DAD

Let’s rewind 61 years and a few months to January 20, 1954. It was a momentous day since my grandmother was having her second baby – my father. Like all babies, my dad probably would have come out crying but since I wasn’t there (obviously), let’s skip all of that and come to the present day, 2015. My dad has grown, and over the years, he has attained so much in life. From a small boy playing cricket in the streets of Alleppey to the successful man that he is today, he truly has come a long way to get where he is now. This is not about my dad’s journey but more like anecdotes of his everyday life – some incidents of significance, other incidents of humour.

As I was growing up, my dad introduced me to books. And boy was I in love. He told me to start reading Enid Blyton. And my love for short stories and novels grew as my dad took me frequently to the library. I quickly grew out of Enid Blyton and started reading classics. I remember my dad telling me to keep a list of all the classics I read and to give it a score on a scale of 1 to 5. In the end, I read about 33 classics and my favourite was Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Then he introduced me to Agatha Christie and the book he told me to read first was The Labours of Hercules. I still remember how fat the book was and thinking that I won’t be able to finish it. When I told my sister this, she said that dad had picked out that book for her to read first too. Some things never change.

I remember another incident when it was my sister’s birthday and she was gifted an iPod. I told my dad I wanted one but never thought it would actually happen. The next day, he bought me a purple-coloured Apple iPod. I was so surprised and just so happy. I hadn’t even meant it and before thinking it over, he went to the store and bought it. What can I say? He really is amazing.

Now my dad is a man who loves his poetry. When he was small, he used to buy poetry books with his pocket money. In one book, he had written “Poetry is life.” And in another one, “Poetry is distilled prose.” He used to come to my room and read poems to me. And by ‘read’, I mean recite it through memory and refer the book only when he forgets a word or two. Yes, he used to by-heart the poems. ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’ is his favourite poem till date and it astounds me that even after 40 odd years, he still manages to remember the words, verse for verse. I sometimes can’t remember what I did the day before and here is my dad, reciting a poem he learnt when he was my age.  He also used to read a threnody written by PG Wodehouse, called ‘Darkling’. And the way he recited, it was hilarious. Words like ‘worms’ and ‘dyspepsia’ were said so comically that it resulted in incessant laughter.

The world’s best planner may be someone in the USA or Africa or China. But to me, it is my dad. He is so organised that he plans our holidays to the minute. He prints up an itinerary and writes down the approximate time of arrival and departure at every airport and every railway station. He also books tickets for most of his relatives and to make it easier, he has three calendars in his room, one showing the present month and the other two showing the successive ones. Some might think he is a bit queer but to that, pat comes the reply, “There is a method to my madness.” Yes, indeed, I would hope so.

So yes, this is how my dad operates. And even though there are a thousand other things about him which are unique, these are the incidents that came to me instantly. So if anyone asks me who the greatest man alive today is, I would say my dad, because he really is something.