Being the elder son, I performed all his last rites in April 2005. The ceremonies involved were quite elaborate and engaging spread across the 13 days which ensued. The brief Shraaddh ritual too was replete with philosophical techniques which would need another piece to unravel, from geo-tagging your own self to invoking the deceased soul to satiating him(her) across the species spread and conducting ablutions for ascendance. The metaphysical motifs contained therein are all worth pondering and relishing. What a human tradition which remembers its ancestors all throughout a fortnight !!!
I had somewhere been running away from remembering him formally. But today's Shraaddha ceremony caught me unawares and the entire floodgate of reminiscences just got open.
If the mother constructs the conscience, setting in the deepest directives of deducing the dharmic foundations of a decision; it's the father who illumines the intellect and ingrains it with information incensed with insights of the past and imaginations for the future.
My father, had the aforesaid profound impact and influence onto me. Whatever I am today and whatever I would be able to accomplish in this lifetime would all accord its credit to my father's grounding and firm rearing.
His virtuos values, widespread intercoalsced vision and his enviable vitality caught my fancy since early childhood.
Born in the city of Jalmahals, the erstwhile capital of the Jat Kingdom, Deeg, he was a gifted soul with an incessant curiosity and ability to learn from observation and experimentation.
Well built and handsome he awestruck one and all by crossing the Gulab Taal, just adjacent to the prolific Jal Mahal. His resoluteness and stamina for a chosen task were unmatchable. He used to say that if you can master a posture of sitting engrossed into any vocation, the mastery of the vocation concerned is just but natural.
An avid player of badminton he was a finger-licking cook as well. He lost his father quite early and thereby immersed himself into studies and building himself.
His mastery over the field of accounts in the heydays of manual processing was a region wide sensation. He stood 25th in the Chartered Accountancy Intermediate examination but couldn't complete the final group owing to multifarious reasons.
His first principles based approach of comprehending a concept and thereafter extending it to all other domains was prolific. It was not limited to his domain of study - commerce - alone. He made himself a polyglot by self learning.
From a thriving accounting practice, he was pulled into the world of entrepreneurship for fending his younger brother. He established a bakery in the very year I was born, a pioneering initiative in its own accord.
Setting up a manufacturing unit and that too in the domain of a perishable food commodity spoke volumes about his skill, commitment and verve.
All through my childhood both as a school boy and later as a college chap I witnessed the perils of a manufacturer in the MSME sector. The tepid tales of License and Inspector Raj became an integral part of the rubric of our existence.
One ugly act of humiliation I faced just after the first year of study at IIT Kharagpur. It was summer break of year 2000 and I had accompanied Papa to the factory.
The District Foods Officer has the onerous responsibly of ensuring the food standards of various food enterprises. In practice it has simply become a way of imposing annual collections on the concerned enterprises. Depending on the scale and profitability amounts are negotiated and contributed as a routine.
That year, due to some family obligations on his count the concerned officer came out of turn all over again in the name of inspection. Out of human solidarity his additional finance need could have been met with but his sense of guilt made him extol his official powers which created a behavioural tussle. He was thereby restrained from unduly filling in the food sample.
To get his humiliation redressed, he invoked his authority of being a government servant and lodged a complaint with the local police station. The sleuths came rushing blabbering in lowest degree abuses and took hold of Papa in the most derogatory demeanour.
I couldn't withstand this dirty display and protested to which the goon in uniform took hold of me as well and transported to their den of justice.
The SHO and the ASI tried to herald their expletives and terror including a warning to ruin my career. The tactic was to simply extract a booty from this deliverance of duty in the larger public interest. I was appalled by this entire turn of events and decided to fight these official goons against all odds - the societal weakness, the systemic fault lines, the collusion of all concerned.
Papa, who fought for dignity of entrepreneurs, found a young ardent supporter in his son. His silent blinking of eyes remained my sole assurance and I along with my father got scot free from that unwarranted ordeal.
This encounter with the system, somewhere washed out the fascinations of flying down to greener pastures which has somewhere got germinated in the first year of my college. How can I leave my father all alone in this ordeal, became my dominant quest?
Fighting for justice needs sacrifice, and a deeper fearlessness imbued from a sense of probity & propriety. I am contented that I inherited these very traits in great abundance from him. Values and traits unfurl only when you see them in practice. Being tepid is otherwise the first comforting choice and option.
Incidents after incidents are coming in front of me on this day of rememberance. How he overturned his enterprise by championing the American Institute of Baking patent book which I explored in the Central Library, got photocopied and couriered him. Even in his state of losing eyesight, this commerce graduate mastered the formulae, customised them and beat the competition.
However, in this ordeal the physical state of his body beat the life out. His physiology developed high levels of sugar which bursted into a carbuncle which was operated upon but of no avail. His vital organs started receding and the towering intellect started frustrating. Despite the best of efforts, even to the extent of joining him in our hometown leaving the mainstream career cycle, couldn't rescue him.
Papa, is not in his body, but his spirit resonates duly. His larger than life thought, openness of heart, resilience, belief in karma, fearlessness, diligence, sensitivity towards one and all...the list is endless.
I don't know where I am heading, but I am pretty sure that I am enthused and blessed by his spirit and the life he shaped within me would carry me forward to some definitive destination making me a worthy son of an illustrious father.
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