My father passed away when I was eighteen, which was sixteen years ago. I have spent almost as much time alive without him as I did with him. Today would have been his 70th birthday.
It's hard to talk about the loss of a parent. I typically have a lot to say about all sorts of things. You can't shut me up about shame, anger, jealousy, love, the human freaking experience, and what have you. And I have many inspirational thoughts, especially at 11.53 pm when my husband is about to fall asleep.
But when it comes to my father and his untimely death, I find it hard to say much.
When I do, in non-therapeutic contexts anyway, my approach vacillates between an impersonal factual account or a somewhat detached performance of my feelings.
His loss feels like an abyss. It is deep and unending. And it feels abstract almost because I don't fully understand how far it goes.
Maybe this abyss ends where he still exists. A place that transcends the limitations of time and space. Magical thinking etc.
Language and syntax are limited in that they cannot wholly articulate the entirety of grief. Grief is lightless. It is visceral. It does not ever entirely let up. Even eulogies strike me as vapid. They're simply flourishing and fawning. They don't allow you to see a person's totality and humanity with compassion.
In this post, I'll attempt to recreate a passing impression of the human that was my father. And with that, mark his memory.
My father was a complex man, as fathers often are. If you'd run into him at the grocery store or the bank, he'd strike you as gregarious and sprightly. 'He was very dynamic!' my mother often says of him, reflecting on the time they'd just met. He almost always opened informal interactions with a joke. And he roasted people a lot. This natural flirtation and mischief was innocent and only meant to create warmth. And for the most part, it worked.
But if you looked closer, as I did, you'd see traces of wounding from a difficult childhood.
He grew up one of twelve siblings in the industrial north-western town of Jamshedpur, which was then still called Sakchi. This was small-town India, pre-liberalisation, and nothing he said about his childhood struck me as hopeful or abundant. He only ever spoke about being very determined. My mental image of him was an eleven-year-old boy with ill-fitting khaki shorts and all the world's burdens on his shoulders.
His siblings still recount how my father somewhat stoically ground away, studying and working jobs as a student while everyone else made merry. His sole mission was to rise above the station life had dealt him. And win.And it makes sense that he did. Because his was a context that celebrated masculine steeliness.
Things were looking up by the time I was born. His children spoke English, and we had a garden. He traveled frequently on business, and the landlines rang for him incessantly. He had made it, somewhat. And he shone. He’d be the life of the 7830372 family gatherings we hosted then. And to me anyway, he appeared fiery and hootless.
His belligerence was obvious, but no one really marked it. At the time, all fathers were cast as the most important person in the household. They seemed entitled to their anger.They set the tone. We all had a good time if he laughed, but if he was tense, which was often enough, we shrank to make space for him.
When my father was in a lighthearted mood, he would go all out. He frequently set up elaborate practical jokes, and everyone was a target. One time, when I was twelve, he had me pretend to be 'Paroma', a Bengali woman calling to inform my very orthodox aunt that I loved her son and had already married him.
Another time, He sent my uncle and cousins on a wild goose chase all around Bangalore, looking to collect an award that they hadn't actually won. To execute these stunts, he’d strategically recruit talents such as myself, his work assistant, and my cousin Shyam. It was absurd, and very very fun.
As my brother and I grew up, the world was quickly changing. Bangalore got its first-ever Pizza Hut, and Friends ran on television every evening. We all said 'fuck’ and 'dude' a lot. And we were very inexplicably into 70's progressive rock.
Through all these changes and a rapidly westernising social context, my father worked away, paying increasingly less attention to the world around him. We were negotiating the social mores of traditionalism and liberal culture, whilst he was enwrapped in dealing with the subversive dynamics of the many lala companies he worked at. Sometimes he'd rant about how impossibly extractive the workplace was. He was beginning to tire of it.
When I turned thirteen, my father was finally ready to get off the employee treadmill and take some bold professional decisions. But then he received a diagnosis of an irreversible and untreatable medical condition. Best laid plans, as they say.
We could have done better internalising this information as a family. We were all so used to organising ourselves around him, but this time he didn’t really have a steer. It was difficult, it must have been. We all knew he would eventually pass, but we needed more courage, words and wisdom than we had to directly address it. Nobody, including the adults, knew how to really check in on each other. It was easier playing out the subversive unconscious family roles we were assigned. That papered over the truth. And temporarily distracted us from the pain.
In the five years that followed, I saw a phase of consolidation and pragmatism. But it was harder and harder to witness my father go about his days. It felt like the world he had created emptied him out. His bright eyes had begun to yellow, and he didn't give as much of a shit anymore. He read Victor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning then and told me all about logotherapy. Other people in history had it worse, and he was trying his best to gain strength from that awareness.
Two months before he passed away, I distinctly remember my father concluding his business subtly but almost ceremoniously. He sat on the balcony, packed all of his books, and gave them away. He had our family move into an apartment we owned in a somewhat downtrodden neighbourhood, away from the two-story house we rented elsewhere. He knew we would no longer afford it after he passed.
My dad was mainly my champion. I don't know if he was surprised or annoyed by it, but by the time he passed, it felt like he was out of sync with how rebellious I had gotten to be. I could tell that he didn't like my friends. And he didn't quite relate with this hyper-liberal, cloyingly western outlook I'd developed.
After his passing, life got very real very fast. I spent the first several years attempting to cope with the enormity of the experience that was his passing, and well, logistics. Only recently have I had the courage to parse and understand his story.
My therapist told me this week that grief can take form of an emotional tethering to the person you've lost. You feel so enmeshed with their being that it's as if you are them. It takes a lot of effort to remind yourself that you are a separate individual with a distinct life and a different destiny.
I get this, intellectually. But believing this is likely several sessions away.
When I reflect on his life, I don't know that I can say that his was happy. It was joyful and sad and fun and hard. It was a life.
I wish he saved less and traveled more. I wish he had a bit more fun with the money he made and just put us kids in a less nice school. I wish he let go of all the dumb 1950s conditioning that put him on the linear job-marriage-life path. I wish he tended to his inner child more, and took therapy.
This isn't quite a lament. But maybe it is a reminder.
Happy Birthday, Dad. <3
“Language and syntax are limited in that they cannot wholly articulate the entirety of grief. Grief is lightless. It is visceral. It does not ever entirely let up. Even eulogies strike me as vapid. They're simply flourishing and fawning. They don't allow you to see a person's totality and humanity with compassion.”
I felt every word of this write up and especially what you have written about the inadequate language of grief. I lost my father in 2020 and up until then I didn't realise how empty the platitudes we offer someone who has lost a loved one is. Have you read “Notes on Grief” by the author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie? She first wrote it in New York times after her father passed away. I think it was later published as a book too.I remember reading that article and felt seen. Just like what I felt after reading your post.
What a beautiful birthday tribute.
You have a gift for describing the indescribable and putting words to the most difficult feelings. Love you. His prank calls live on through you and your weird band of friends (such as myself). Though we don't commit to it like he did. Goals.