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.