“And is there meaning to your life when you’re
sleeping while you’re still wide awake.” He said that and that were the last time he
said anything. My grandfather closed his eyes there and leaving me alone in
that house which he had made home.
My grandfather
was a carpenter when he married grandma. They had their first kid in the second
year of their marriage and my father in their third. My father had three
siblings out of which the eldest one died in a fire in one of my granddad’s
godowns. My granddad with time, had constructed a fortune out of his small
business which he started while he was fixing sofas for someone. Starting as a handy man and walking from door
to door to fix everything in less than two years he had started off his own
small venture where he and four other people under him became the supplier of
all the wood and furniture in Nevilain. I don’t know how he did it but damn it
was brilliant. In the next two he had ended up with four showrooms in the area
and three huge godowns. He now had a team of eighty nine people under him and
was supplying furniture to other states. By the year 1967 we had become a brand
“Norman Furniture’s”. That year marked the twentieth anniversary of the company
which was now a nationwide brand.
In March 1968
we had riots in Nevilain. There were great repercussions, businesses shut down,
godowns burnt, people killed. My granddad was a Christian but didn’t follow the
religion in specific, his religion was success, his religion was his family,
his kids and bread and butter. My grandma was a Buddhist and due to this all
the three of their kids were given the opportunity to choose any religion of their choice. It was
hard for the kids to choose because of lack of knowledge, because of lack of
comprehension and because as a kid, no one takes you seriously. My dad’s elder brother had chosen to lead a
sikh’s life because he got inspired by a teacher in school, where he read about
how magnificent were the sikh’s and how much did they contribute to our
freedom. So, while he was sealing off one of the godowns some people found him
exit the godown. They followed him and grabbed him by his pagh. He retaliated
but the effort was worthless because before he could move a dagger had been
placed just below his chin. A small cut was made to make him realize that its
all real and then in that dark alley they took him. Dragging him by his hair they
took him inside the same godown which he had locked down. They tied his hair to
a railing and made a slit on his throat. That didn’t really kill him but made
him cover it with his hands. It was bleeding profusely and he was choking on
his own blood and then the group of masked men left the room setting it ablaze.
That’s how my granddad lost his firstborn.
The riots
ended in the month of May by and by that time my dad was eighteen and his
younger brother was sixteen years old. Now the fear had forced my grandparents
to make the kids learn about all the major religions and lingual groups which
might cause harm in times of a riot if you’re not with them. The business started again after the riots,
this time with a boom. Somehow, maybe god was trying to equalize the loss of a
son with huge profits but that could never work.
My dad
decided to follow nothing. No religion, no lingual boundary, nothing. He ended
up mastering speech in thirty seven languages and could read and write in almost
all of them. His upbringing had made him a lover of knowledge and he ended up
in love with his history professor in college who was four years elder to him.
No one in the family had any objections and they married after romancing for
two years while my dad completed his college. He and ma were people who could
get lost while talking about how Hitler lost the war to making conspiracy
theories about the fact that no one ever landed on the moon. They had a
plethora of knowledge and that was their world, that was their love. They read
books to each other every night. That was their way of making love, showing
love, enjoying their nights. They
mastered each and every subject they could, they were in the real sense of the
word an “Encyclopedia”. My dad taught my mom the languages so that they could
read poetry and prose in different languages. They travelled all around the
world and earned their living by eventually writing for newspapers, magazines
and about the places they visited. After a while they were invited by different
tourism ministries which sponsored their full trip and all they had to do was
write about the place. What a beautiful life it was. Just two souls, hungry for
knowledge swimming in the ocean of life.
Eventually
time passed and I was given the same choices as my father was. To choose a
religion for myself. My father towards the end had found peace in Buddhism and
had been quite content with his choice. Ma on the other hand was a Bengali and
had always followed all her customs. Each Durga Puja I was present in all of
their ceremonies and so was my father but it was so easy for my father to merge
into that crowd that it was almost unbelievable. My dad was like air, he was there everywhere
and he could diffuse everywhere. Actually, he was like water, which takes up
the shape of the container its put in. Whatever he was, he was brilliant. Whereas
I really didn’t understand anything or maybe I barred myself from understanding
anything because I didn’t want to belong to a single religion to give myself up
and walk a path which I don’t know anything about. At times I tried to know
what’s happening but that was after the whole of it was over. I generally used
to sit in those grounds and gaze at the sky, which always mesmerized me and
held me its captive each night when I looked up at it.
My dad and
ma always kept reading and writing and giving lectures and what not. They were
here today and somewhere else the next day. They knew everything about
everything and that’s what was their passion and sharing that knowledge had now
become their profession. The family business had gone to my father’s younger
brother, my uncle who had turned out to be a quite successful businessman as a
businessman but unfortunately he passed away after a truck rammed into his car
in the hills from where his car got misbalanced and slipped into the valley.
From what we hear there was a huge blast in the car and the police had a hard
time even assembling the parts of it and uncle’s body was never found. So at an
age of thirty six he disappeared into the valleys and started living a secret
life or more conveniently died. My granddad had handed over the family business
completely to him years ago and after a while had set his heart on travelling
and romancing throughout the world with my grandma. When he heard of my uncle’s
passing away he and grandma came and Dad and Ma also reached to comfort uncle’s
family which was supposedly our family too which consisted of his wife, two
kids and seventeen dogs. Yes, seventeen of them. All of my family had gathered
together and we were mourning the loss of my uncle. A huge number of high
society socialites were present, sipping wine and looking gracious in black and
white. Somehow while it was a very sad occasion for my aunt, her kids didn’t
really understand much of it. Each one started crying at different intervals
and like a magician my father handled them.
My mother on the other hand organized everything from which coffin is to
be selected to who all need to be informed and all the paper publications and
what not. It was all over the television somehow, for a slight period of time
but then someone had again spotted another celebrity walking down with someone
else and the news channels were again oblivious to my uncle’s death and needed
to know who the ‘Mystery man’ was. Out
of all the people present there my aunt, the two kids and my uncle’s best
friend were crying. My father was silent and for the first time looked a little
less like water and more like ice. My mother was keeping herself busy in
organizing everything and making everything perfect, she didn’t do this because
she didn’t feel anything for uncle but maybe it was just because she didn’t
want to keep her mind free. My Granddad and Grandma were trying to convince
themselves that this had happened and using their rationale to sort everything
in their minds. They looked ..calm. Somehow, they did. My great uncle who had “grown the family business and took upon his
shoulders, the responsibility of holding together the family and a boy who had
become a man much before his age” This is all I know about uncle because
that’s all my father said, in a small speech at his funeral.
My uncle
had left around seventy percent of everything to his wife and two kids but the
other thirty percent was somehow on my name. I don’t know why or what was the
reason which made him do that but yes, that’s what I was told. I really didn’t
understand this well but I had lawyers running around me for days to get my
signatures on multiple documents. Actually my mom signed for me as I was still
sixteen and not adult enough to sign papers and memos. I felt I could, I had a little
line of a moustache and ..that’s what makes you an adult? Doesn’t it?
So, now
after my uncle’s death I somehow had mare family than I did when he was alive.
Strange, but true. Now, my aunt and my cousins used to visit us more and sit
and talk to my parents. My dad as usual used to flow into the conversation but
my mother tried to put up the most superficial smile she could and sit and
listen to the lower minds talking. She tried feeding some knowledge into the
two cousin sisters that I had but she failed miserably. She believed that if I
stay with them any longer then my IQ would also decrease to a minimal value.
So, whenever they came over to my place, I tried helping them out with Math and
Social Sciences and Sanskrit and actually each and every subject. I used to do
their homework too. Not because they were a bully but because I was bored of
doing mine or I had finished mine. I had finished my entire syllabus in the
first two weeks after we got my books. I always did the same thing, until class
eighth.
#Work of fiction.
#Work of fiction.
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