Cheeku,
It’s your birthday eve…somehow birthdays are days of joy and celebration. And your birthday, above all, is celebration of life. More than ever, I am so aware of the transient nature of life and the completeness of living in moments stolen from eternity…isn’t this your gift to all of us who loved you and were loved in return. Add one moment to another…till the game is over and then without much ado, pack your bags and be gone.
Twenty eight years ago you came into my life as a bundle of joy…that was the first time I had become a father and I did not know how to react. Men should not show emotions, the old Brahmin tradition, made me behave nonchalantly. And as I took you in my arms, you opened your eyes to look at me…and my world was transformed for ever. I knew you were an extension of me then but in time I would become your extension as you would mould my life, wrap it around a world I hardly knew and at that moment was not even prepared to see. When Tubby arrived the next year, I knew between the two of you my world would be redefined and I would learn to deal with the new world with joy and anticipation because I would be seeing this ever changing world through the eyes of the two of you.
In those many years, I did see the world differently. I saw shades of my life in you…the breaking of the rules and not getting caught, remaining on the periphery of anarchy without really slipping into it, retaining the larger purpose of life while enjoying the frivolities of everyday life and above all, fiercely defending the institution of friendship…to the extent that even your kid brother became your friend and the friend of your friends and that circle has never been broken even though you danced your way out of it and spun yourself into another orbit. But you went beyond what I had ever experienced both in measure and form. You picked up so much of it including wry humour and refined it into an art form…everything that you touched was perfected to become an art…you seem so invincible in your world, holding everyone and everything together…and yet, deep within you also retained the little kid who was afraid of the dark, who was terrified by heights, who couldn’t fathom why anyone would want him to ride a horse on a holiday…
The night is deepening…I don’t know whether the moon is hidden by the clouds…there is stillness all around, nothing is stirring. Miles Davies’ “Kinda Blue” is playing…the soulful slow melody…at once nostalgic, remembering another time, another place…as if fragments of memory are gently drizzling from the sax. I am thinking of you, missing your booming laughter in the other room…I am missing being with you…
It is your birthday eve…tomorrow, all your friends would be here to celebrate the young man who touched their lives and transformed them…tomorrow, we shall all celebrate…but tonight, there is only music and my longing heart wishing somehow the evening had been spent in another way…
Love you, Cheeku…
Dad