Several thousand words.

Not much I need to say about these, except to tell you that this is where my father was born - the island of Thimmanna Kudru, on the River Suvarna, near Kemmanu, in southwest coastal India. Pretty much unchanged from what I remember as a child, over 40 years ago. A picture's worth a thousand words, it's said, so I'll let them do the talking, and just interrupt here and there with a caption.

View from the tip of the island

Punting down the river Suvarna in a "hodi"

Perfect place to just stand and breathe.

Hanging bridge to Thimmanna Kudru

Interracial harmony .. these girls were still hanging out together when I returned several hours later

Coconut tree

Collecting firewood

Someone's got a lovely bunch of coconuts (my cousin, apparently).

Garden well

Things change: heart motifs, a satellite dish and utility lines ..
also this used to be a thatched hut.

Cashew tree - unripe fruit

Illegal sand dredging - a heavy load

All I have is one teardrop.

Today I learnt that a friend’s father died, and I am jealous.
I am jealous of all the things he could say and do when he was
last with his father:  talking and smiling and touching and seeing
and remembering and joking and being together.  I don’t know
exactly what he said, but I know he said - and heard - the most
important thing:  I love you.

I said it too, to a heavily-sedated man with a ventilator tube
stuffed down his throat, held in place by a large unevenly cut
strip of surgical plaster across his face.

I love you. Thank you. I’ll miss you. You were wonderful. Good bye.

I said all these things, I think, to a man whose chest may only
have been moving up and down because of the machine pushing
air into his lungs. Somebody said later, that he was already gone
by the time we gathered around him in the ICU, and that
his reaction to my words might have just been a reflex,
a coincidence.

Because when I said these things, one tear gathered and rolled
from the corner of one puffy, closed eye. 

So I said a bit more. 

Don’t cry. Don’t worry. I’ll be okay. We’ll be okay. I’ll manage. 
I’ll take care of things. Go in peace.

Some of it was a lie. I’m not okay. I’m not managing. I don’t know
how to take care of anything. I cry. I worry. I have very little peace.

I hope my friend will be better off. I don’t know what else he said
to his father, but I hope he got to say all the things he needed to.
All the things he will need days and months and years from now.
When the if-onlys, the should-haves, and the why-didn’ts
come calling, I’m hoping his last memories of his father
will see them off at the door.

All I have is one teardrop. Sometimes it feels like everything,
and sometimes it feels like nothing. But it's all I have.

World's Greatest Dad.

It floats around a lot, that phrase. We see it on coffee mugs and t-shirts and plaster-of-paris trophies in souvenir and novelty shops all over the world. Moms are not that hard to shop for. For some unfair reason, it's always easier to buy a gift for a woman. For a man, not so much. Especially if it's for your father. So the t-shirts and mugs and trophies come in very handy when you've broken your head over what to get him for his birthday, for Father's Day, or for Christmas.

If you, reading this, are a father, you probably have received at least one World's Greatest Dad. If you've received more than one - all from the same child - you probably need to let him or her know that you've got the message, and then drop hints about something you'd really like as a gift. If you're a father who hasn't yet received one, be patient. It will come.

World's Greatest Dad. As I said, it floats around, and when we say it, we're pretty sincere about it. But here's the thing - you will only truly understand what the words meant, when, like me, you have lost your father.

Daddy

1 December 1926 to 21 March 2013

Two years today, and every day I discover more ways in which you earned that award.

Tomorrow, right now, two years ago.

Tomorrow, right now, two years ago, I am awake. I am exhausted. I am overwhelmed.

Tonight, I am awake. I am exhausted. I am overworked - but I am in control.

Tomorrow, right now, two years ago, for the first time in my life, I am not ashamed to let people see me cry.

Tonight, I realise that it has been some days since I cried, but that I will probably do some crying later when I think about how I didn't see him in hospital while his eyes were still open.

Tomorrow, right now, two years ago, I am heating a soothing mix of half water, half milk, with honey, crushed cinnamon and cardamom, and a pinch of turmeric, for a bedtime drink that I will make for my mother every night for a month.

Tonight, I make healthy tuna salad sandwiches in pita bread with fresh lettuce and olives, finely chopped coriander and mint, yoghurt, mustard and a big dollop of not-so-healthy ranch dressing, and my mother and I sit at the little breakfast table that was the first thing she bought as a bride,  and eat dinner together.

Tomorrow, right now, two years ago, I sit down next to my father and talk to him softly so that the others in the room can't hear me.

Tonight, I know that he is sleeping and that perhaps he can't hear me. I will talk to him anyway, as loud as I like.

Tomorrow, right now, two years ago, the child within me tells my father that he reminds her of Snow White, and that it's a good thing his paunch isn't any bigger or it would touch the top of the glass.

Tonight, I remember that, and can smile.

Tomorrow, right now, two years ago, cousins and aunts and uncles and nephews and nieces and friends are arriving, and phones are ringing, and I repeat the words over and over.

Tonight, I know that all these cousins and aunts and uncles and nephews and nieces and friends will remember me in the morning, and though I am an agoraphobic who always dreads the phone ringing, I will pick up if one of them calls.

Tomorrow, right now, two years ago, my father is dead, but not yet buried.

Tonight, I know that though my father is buried, he will never be dead to me.

Yesterday was Daddy's birthday.

I didn’t know how to celebrate it without him, so I didn’t. I remembered how I’d dig out the same two cards every year and give them to him in the morning, then take them home for another year until his next birthday. He liked it that way. He thought cards were a waste of money and paper, and appreciated my “recycling”. 

One was a funny card, from the little girl that still lives inside me. One was the perfect card, whose lines were just right for him.

All day long, I remembered:  today is Daddy’s birthday. He would have been 86. We would have had a cake of some sorts. He would have worried about my sugar and my cholesterol and my weight and how much I was eating and why I hadn’t stopped cutting my hair so short, and why I still needed to go out for a cigarette after lunch. We would have had our friends over, the ones with whom we have shared so many celebrations over the years once we discovered we had birthdays and anniversaries in common. 

Yesterday was not the same, not for any of us, so our friends had dinner with their relatives, and I had dinner with my mother. She had left over curd-rice from lunchtime, and I poured myself a bowl of corn flakes. We shared a slice of carrot cake bought from a Christmas bazaar. I wondered, but not aloud, if we ought to be celebrating his life in some way, if we ought to have gone to his favourite restaurant and ordered chicken varaval and coin parat’has. If we should have gone over to my sister’s and sat together, talking about all our memories of him:  the happiest, the funniest, the earliest, the best. Instead, Mummy and I sat across from each other at the dining table and ate, quietly. Afterwards, while she said her prayers, I washed the dishes, quietly. After she left, I watched some TV, played a few games of Solitaire on Facebook, and went to bed.

Today I remembered the cards again, and searched for them, all the time worrying that I might have ripped them up and thrown them away, sometime over the past year. I don’t remember doing that, but it seems like something I might have done in an attempt at closure:  a way to say to myself that I didn’t need them any more, that I was finished with them, that it was over.Close-the-page-rip-it-up finished.

I couldn’t find them, and I was scared to keep searching in case I never do find them. So instead I sat down at the Internet and read other people’s poems about their dead fathers, and I cried.

Now, after the tears that always seem to wash things clear in my head, I think I will stop looking. He’s gone, and so are his cards. Perhaps one day when I’ve forgotten, and I’m tidying up and not expecting it,  I will open a box and find them, the funny card and the perfect one, and it will feel wonderful. Far more wonderful than if I’d found them today.

(edited 16 April 2014)

They're all dying.

Death has really been getting up in my face, ever since that day in March
last year. I suspect death is getting up in most of my friends' faces,
at least the ones who are around my age. Why didn't the middle-aged
people TELL us these things, back when we were pompous young
adults full of energy, full of alcohol, ideas and confidence, full of
ourselves? (Well, maybe THAT's why!)

This is my newest discovery about middle age. It's worse than
the aching knees and the accidental flatulence. It's even worse than
my breasts' new love interest (gravity). It's that people are dying. Yes,
I know they're dying all the time everywhere, but somehow in
middle age it really does seem, to borrow a phrase from paragraph one,
up in my face.

I think it's because most of the people we know who are dying are in
their seventies or eighties. That's a niceish age to go, after having lived
through many of life's seasons - but this is not about them, it's about us,
the middle-agers left behind, and what it means to us. Our childhood
heroes are dying. The names we grew up with. Elizabeth Taylor.
Ray Bradbury. Rajesh Khanna. Daddy.

It goes beyond losing the person. It's also losing what they stood for:
our childhood, our dreams and aspirations, the background music for
so much of our adolescent drama. They were the foundations upon
which we grew, as we turned into the us we are today. It's scary. It tells
us that something is over. It tells us what is coming. It doesn't tell us
how to handle it, though. That's what our childhood heroes were for.

But to every thing a season, as someone said in a book I once read.
And then someone else took those words and turned them into a song,
and added the refrain, "Turn, turn, turn." It makes sense when I think
of winters and springs, of harvests and sowing. Here I am, somewhere
between summer and autumn. I need to stop looking ahead at the winter
to come, and focus instead on the springs that will follow - springs
that will depend on my fallen leaves and dried seeds and my rested,
restored, turned-over earth.

I need to keep reminding myself that somewhere there are children
for whom I could be the hero mourned one day, and that the best way
to honour my dead is to be for someone new, what my old heroes were for me.

Magnified.

Grief draws
big black lines
around my loneliness
heightens all my fears
Grief lays stark every vulnerability
and doubt
and dusts away the cobwebs
of memories both lost and hidden.

It comes again and again and again
relentlessly
an unwanted monsoon storm,
a necessary cruelty
and I keep hoping that it is just a season
that the sun will shine on me and warm me again
but the days get colder, gloomier,
and winter must first be braved.

Grave conversation.

It tends to be one-sided. At least, that's been my experience, and to be honest, I like it that way. I think I'd be more than a bit disturbed if my father had had something to say this morning, when I went to visit him.

The graveyard is beautiful. I find most graveyards beautiful, but perhaps it's just because of the trees and the quiet. There is nothing to fear in a graveyard, even at midnight, except perhaps for rats, snakes stray dogs, or stray men (living ones).

The dead pose no threat. They return no greetings and answer no questions, and if they're happy to see their visitors and hear our voices, we can't see their smiles, not unless we shut our eyes and seek out their faces in a memory or a dream.

But we don't know for sure, do we? And we'll only find out when it's our turn to take a place under the earth. So I found myself babbling along, trying to remember all the important things I had to let Daddy know. Just in case. I felt a bit silly, talking to a tombstone - but surely it was no sillier than buying a lottery ticket, or blowing a fallen eyelash off the back of one's palm and making a wish ..

I would have sat there for hours to tell him all that I had to say, but the living were waiting for me at the gate, so I rushed through as much as I could, then left. Now I'm sitting here wondering if this is how we humans first created prayer: conversations with an unseen unreachable parent, someone who gave us strength, care and protection, who loved us in spite of what we were.

I suppose an atheist would see in this, the invention of God by a bereaved child. And a believer would think of Adam, separated from his Creator, calling out, yearning for that lost connection.

No answers, so all we have to go on is our faith, and on what we choose to believe, even if it's make-believe. And so I like to think that my father might have had something to say back to me this morning, after all. I worry that I left too soon, but I like to think that he understands, and that he'll get the message across to me anyway, in a language I'm only just learning to unlock.

Good night, everyone, wherever you are. Good night, Daddy, wherever you are.


(Edited 15 April 2014)

Upside down.

It's four months since my father died. My world has turned
upside down. I've gone from being the baby of the family
to being its general manager. I've gone from reading and writing
to 'rithmetic. I've gone grey. I go home every morning to do work
that isn't mine, and I leave home every evening to sleep in a bed
that isn't mine. I go crazy once in a while, and go into the abyss
even more often. I go on. I indulge in a lot of emotional overeating,
and am intrigued by the amount of emotional weight loss. I smoke
like a salmon and cough like a cancer patient. I cry, even in front
of other people. I wake up screaming, and wish I had an Edward Cullen.
I obliviate by drowning myself in Harry-Potter-abilia, which works well
until my favourite characters die, and then all the heartache comes back,
and I cry like it's four months ago.

But .. Nature spoke to me this weekend, and this is what she said:




















So - it's been four months since my father died, and my world
has turned upside down. I'm not the baby of the family any more,
I've grown up. I'm learning new skills, like how to balance accounts
and pay taxes. I am getting to experience emotions that I've spent
most of my life running away from. And when it gets too much,
I have places to escape to, some down the road, and some
inside my head.I do smoke and I do overeat and I don't exercise,
but I haven't walked into a bar and I haven't got hooked on
sleeping pills. It's difficult closing my eyes because the nights
aren't very nice, but the mornings keep coming, and when
my eyes are open, that's when I catch such glimpses of
the loveliness of life that is always there to find if I just look.

Upside down isn't all bad. I'm growing. Just not in a direction I'd expected.

P.S. I don't know what these amazing flowers are called. They're growing on a tree 
in my next-door neighbour's garden (she calls them "trumpet flowers"). I've been 
driving past for more than a decade, but I only noticed them a few days ago.

(Edited 15 April 2014)

One day in March.

The sky  was still blue, as blue as polluted Bangalore skies go. The leaves were still perfect in their intricacy and their symmetry. Almost everything stayed the same. Almost nothing changed.

But I've been hearing ambulance sirens since, and am surprised to find that my heart no longer races, my fear and dread no longer rise up to choke me like they used to.

Later that evening, I watered the neglected garden and noticed that a little brown butterfly with lemon-yellow markings lay dead at the foot of the lime tree my father and I planted on my birthday two years ago.

Things we have in common:
artistic talent
brains
like to plant trees
like birds
know how to make tomato jam
the same eyes
the same feet
slow to show anger
tend to think the best of other people
find it hard to say 'I love you'

The butterfly was dead and I ran the hose over it, bathing it like they bathed Daddy yesterday. This morning when I brushed my teeth there was only the faintest whiff of camphor and herbs left to remind me.

Things we did together:
walk down to the riverbank to brush our teeth when I was little
paint eggs
make gulab jamuns
do the crossword
agonise over paperwork
go for walks
go to the bank
fix things
roll our eyes at each other when Mummy got melodramatic

The man from the mosque came back later to clean the bathroom. He did a terrible job so I grabbed the Lysol, rolled up my salwar and helped him clean it a second time. I like cleaning so much that for a while I could forget that just a few hours earlier, they had been bathing my father's body just there; the wooden bier had lain on the cream tiles that my bare feet were on now.

It is now three days since I tried to warm his cold swollen feet, and then held his clammy hand while they switched off the machine. And the sky is still as blue as it gets.


Dr Abdul Razak Tonse
1 December 1926 - 21 March 2011

Bye, Daddy.

Tree #1's birthday present.

When I turned 42, I asked friends around the world to plant trees
for me, as a birthday present. I didn't quite reach my goal of 42 trees,
but it's nice to know that somewhere out there are trees growing
on almost every continent because of me.

The first tree from this  project was planted in my parents' garden,
a day before my birthday. It took three years, but on my birthday
this year, we discovered its first lime, ready to be plucked. 

My lime tree is nearly as tall as I am now (how quickly they
grow up!) and I wonder how the other trees are doing. I must
ask my friends to send me recent pictures. In the meantime,
if anyone out there would like to plant me a tree, please do!
Don't forget to take a picture that I can put up here. And if
any of you have "special" trees, planted in celebration of
a birthday or some other special occasion, I'd love to hear about it.

Tree #1: A lime tree in Bangalore, India.

The first tree is from my parents, and was planted this afternoon,
in their garden. It's a sapling of a lime tree - what we call "neembu"
here. I now have two neembus - I also have a budgerigar named
Neembu - she's lutino (yellow all over) and is exactly the same
colour as the limes we get here.

Daddy supervised the planting, while Krishna (yes, who used
to work for us when we were in Bahrain - he's here on holiday
and came to visit) did the digging. Daddy insisted that I should
be the one to place the sapling in the earth. Krishna patted down
the earth and watered it, and within half an hour, I like to think
Nature showed its appreciation with a lovely little finale --
 a light shower of rain.

Edited 11 Apri 2014