A daughter’s quest to find solace after her father’s death.
By Niharika Mookerjee
Sunlight poured through the lace curtains billowing in the breeze. Bare branches of the trees parted in wide delight to a flood of January light that floated from the vast pale of skies. It was time to remove the Christmas lights and stash them away in boxes. Time for the feast of Makar Sankranti, for the kitchen hearth to be filled to the brim with pans of dark and syrupy gulab jamun and golden pithe, coconut roasted to a milky richness.
Usually the end of a season fills me with a sense of tranquility, a slow easing of an understanding that it was time to get on with life‘s familiar rhythm. However, the shrill cry of a lone jay tinged the blue in the landscape. The season’s first tulips and the last roses danced atop every wave of breeze that skipped in through the painted glass pane. Earth seemed brushed by a playful dew of jasmine dreams. All that which my father loved.
In the midst of such grave beauty, I realized that this year I would need to move to a place where I could seek my dad’s inspiration only through the dimly lit lanes of memory. He had departed for his heavenly abode and although I knew it was time overdue to bid adieu, I couldn’t imagine forging forward without his pragmatic wisdom that firmed my abstract meanderings, his uncompromising sense of discipline that harnessed my free-wheeling spirit during my youth, and his deep-seated modesty that kept me rooted to the soil of Bengal from where I came.
No theological solace could ever mellow the merciless heart ache. The photograph on the wall was too still to resurrect his irrepressible humor. The phantom past of my childhood glimmered in the distance, as I lay stretched in its languid memories – the white corniced columns of our colonial home in Jamshedpur, lined with graveled drive-ways, amid a cascade of lawns and wooded haunts. I remember sliding into tiny purple pools that brimmed over with lily pads, arched over by frail bridges that glowed exquisite when touched by my mother’s hands. In the long walk back towards the past, the house rose like an opalescent dream, soft with the tinkle of girlish laughter over baby birds on mango trees, arabesque adventures around evening bonfires and my dad‘s admonishing reminders of homework pending.
Busy as he was as the head of a conglomerate, he could afford little time to spare for his three daughters. However, one particular evening stands out in the haze of recollections when the October setting sun was ablaze in the horizon. My father, my dog and I were walking through the woods behind our house and a cascade of golden light spun its dazzle through the crevices of silent trees. Sunlight streamed through then, unhinged and unhindered, as it did now. I could still hear the crackling sound of brown leaves underneath my feet, as we walked in leisurely pursuit of vagrant ducks, waddling zigzag in front of us.
Somewhere a whisper of sacredness circled in a slow dance down the immeasurable heavens through the rapturous light, rich with unknown blessings, rippling on a breeze. The trees, the musk roses strewn over the hedges, and the sun had frozen into utter silence. The earth stood still for just one second. Somewhere in the gleaming distance, wisps of factory smoke rose in circular columns as the 5 o’ clock sirens wailed to mark the end of a work shift.
As the three of us climbed down the moss grown stony pathways, hidden by a welter of leaves, I remember speaking out aloud, “I promise as long as I live, this moment shall last forever.†It was a pledge, made youthfully and carelessly, with little thought about how life unravels itself or the number of companions one loses or gains on its way. But locked in an enchanted circle of nature’s mysterious beauty, the forests and the skies seemed bathed in the fair light of immortality. My faithful dog, woofed in apparent agreement, as she, continued determinedly to pace along the floral path with unfaltering resolute. She jumped, she bounded, she ran furtive, and the three of us never had a passing thought that it would not always be like this. Slowly and imperceptibly, the years fell, one layer upon another, claiming initially, the beloved dog, then, in time, the house trellised with roses and lilies, and years later, my dear dad.
It was not a moment of epic occurrence but decades had rolled by and yet it remained gilded in my mind. In retrospect, life was replete with such overlooked minutes, precious in recollection. Magnificent touches that lifted us up from the trove of life’s trivialities and profundities, of the struggle between the next bill to pay and the slap of recession that could hit the job market. But lying in subdued profusion, among the vines and trailing leaves of existence, was a wealth of benevolence sewn in the text book of the universe.
It lay in the sudden sweeping flight of blackbirds across the skies, of wild fields radiant with yellow dandelions, in a desolate train whistling through the roads or simply the sight of turtle doves in the back-yard. Of red and yellow balloons floating into the deep recesses of the skies in the film, Anand. It could even be the quiver of sensation within unexpected places, amidst iridescent fish slipping upon watery slopes at market stands, paper boats on rain puddles, crisp smell of clothes dried in sunlight or the homely call of vendors from far across the streets.
Those were the forgotten but ancient sounds and sights of happiness that did not require a well-paying job or great intellectual effort to appreciate. Whether one is of poor health or worried about paying the next mortgage, the process of living simply does not stop regardless of our will. It is Spencer Tracy’s “hunk of blue” sky that he glimpses through the slider on the rooftop of his shack at the shanty in the movie “Man’s Castle” that keeps prodding us on forward. Because, surely, shall we ever come across this winged span of the blue in another world?
And so during Sankranti, in the middle of damp and cold winter, my family and I went to the beach at Cape May to find a way to begin anew. A rare sight greeted us. Thousands upon thousands of dolphins were crossing the seas in crystalline perfection. Graceful and beautiful. Magic that lit up our lives for a split second. It was as simple as the words, my daughters scribbled on the sandy shore, “Dadu, when we think of you, the skies deepen blue.”