there we were, in a taxi for the day from coimbatore
to palani, the three of us, looking for that ‘rosebud’ moment in my father’s
childhood- a time in his life kept as far away from us as he possibly could.
what was it about that time, those place and those people that he did not want
us to know about? we never knew anything about the days when he was sent away
by his parents to live with his uncle and aunt in kozhumal to compensate for
their lack of progeny; or the time afterwards when he was, at the age of 10
returned to his parents to live in udmalpeth- when his parents lost some
children to disease, or in childbirth. even these fragments of information came
in the last days of his life, on the hospital bed, to my mother. i never heard
these stories. yet, somehow this places have always been part of my
consciousness- an imagined ancestry in a pastoral landscape of trees and
rivers.
the pretext for this trip down south this time was my
mother wanting to go to palani- the only religious place i think my father
prayed at- perhaps until the age of 15 when he left to go to loyola college in
chennai to study. he never returned. angry at being so easily traded between
families; ashamed at his humiliation in being so easy to trade. in chennai he
finished at the iit and then to bangalore and the iisc, before coming to bombay
and tifr where he met my mother.
i think it was bangalore of all the cities that was
the closest to what he would have thought as his hometown- the time of
octagonal hostel rooms and friendships over a film seen everyday. he was a fan
of asha parekh and had her poster in his room.
i don't think i have ever seen my father pray in
public- ever- except for a discreet bow to the photograph inside his cupboard
of murugan, after bath. sometimes he put vibhuti on our foreheads if sonal and
me ever left town.
murugan sits on a sudden sharp outcrop of rock set in
a flat fertile landscape surrounded by dark shadows of mountains. the older
temple lies buried under many extensions. we took the ropeway and the vip route
that slid past all the other waiting worshippers. you entered from the side and
rushed through a maze of metal barricades that all but completely erased the
traditional hierarchy of spaces in the temple. sonal, dad and i were here last
20 years back, before i went to the usa and had traveled here by a local state
transport bus. although kozhumam where my father grew up was just 10 kilometres
away he refused to take us there. he did not even mention it.
at kozhumam, we found the agrahara where the iyer’s lived with great ease. a few questions in
the tiny village and we were in quiet lanes with white washed brahmin houses
around us. we were about to give up locating the exact house when after a turn
we arrived upon a massive structure that was being torn down right next to the
main temples on the banks of the amravathi river. my mother remembered it from
40 years ago. i half remembered stories of houses lined up on the river from my
father. he had no nostalgia for that time that i could discern. there was no
trace in his conversations of his great lineage. in fact he recoiled at any
investigation of that side of the family from any of us with his characteristic
send of humour. and if we continued- a sharp retort. we recoiled away form any
further questioning.
inside we met distant cousins never imagined, they
looked at us like aliens- we had no language- no common history or characters
whose stories we could tell each other. we were told that the entire lane
belonged to my father’s mother’s family before people left for the big cities
and these were gradually sold off. now three houses are left- one of which is
being demolished and turned into a factory. in the last of the three houses we
met my uncle and his mother. we saw the photographs of the woman who took care
of my father when he lived in that lane and drank sweet hot coffee in the dark
volume of the living room lounging around on low chairs, sitting on the cement
floor. we saw the photographs of respected powerful men in fading sepia.
we learnt that the house in udmalpeth- my father’s
father’s house had been sold and demolished and a shopping mall stand there. i
did want to see the shopping mall too- my father would have been amused. it
didn’t happen. we drove back straight to coimbatore.
i have seen my father twice since he died- once
sleeping beside me a week after he passed away. i woke up to find him there
urging me to go out and telling me he is all right. like the ghosts of dreams
and cinema he was wrapped in white. i still remember his face and the light in
his eyes. the second time was in a dream in which my mother told me he had come
back to life and to go on to work and meet him in the evening. i remember him
standing in the corridor of the courtyard and then heading out.
i think i met him again yesterday in kozhumam. i saw
him grow up surrounded by the distant mountains, playing the courtyards and the
streets; a playful child, angry, confused, petulant and scared. i saw him in
the faces of the young men and children on the streets and wondered what about
that extraordinarily beautiful languorous landscape- the privileges and power
of caste and prestige- made him run so fast, so hard; made him suspicious of
religion, of history; made him love us so much that we were the only things
that mattered; that made him jealous of our lives outside; and made him conceal
all his sentiment under that whacky incredible sense of humour.
coincidences_ on our way to coimbatore we met one of
his favourite students at the airport. prathmesh had designed a way to cool
hard working computers by inserting coolant as pipes into the machine. although
i had never met prathmesh before, i remember my father’s stories about his work
and how crazy it sounded- and how proud he was when it actually worked.
and then the other one- my father died 6 months back
today to the day. our flight was delayed just enough that we landed in bombay
almost the minute that he passed away. we miss him. very much.
