I am somewhere overall the vast expanse of Mongolia on my way to the Far East. The cabin is dark and comfortable. I tried sleeping but I feel restless. I do most of my thinking these days like this, reclining on an airline seat captive and restless, with compulsive focus. It is disconcerting and unsettling. Thoughts, unbeknownst to me, rise up from the undredged bottom of the mind and appear as if in a dream.
One afternoon, when my father was resting, I sat at the edge of his bed and asked him how his marriage had been, overall. He smiled and recited a poem by a lesser-known Malayalam poet called A. N. Kakkad. I don’t know anything about the poet but this poem I will remember forever. When Kakkad was dying of cancer he wrote:
Are there no memories? None at all?
Wearing and taking off bangles with patina* of so many colors
And greeting each other with so many faces
Being hurt and hurting each other,
How much bitterness did we drink up
Through these unknown paths of thirty years
Just to taste a few sugar cubes of peace?
Are there no memories, none at all?
There must be memories?
Otherwise how did we know that spring is here?
(Brahman women of Kerala wear brass bangles)
My father was dying of cancer and he knew it. Just like Kakkad, he had taken a real stock of his own life and he had decided to face his death stoically head-on. Whenever I think of him, I think of that afternoon Tuesdays-with-Maury moment we shared.
My father had been a poet and I am left with six notebooks of his poems. Other than pictures, the only things I have of him are two of his shirts and those notebooks. The life of a man reduced to a few props!
We had a difficult relationship. Like the poem above, we too drank a lot of bitterness just to taste a few sugar cubes of peace. He changed as he was approaching his end and redeemed himself. But the poem he was quoting characterized our relationship as well.
I never thought much of his poems and sometimes told him so when I was growing up. We used to have long furious debates about modern poetry at night when I was fifteen. We never managed to agree on anything. On poetry, on art, on politics but we debated everything. I don’t think he ever knew how to handle his son once he was no longer five. It must have been frustrating to have a son like me.
He once wrote a poem about coming home from work and watching his four-year old son dismantling a brand-new umbrella in the middle of the living room. He stood there watching this with great dismay as the son continued to take things apart quite unaware of the presence of his father. He was so angry and yelled, what are you doing? His son turned to him smiling and with great excitement said, “look dad, I am making a rocket to take you and I to the moon.” And all his anger melted away to a great broad smile.
I saw this poem recently when I was going through his notebooks. I wish I could take a trip with him to the moon. Or a trip to the center of the town. It doesn’t really matter where anymore. And I wish I could tell him it is a poem that moved me to tears and that he was not always wrong. I miss him so much.
Two days before he died, I phoned him. His kidneys were failing and I knew he didn’t have too much time. His speech was blurred and thinking unclear. At the end of the conversation, I said, “I love you, dad.”
He said, “Thank you very much.”
It turned out that those were the last words we spoke.
I love you dad. And thank you very much.
