A Daughter's Tribute

A day after my father’s death on February 10th, 2006, I thought I will get over with the painful task of sorting his belongings. That’s when I stumbled upon his dairy. I opened it with trembling hands. The entry on January 7th, the day he heard the news of his terminal illness for the first time, had these immortal lines of Adi Sankaracharya’s in Sanskrit.

“Ayatham ayatham apekshaneeyam,
Gatham gatham sarvam upekshaneeyam,
Alam vritha modana khedanabhyam,
Alanghaneeya kamalasanagnyam.”

Translated in English.

“Accept whatever comes your way,
Let go of whatever goes away from you,
It is futile to be joyous or to grieve,
Brahma’s orders cannot be reversed.”

The doctors conveyed the life sentence directly to my father. And he took it with absolute stoicism. I suppose it was his philosophical disposition, which was more prominent than his ritualistic instincts that gave him the courage to imbibe the news of his terminal illness.

Cancer did not defeat him; in his peaceful painless death, he defeated the disease with courage, dignity and composure.

The memories keep coming back like the tumultuous monsoon, and in our tears we wash away a million emotions with the conviction that in the clear sky after the deluge, we will be blessed with an infinitely beautiful memory of a unique man whose wisdom, courage and understanding were always way ahead of his times.

I keep trying and trying in vain to write a full-fledged tribute to my father and get it published in some newspaper or magazine. But, here is where I seem to be encountering my greatest writing block and I am unable to string together my emotions or words; it is indeed difficult to write about a person who was an integral part of your life and thoughts. Nevertheless, I am trying….maybe one day I will let the words flow.

We, the Self-Righteous!!!

Self-righteousness, most of us Indians believe is a laurel to be worn proudly around our (supposedly) moral necks. If there is one accomplishment that is unanimously common to most of our countrymen, it is this ‘holier than thou’ attitude. As far as I am concerned, nothing stinks more acutely than this attitude. The belief that any crime or any immoral act is the possession of outsiders and ‘my husband/wife, brother/sister, daughter/son’ cannot be touched by it. How can they be touched? After all, they are my family! And I raised them instilling the fear of God and morality and good manners in them.

Anyway, coming back to the subject – self-righteousness seems to be at its glorified best now with the vices of Rahul Mahajan coming out in the open. Apart from the media and our super efficient police who have been diligently thrashing Mahajan Jr with the sole aim to ensure that whatever sanity he still possesses is destroyed once and for all, even our moral fellow country men have been vociferously lashing out with lame inconsequential comments.
The focus of my discussion is not on whether what he did was right or wrong, I am not even getting into that, since more than it wronging any other person, any addiction is self-destructive and similarly Mahajan Jr’s addiction may not kill another person (like other famous films stars who kill roadside slum dwellers with their drunken driving binges and yet get out on bail, in style). And besides, I am least interested to pass any judgement on his or anyone else's personal doings.
I was shocked to read comments on various news sites that criticised the clothes he wore on the day of his father’s funeral, his eyes that resembled a drug addict’s and one even went to the extent of accusing him of being disinterested to perform the last rites of his father, on the basis that he was being guided/led by the priest to do it. C’mon, what sort of narrow minded people these are I wonder who can think so pettily? Grief is an intensely private affair, which cannot be conducted in a professional manner. Can one acquire enough practice or precision to mourn meticulously? And can such superficial elements such as clothes convey a person’s inner turmoil? I seriously wonder about the parameters we use to judge another human being’s emotions. Do we ever pause to think for a minute, ‘are we all flawlessly clean always?’ and ‘have we never erred?’
Self-righteousness appears to be super ceding all else, even the simple human emotion of warmth that is being mercilessly trampled in our excitement to brand another person as evil/immoral and the like.