My Captain, My Captain

My Father was a military man. From the tip of his stiff, white peak cap to the toes of his cherry blossom blanched navy shoes. He demanded order, punctuality and discipline. He was very good with his hands. Our various garages were always converted into workshops while our old trusty Standard 10 stood outside in the humid coastal air. He made my very first bicycle from parts of an old Russian circus bike and then helped me learn to ride it.

Never one to show much emotion, me and my brother knew how to discern his secret pride at our youthful accomplishments. The smile that looked like a straight line when I topped first grade, that nod when my brother won the Cochin Refineries Tennis Tournament and that quiet appreciation when my mother made an especially delicious chicken a-la-Kiev. My brother and his friends used to slink around him and called him Rambo behind his back. Unfortunately, this rigid, impenetrable demeanor was often frustrating for me as a young girl. The few times when I’d seen him let go was on our many long distance drives when Abba was playing on the car stereo. He would stick his head out like a turtle and withdraw in time with the music and it made us laugh. When I was in the seventh grade he bought me a cheap Phillips walkman for doing well at my boarding school.

Four years later, he and I were on driving down to Calicut on the first leg of our journey to Goa. My Mother was taking the evening train there as she couldn’t miss that day of school. He was in a particularly cantankerous mood and had been recently diagnosed with diabetes. There was no Abba on this trip. Only a grueling drilling about the whereabouts of that ridiculous walkman. The thing had broken down, been repaired, broken, repaired again and eventually lost by my brother who took it to college. He insisted that I was careless with my things despite my strenuous defence. It was a bitter session and frustrated, I ended it by telling him to never speak to me again. The rest of the journey passed in silence and when we reached my uncle’s home in Calicut, he took off to play a game of badminton at the club. I stayed home.

After the game he thought he had acidity and sent his friend for some Gelusil while he waited in the jeep. He had a cardiac arrest and died alone. He was two months away from my parent’s 25th anniversary, four months away from my high school graduation and six months away from his fiftieth birthday.

My dad had been known to say “When your Visa comes from above, you have to go.” It was so offhand. But I was the one who crumpled my mother with the news as she got off the train, glowing from her facial and all set for our week of family fun in Goa. My brother arrived the next day from college in Madras and the rest of my relatives flocked there in no time at all. I didn’t cry. Instead that night after putting my mom to bed I made jokes to my brother about how he’d look dressed like John Travolta in “Saturday Night Fever” and stayed numb. In the following month I helped sort out our finances, pensions and wrote scores of letters to banks and insurance companies and tried to look after my family as best as I could.

When the month was up I went back to boarding school. On the very first night I realized I had no one else to look out for there. I thought of the last conversation I’d had with him and cried so deeply and incessantly in my bed that I woke the matron down the hall and everyone in my dorm. After a couple of hours there was talk of medical sedation and as suddenly as it began, the storm ended. The idea of all that drama made me sick and I went to sleep.

Thoughts of you made me crawl out of bed at 3 Am and write. I’m sorry.