The time is 7:47 p.m., an idle Sunday evening. I don’t know if I am good at narration but to say this, I have no other way. Today, when I sit before my desktop, I’m certain that no one will ever read this. Or if anyone gets a chance, I warn you, this is no thriller. This cannot be called a story or a poem or prose rather I would call this my confession. I don’t know how else should I say this, not to anybody but to myself. To deeply contemplate what has been on my mind these nine months. Revolving, taunting, and killing me. Nine months! How fast it went. My father whom I called Acha is dead for almost a year. Dead as in physical sense because I know, he still lives through many. I don’t think a single day has passed for me without remembering him. A noble soul, I should say. He had his own way of living where he sometimes cared for nobody, not even for him. But he helped people – helped to achieve something in their life. That was the best part of him. And the worst part is that these will remain just as stories. Like every child says, I too loved my father. Sometimes I think maybe that’s why I never found any love in these twenty-one years of life. The greatest love of my life was him. But now I feel like I don’t deserve to say that. Acha was a remarkable character in my life who left a void when he had gone. A void that can be filled only with regrets and nothing else. I could explicitly remember the time he bathed me when I was mere three. On a sunny day, I was on top of a washing stone where he soaked me with soap. Then, the times I travelled on the petrol tank of his pulsar bike, and years later he asked me to become a brave girl by giving the complete control of a brakeless JEEP. I drove that jeep when I was sixteen years, only because I knew Acha is sitting beside me. Knowingly or unknowingly, he was always my strength in everything. For the past few months when I took decisions, it was every time incomplete. I knew there was something I lacked. But now, I know, I lack the presence of a man who told me that a brave person will die only once. We had a lot of memories together that I doubt if he will ever remember one. Because that was him. He loved me, maybe thousand times more or less than I loved him. The truth was I could never really understand him. The irony is that if someone asks me to share a good memory of Acha, I may not have one. It is not because everything with him was the best but because I hardly have one. We laughed our soul out while we mocked people, we polished an old kathakali picture that still hangs in my room, we watched four films in theatre together, we read Bhagavat Gita and admired Lord Krishna, we quarrelled a whole day just to be friends again at the end, and we cried when we thought we will never meet again. We did all these when he was drunk as hell. But there are countless things that we never did. We never went for a happy picnic, we never met in a parent’s meeting, we hardly ate any breakfasts together, we never celebrated birthdays or Onam, we never read any of my stories together, and we never blamed for not doing any of these. There are many things that I could still complain about him but I won’t do that. The truth is I never cared. I was happy for what he was or how he was. And for sure, I know if he has a life again, he will ask me as his daughter. And a thousand times over I am ready for it. The less memories I could recount, the more I go insane. But there are incidents in my life that I can never forget even after this life ends. It’s been nine months and all these memories are buzzing and crowding like bees around the wreaths kept on my father’s funeral. Even they were shooed away, all of them returned after a while. And sometimes returning to kill me. One such was in 2016 when I was in tenth grade. Those days, I proudly said to everyone that Acha was my favourite and favourite of all (I don’t know why). Mostly because I always had an ample number of fights with my mother and he was always the saviour. No matter what, he rescued me every time leaving less chance for my mother to kill me with her words. I sometimes was left doubtful to express my love for him in words. It was beyond words, emotions, and thoughts. But now, I’m afraid if I was ever true all those times if I was betraying him by saying that I loved him. I remember that day when he was taken to hospital for the first time in a very critical stage. Sometimes our memories are damn clear for those things which we fight hard to forget. Acha vomited half a bucket blood. How strong I tried to rub the stain off, the more it stained my mind. Those stains of blood awaken my consciousness and said, Acha would be the last thing I would like to lose. I don’t want to see him dead. So, I prayed, cried to all those gods I have never known before, just to bring him back to life. Even I begged to take my life than my father’s. The power of God or the Power of Medicine, I don’t know, but to everyone’s surprise, he returned to life. To say, I was the happiest ever soul to welcome him Home that day. To Home. That was the beginning of my worst birthdays to my bad Birthdays. People call it Birthday Blue, but I like to call it Black Day. I would rather like to mourn every of my Birthdays than celebrate it. To mourn for the day that remembers my heavenly birth. Time passed. And then I never realized how important Time was. If you don’t know, let me say you, it will never come back. But it will hit you hard with memories. The world would remain less beautiful if there were no memories. Less colourful, it may look. But to me, these memories fade the colours of my life. It reminds me again and again and again that I am incapable of Love, Happiness, and whatever it is called Heaven. The raw truth in front of me proclaims that my existence is for nothing. Nothing but to be the tragic hero in an unsung Tragedy. Whatever is in my mind, I don’t know if I could ever write it down. I have heard someone saying that you could hate a person only if you have loved that person at least once. I have had loved Acha not once, not twice but from the bottom of my heart every time. When every time, he dropped me school in his scooter on his way to beverage, I prayed, wished that he should get back home safely. I don’t think I could ever forgive and love anyone like I have did to him. When I entered ICU for the first time in my life, I was heartbroken to see a person who was always my strongest hero. Every step towards him said that I’m not ready to see my Acha in a ventilator. He cannot even breathe himself. To a great extent, I believed that he may never recognize me again but what if there is a miracle. And the miracle was he touched my hand, tears flowed down, even his wheezing through the ventilator could be heard and his eyes were trying to say something. It could be similar to what Pericles felt when he found his long-lost daughter, Marina at the end. Because I always understood what my father was. It was said a medical miracle but later that day when I cried my heart out in front of that ICU, I swore to myself that no matter what, I will always protect him. And now, to the one who is invisible and seeing everything and everyone from above, I did Love you the most and I owe you an apology which never deserves forgiveness. When you were finally ill and were taken to hospital for the last time, I wished if you didn’t come back. I wished if you were dead, I wished if that was the last time we meet. And for that, nothing could calm my waves of regrets but my own life. Like the stream that keeps the moon at night, my young mind will always keep the last words of us. If I knew nothing was forever, I would have sat beside you on your last breath. Now, I fear if I was ever true to you when I said, Acha is my favourite. And if I’m given a last wish, I’ll ask for that day I saw you last because I want to see you forever. “Acha, can you breathe?” I’m waiting for your reply.
By: Laxmi Preethi S Kumar
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