“I fear yours is no living soul. How could it make this distant flight? You came: the maple woods were green. You went: the pass was black with night." ~Du Fu (As translated by Vikram Seth)
The hamartia that ruled my father’s life was his obsession with the well-being of his companion, my mother. He sired a string of offspring in quest of male progeny, some of whom wilted in infancy while others weathered life less gloriously than he was apt to approve. The lone prize, or the son he was left with at the end of his productive years, is eking out a low-key existence in a swarming metro.
Mother was also the only bosom friend he ever had. He suspected many mortal maladies of laying siege to her. Seldom did a groan escape her without sending him scrambling to diagnostic centres. A lingering queasiness in her bowels warranted the attention of the best medical institutions he could afford. The paranoia was perhaps a repayment of sorts for the biennial crops she bore for him with faithful regularity.
I can tell you I was the apple of his eye, for my earliest memories are of sitting in his lap, my fingers teasing the contours of his face. As soon as I could tell the moon from the stars, I was soaked with stories of every hue. But a theme that was to recur again and again was the bond of love and devotion between father and son.
As I grew older, I became especially fond of the heart-wrenching tale of Casabianca, the twelve-year-old boy who held his post on a burning deck, waiting in vain amid the inferno for his father’s word to leave his post. The father, indeed, lay ten fathoms deep, oblivious of all in his eternal sleep.
More than the overwhelming sadness of the tale, it was the emotional charge in his narration that riveted me. With a queer lilt in his tone, father would begin:
“The boy stood on the burning deck
Whence all but he had fled,
The flames that lit the battle’s wreck
Shone round him o’er the dead.”
Further into the recitation, in a faintly cracking voice:
“The flames rolled on – he would not go
Without his father’s word;
That father, faint in his death below
His voice no longer heard.
“He called aloud: ‘Say, father, say...’
If my task is done!”
This is where a lip would quiver or a cheek would twitch:
“Speak, father!” Once again he cried
“If I may yet be gone!”
And but the booming shots replied
And fast the flames roll’d on”
Father could barely speak by the time he’d come to
“My father, must I stay?”
Eventually, Casabianca perished in a “burst of thunder sound”, becoming one with the elements.
Lest you begin to fear an undue callousness in me, every iteration left a lump in my throat that refused to move either way.
Father yearned to live the lost dreams of his life through the fumbling, recalcitrant heir. “This son of mine,” he would declare, “is going to be a world-famous guru of the Vedas, Puranas and Sanskrit scriptures.” An emaciated but alarmingly agile tutor was soon pressed into service. For a year or so, the pundit flailed and wailed and writhed in despondence as his efforts came to naught.
Father changed tracks. He started paying daily visits, with me in tow, to a renowned scholar of the day whose goodwill he had somehow won. He was a sharp man, Shastri ji. “Lad’s heart is not in it,” he quickly discerned.
In a desperate bid, I was admitted to a Sanskrit seminary for three long years. To cut a long story short, I emerged as unscathed and un-Sanskritised out of the whole enterprise as a frog in the monsoon.
Life rolled on. Sometime towards the end of my student life, when I was pursuing a postgraduate degree in English Literature, father tried to kindle in me the ambition of becoming a Civil Servant. But the idea remained stillborn, never taking its first faltering step.
Crestfallen, father scoured his quiver for the proverbial last arrow. Laced with the potion of pecuniary blackmail, the last arrow came in the form of a direction to pursue a degree in Law. “I want you to roar like a lion in the courts,” he ordained!
To be honest and truly fair, I scraped through two-thirds of the course offered by the university. But, in a final act of brinkmanship, I skipped the final-year examinations.
So near, and yet so far!
In one of his whimsical ways, father decided to take up farming once he hung up his boots on Indian Railways. But mother, with her remarkable urge to take charge, turned out to be a better practitioner of the art, and he was soon relegated to the back seat. In the absence of a meaningful engagement, father turned to pursuits as disparate and esoteric as astrology and homeopathy and, to his credit, attained considerable proficiency in both. But he could never abandon his time-tested obsession with his soulmate’s health. In fact, he regarded even the commonplace afflictions that befell her with such foreboding that he became hypertensive and ruined his heart irrevocably.
As with most years, the bitter winter of 2012 yielded a rich harvest of corpses. The cremation grounds at Manikarnika Ghat bustled with the dead who arrived from far and wide, and with those who bore them on purposeful shoulders, chanting all the way, “This alone is the truth!” Those who tended the pyres and broke the charred remains to earn their living had a roaring business. Tourists from distant lands loitered with mouths agape and faces flushed.
Pyre after pyre was lit in such unholy proximity that the dead might have nudged one another back to life, had they been able. I carefully noted the pyre I had set aflame and returned to a terrace above to watch the danse macabre unfold amidst the soot, smoke and smouldering stench.
The eyes, perchance, lingered on other pyres too as I stood there half-dazed. Nothing could have underscored the evanescence of life more emphatically than the charred human forms that stiffened in vain in their final struggle against the fury of the fire. My eyes returned to the pyre I had marked, only to recognize in a flash my father’s unmistakable skull through the gaps between the burning logs. His face came rushing to my mind in that instant, bearing a thousand emotions: the face as it had grinned and grimaced, the face as it had kissed and craved, the face lost in deep thought, the face singing a poem, and the face as it would shake again and again in some untold remonstrance.
"My son, must I stay?"
One Grain Amongst the Storm 
That was gut wrenching my friend. The pain and the anguish all come through in the words soaked in grief. May his soul rest in peace.
This alone is truth! RIP! May you find strength to withstand this difficult time!
That was very emotional. May his soul rest in peace. May god give you strength to bear this loss.
I have no words. It is a searing, searching and heart hugging tribute.
My father too was with the Indian Railways..a doc.
deeply moved by this master piece from a emotional son about the relationship with his father , expectations and desires of the father and angush over diffrences . Pandey is one of the persons who can be honest even upto extreme .
Gave me goose bumps .. Very touching post.
We can never feel we have done enough for our parents no matter what we do.
It was painful. It was as if you are searching for yourself and comforting in that pain. May he rest in peace. And you be the son he dreamt of…
Heart -tearing. Masterpiece. Left me alone , lurching in darkness . Hats- off to your heart , to your pen , above all to your honesty .
May God give you strength to bear this inevitable macabre experience of life .
deep and the poetic touch keeps it flowing!
May his soul rest in peace.
I am grateful to you all, my friends. Thanks for your kind words.
A very somber tribute! May his soul rest in peace! For some strange reason, the poem of Casabianca kept playing in my mind today morning, and strangely I find it here verbatim in your moving post!
After I lost my father, your blog brought me to peace and I finally let my father go.
I am sorry to learn of your loss.
Touching post. May his soul rest in peace.
this was a deeply moving narration. from the light-hearted note with which you began the post to the shift in the tone as we went on along with Casabianca & then to the your own touching story of the father & son
Thanks for the kind words, Sujatha. The repentance is mine.
They say time is the greatest healer. I am still waiting for the soothing touch.
Sad to see this news Uma! Death is just too final but the soothing touch will come with all the wonderful memories & stories that you will share with your family over the coming years.
You are a great narrator.
Yes, it’s the final abyss. Memories are all one is left with. Thank you for your kindness.
I am so sorry for your loss.
I do hope time has been a good healer!
Thank you, Nabadip. I am waiting for the healing touch.
A stunning piece of heartfelt prose US; not least, the link with the poem & the closing quote.
One line in particular – I feel – is a touch of genius: `…Manikarnika Ghat bustled with the dead that flocked from far and wide…’
I hope your father got to read some of your magnificent & magical tales US. I’m sure he would be so proud – captivated with your skill – as I & most of your readers certainly are.
Cheers, ic
Ian, that is one ancient, holy and, I wish to add, nasty crematorium. Standing there is a humbling experience any day, and a heart-rending one, if one’s father were to be part of the ongoing hellfire.
I did give my father a printout of one of my stories once. He said I had a golden pen that I should never lose. But then a father would say that to his son.
Thanks for those words.
I am glad you had the fortitude to resist law. You are far better suited as a writer.
This was a poignant and touching account of your memories. Thank you…
Thank you for those words, Dagny.
you poured your heart out Sir..
I felt the pain, agony and helplessness of a boy who is confused and dazed.. looking desperately for that familiar touch which is lost.. lost for forever
truly sorry for your loss.
Thank you for those kind words, Jyoti. There are times I miss him badly but then that is how life is.
This was such a poetic tribute to your father, Uma. He wanted what he thought was best for you. Perhaps your inner resolve to do what makes you happy now (writing) is related to having dodged all of his vocational suggestions (mandates?) over the years. The way in which the tale of Casablanca symbolized you and your father’s relationship, both literally and figuratively, is chilling. Thanks for sharing this heartfelt piece.
Kris, I was in a bad shape when I wrote that, recalling my earliest memories and the later day conflicts with him. There is no doubt that I kept failing him perennially.
That was sensitive of you to notice that chilling recall of the filial story, in an ironic reversal.
Thank you for your kindness.
You laid bare your heart in that piece – written with feeling; it’s evident that you loved your dad and looked up to him.
I realised the value of my dad after he had left this world – wished I had spent more time with him and asked him more about his life. I know so little about him and that is a huge loss.
The last part of your narrative was gut-wrenching like another reader already mentioned. I have lit the funeral pyre for my dad too but didn’t have to bear witness to what happened afterwards. Why did you put yourself through that agony? It must have been very painful.
I am sure you are a great dad too!
Who was it that said that wisdom comes a bit too late to be of any good.
No one forced me to stay in sight of the burning pyre of my father, but it was the last that I would see him ever…. Maybe it was a penance for the disappointments I kept throwing at him all his life.
As for being a great dad myself, well, I hope I am!
Thank you for those kind words, my friend.
“charan sparsh”
Chiranjeevi Bhava.
Such powerful writing, uma, especially the fiery conclusion. I sense a terrific bond between you and your father. Naturally you had to go your own way, choose your own destiny, disappoint all his plans and expectations. But what father doesn’t love a rebellious son.
NP, what was once a bond, is now a bundle of memories. I guess my father fumbled because he believed he had a tiger in his son rather than the kitten I was. Many, many thanks.
Really nice tribute to your dad and written with so much heart!
Many thanks to you, Angie.
Umashankar, this piece is so powerfully and beautifully written! Your father was very endearing in “his quintessentially whimsical ways” and I find it fascinating that after retiring he became proficient in astrology and homeopathy. All that hovering over your mother was really very loving, and I could tell you felt very loved by him too. That’s a wonderful photo of your father, what a wide-open, happy face, looking at him smiling made me smile.
Seems he was quite the storyteller, the way he relayed the heart-wrenching tale of Casabianca. I am wondering if your love for storytelling and writing began back then listening to those tales. The way you came back to the Casabianca story at the end with the funeral pyre, your father’s face in all his expressions, and “my son, must I stay,” brought tears to my eyes. Well done and thank you for sharing.
Madilyn, you did read a lot between the lines. He was both quaint and whimsical, and his love was deep. He was an untiring raconteur of folktales and scriptures. It does seem to have had an effect on me, just as you say!
Thank you for those kind words.