I am an uncle, again.

Yesterday, the sixth of May, 2009 my sister delivered a baby boy in America. I am an uncle, again.

I welcome him to this beautiful world. It is a beautiful world, my boy. No sarcasm meant.

On my dad, whom I always tried to respect

(This was written as an invitation to my friends in yahoo group and facebook on my dad’s retirement. Thanks to Rekha who fondly asked me to quit my job and pursue writing. Had to have few drinks that night to celebrate the compliment but it was so soothing)

ACT: 1

He ate three bananas and drank a liter of water. The time was 5am at Bangalore. The weighing machine mimicked a bullock tied to a fully loaded cart and managed to touch 48 kilos for speck of a second. He sighed. The sardar smiled and nodded his head in approval. That was his passport to Indian Air Force. Chempum Kandathil Kuttiyamma Sadanandan joined the Indian Air Force. The year was 1966.

ACT: 2

Jiscinda was Australian and her father was Italian. The BBQ was held at their private forest in the middle of their 17 hectare vineyard which had the same name of their ancestral home in Sicily. In an accent that carried all the distance between two continents and worsened by un-counted numbers of Fosters he asked, “did you call your dad?”. I nodded. Italians unlike Europeans never laugh at such gestures.
Jiscinda was having a fight with her brother. I still don’t understand why I was looking at Jiscinda while saying this, “when I was three years dad was my super hero for I believed that he could do anything and everything and sitting here after 24 years I still believe the same”.
The day was Fathers day and the year was 2006.

ACT: 3

An uncle came from USA. He never bought me gifts and dad was never sure whether he used alcohol. Still, we both liked his visits for he had too many stories to share. A week after one of such visits he called from USA. He had an offer for me the worth of which dad couldn’t understand at that time.
Almost a decade later I walked away from dad because, if I stayed he would have told sorry to me with tears in his eyes. It took him ten years and a single sentence from my cousin’s husband.
It was one of those after dinner sessions at my aunt’s house in Malabar and the year was 2005.

ACT: 4

The pink color book contained all the information on Sainik School summarized in ten pages. There were prints on back cover too. He opened the book just before dinner as you are not supposed to make decisions after dinner. The first page had Indian pledge which he didn’t bother to read. The second page was captioned, ‘Daily Routine Schedule’. It said, quote – 5.30 am, wake up alarm; 5.45 am, parade (uniform color – white) –unquote. He closed the book and said, “I don’t want to send my son to a military school”. We had dinner at kitchen table and the year was 1990.

ACT: 5

It was eight days short to my eighteenth birthday. He bought me a new 100cc motor bike. She liked its color but said Yamaha had much appealing sound and I hated her for that comment. On our return from the show room he told me, “I want my son to have everything which I never had and I don’t want him to have anything which I ever had”. I noticed grey hairs on him for the first time and the year was 1999.

ACT: 6

He had a beard in that suiting’s advertisement. He directed two Indian movies. He gave Anil Kapoor one of his earlier commercial successes. He used a body double to show the frontal nudity of Seema Biswas. He directed two Hollywood movies on a prominent Anglo-Saxon aristocrat. In one of them he is the man who knives the Bishop. He divorced his wife. The advertisement said he is a complete man. Nobody can question a copywriter’s imaginary excellence.

My father is not a complete man.

Neither Francois Truffaut nor Gandhi influenced me. The only man who ever influenced me in my life is my dad. I never saw such innocence elsewhere.

A dream that remained a dream for ever

It is better not to have dreams unless you dare to pursue them!

They called it some rare blood disease for Arun’s blood contained too much venom. Arun couldn’t play, couldn’t stand sun, couldn’t run and couldn’t afford scolding. Arun would turn red if any of these happened and remained as a silent, obedient and macro-disciplined boy through out his childhood. There weren’t any medicines and Arun was told that he would be fine when he grow up, little they knew about the venom that it would remain in him for the rest of his life.

So, Arun never dreamed about becoming a cop or to start with he never wanted to be a pilot. Doctor wasn’t a good idea either and in those days there were no engineers in his family or village to draw inspiration from. When Arun went to Navodaya, the joining form had a column on your dream and he said, Arun want to be a scientist. When Arun was a kid he fancied microscope and to his knowledge every man who looked into a microscope was destined to become a scientist. Later, Arun found that it was his sub-conscious mind falling in love with a lens which attracted him to microscope. The point is, to become a scientist wasn’t a dream as Arun thought rather it was a career ambition.

Arun was twelve and he was on his vacation. He had seen so many movies by then as he had a Keltron color TV and VHS video cassette player at home. Arun went out and rented a cassette. It was a Malayalam movie titled, ‘Vachanam’.

Lenin Rajendran was the director of ‘Vachanam’. There was a lengthy shot in which Tilakan playing a cop was walking very fast with his assistant and the camera following. He hasn’t seen a scene like this before and realized that movies can be different. Arun decided to become a movie director.

Now, he knew why he always liked watching movies. Why he preferred motion pictures over any other form of art. Why he had too many dreams with visuals sans sound. Why he loved colors. Why the whole world always appeared kinetic to him and he had no choice but to remain static and watch it. Why he always sat and watched happenings around him and never wanted to be part of it. Why he always watched, watched and watched.

Arun grew up as he had no choice! He never met any body who carried a dream with them for so long. Alas, along with the dream Arun carried with him the poisoned blood and his macro-disciplined nature.

Every one had an advice. Every one wanted him to prove what they left out to prove.

This is a case study. You need to decide the path that you wish to take up. Do you want to pursue your dream? Or do you want to remain that macro-disciplined guy making others happy. At the end they are going to come and find you, the people whom you made happy, and they are going to tell you that they were never happy. I warned you!