you died a little too early… you passed away in saavan…
was it because you never liked rains or was it that finally you wanted to roam free and soar above the clouds? i am told the one doesn’t feel the vapour inside or around the clouds. you never wrote back how was the journey through the clouds? which route did you take? was it to the east in the heart of the thunder from where the purva comes in this month or did you take west riding the westerly on dark clouds as kalidasa mentions in meghduta. surely you would have posted a letter from there, how come the cloud-messenger never delivered it? please do let me know, so i may prepare. whichever direction you took it must have been very enchanting; clouds and rains enthral.
it has been overcast for nearly a week now, grey and still – just like it was eight years back. it didn’t rain then, but it has been raining since yesterday. it is sans thunder and not furious either. slow and consistent like the kind it rains in hills… you loved hills and all the hill stations. but somehow i am missing that smell, the smell of the earth in rains that casts a spell… even the neem doesnt smell the same…. but how would you know that, you hardly stepped out in rain… punching on your typewriter you loved rounds of chai and pakoras in this season, occasionally looking up to check when you could step out for a smoke. you loved eating jamun, liberally sprinkled with rock salt, and then went back to writing your diary… some pages still have the deep purple impression of your fingers on them. i recently opened the trunk of papers which ma gave me.. it smelt of you and years that you spent amid them.
i am sure you must be watching from wherever you are or would have read and heard about the deluge in gurgaon. (you, whose eyes were always glued to news, you who nearly lived in newspapers). no, i am not complaining of flooded streets. i love saavan, i love rains… it is a month of your memories… it is month of pain that you left me with. and no, even this is not a complaint, it is just that no rite of passage prepares us for this finality, the certainty.
coming from someone who planned his day and week so immaculately this sudden departure was rather unfair, we were supposed to meet the week after – thats what you had said last. all the reminders that your friends, neighbours, colleagues or your children needed were transmitted to them well ahead of time on a cue, as if stored in a super computer. you were the one who would send out birthday and anniversary greetings to reach well on time (oh, how much i miss them). but come to think of it, this very important day you didn’t even mention.
and then, there is so much you left unsaid, unanswered. unknowingly you have left so much on me, of which I am not capable. frankly, but for Ma, not even interested. Miss you, Dad.
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