Painful dawdling cessation of anger

Today , I remembered my father. It's not that I don't think about him other days but today was a little different. I have always had a Torrid relationship with him. I was forever angry with him for sending me to a boarding school, that anger multiplied whenever someone I loved would complaint 'lack of emotions' in me. I would always blame him as boarding made me independent very soon, made me learn that nothing lasts forever. Best of friends are the ones I made at school,who fought odds with me at an age of 4yrs thus giving me healthy skepticism for overt and loud display of love. There was a part of me that would always stay personal. Crying in front of anyone was strict no no. As a result many a relationship broke away, they wanted men who would emote and I could not. I blamed my father for this. 

Today after what I see all around me or the pain I have undergone with loss of friends, family members,  relationships & his own death, if I am still sane and alive, it is because of  what I learnt during school. Aloneness does not mean loneliness. Sometimes it's the only right choice. I am one with myself.

I have so many moments of anger in my memory. He threw me out of house with Rs100 in pocket. I landed in Delhi, found a job and sent him back his Rs100 with interest along with my salary slip. He kept that salary slip for 9 long years, so proud he was. I do realise today that I was so much in awe of  him, so afraid and so much wanted to live up to his expectations that despite all the anger I would do anything to get his approval, even if it meant I gave up my bachelorhood in a second. The crowd of people around him, always few thousands. Once embarrassed the Governer Motilal Vora so much when people saw my father they deserted the Governer and Chief minister. 

He would walk kilometres every day with people, eating at poor villager homes, drinking unhygienic water. I would fight with him worried over his health. He would laugh and say ,"The destiny of ice is to melt and mix with water. I am born here and would die on this land." Loss of my elder brother, sister or his own younger brother never broke him down. He was true believer of Bhagvat Geeta. I once fought with him saying that he loved none except his own self. He never uttered a word. Today, when I hear same things about myself, I understand why it's difficult to display emotions. We grew up in a land surrounded by guns and people ready to kill at sign of weakness, it is death. 

I remember being afraid of the dark; I liked my father's attempt to cure me of this fear. He took me on a nighttime tour of our house, armed with a flashlight, which he used to light up the far corners of every single closet, every single dark storage place—showing me that there was nothing frightening hiding in the darkness. Once he rode me to the fields on Horse back, asked me to get down, handed over a torch and asked me to find my way home. I was 9, met him after 4 years. Afraid, crying, tripping, I made my way back in the middle of the night. Yes I was chased by village dogs too. Fought with a torch in hand.

It was long later that he told me that he was watching me over every step, narrated things that I did on way. I never feared anything after that, even death. 

 अशरीरं भाव संतम न प्रिय अप्रिय स्प्रशातः        - Aatma is not body. This is what he told me .

A second cluster of scenes comes from my adolescent years, when I was sixteen and seventeen. In 1993, after not seeing my father for 2 years, I renewed contact with an idealist socialist father who both intimidated and fascinated me. I especially remember the summer of 1994 which I spent in his house with my grandfather & mother . By this time, I had lost the child's unthinking adoration of the parent. With the critical spirit typical of my age, I perceived his faults, perhaps the most obvious being what was also responsible for his great intellectual productivity—his self-absorption regarding his work. In this act of my memories, the motor cycle rides give way to Horse rides, as I rode besides him feeling the wind on my face and, on one occasion, listen to him explain the difference between the established wealthy and the nouveaux riches. Sometimes he becomes almost my peer, once showing me the wonders of his Bullet by squeezing the accelarator and then capsizing the bike, fortunately with no harmful consequence other than a small cut on his ankle. But it is not examples of his love of throbbing Enfield or mass of farmers that most appear on my mind-stage. The image that most impressed me then and that rises before me now is that of a muscular figure of energy and determination, overflowing with ambitious plans for the future, envisioning roads, schools, industries  that would cut through official distortions to produce uncompromising versions of the truth as his logical mind perceived it. 

Out of all this came the search for, the demand for, absolute autonomy as far as I am concerned. That has been mostly seen as uncaring. The great energies the search has demanded and created, the burdens of loneliness that often accompanied it, and the difficulties of achieving any durable and really deep "human relations" have thus arisen out of quite specific social and cultural contexts. Intellectually I saw with Gudiya or kalyan "I see but one rule: to be clear. If I am not clear, all my world crumbles.".Thus intellectually and culturally I am as "self-made" as it is possible to be. As a friend of mine used to say, "a mushroom." The fact that I seized these academic standards and internalized them deeply meant, in turn, a further cutting off of self from my family background and the social setting at large as well. By the time I went to college, I think no one I had previously known, including family members, really counted for me as a point of reference. I was cut off and alone, and I felt it at the time.

Today, I am back where it all began, Sometimes I feel I am home, alone may be not lonely though. I do understand the contribution of The Man, my father in making me what I am beyond my Looks. This is my cross to bear & mine alone. People seeking dependents & suckers find me abhorring. So be it..