eyes on success and succeed he did, through the sheer dint of hard work, sweat and integrity.

But all this hardly mattered to the estrogen-pumped-in -teenage girl that I was at that time, who saw my father only as this autocratic presence, caring more for money than he cared for his children. Whenever he bragged about his success, I tried to stifle a yawn while wondering "does he ever think of anything else?"

As I finished my post-graduation, which was a rarity for a girl child in those days, I often fretted and fumed within, over his singularity of mind, while considering myself more elite and educated by virtue of my degrees, scarcely giving another thought to the fact that all those degrees were courtesy this man, who was not fortunate enough to get them as his parents couldn't afford to educate him, despite his being smart.

"I am glad it turned out that way. Had I continued with my studies, maybe I would have settled into a clerical job working for someone. Today I am able to provide a job for others" he chuckled and told us one day.

The true value of these words, I got to understand when I myself started working. That was when I could imagine how my parents might have toiled day and night to give their four children a good life.

"Amma, it's the person who gets paid who should feel restless. Why do you get so restless to pay the bills on the very first day of every month?" when my daughter asked me much later in my life one day, I realized with a start that it was something I had inherited from my father, having seen him do that year after year while I was growing up. "No one should be waiting for money due to him, even if we are made to wait" he used to say.

"Our grandfather spoils us all rotten feeding us tons of candies and fruits" when I heard my daughter brag about my father to her friends one day, my eyes turned moist. Perhaps this was his way of trying to make it up for that missed opportunity with his own kids, I surmised.

It was only when my hair started turning grey, I gained enough wisdom to enter his world to understand that he was a product of his background as much as I was of mine - and that my better background was of his making in a way.

It was really very painful to see him struggle with Parkinson's and Alzheimer's towards the fag end of his life. It came as a shock to all of us when he passed away in a freak car accident a few days after the doctors gave the verdict that his condition is likely to worsen.

Having known his willpower, I feel, like the mythical Bhishma, he chose his time of death by willing it upon himself. Having lived and died on his terms, I know my father is definitely at peace now.

This true story is being submitted in celebration of all the fathers out there.