Dear Dhondo Raghunath Tendulkar,
I don’t remember any occasion when I had to write a long letter to you while you were still alive. (My memory has always been weak, to this has been added my age.) You used to write on post cards. And they usually contained matters of immediate concern. I, who was still struggling to find a place in Mumbai, usually postponed writing any letters. By the time I reached your age, maybe a little earlier, I also started writing letters on cards instead of on letter paper. This was mainly because cards are cheaper. It helps to avoid having to buy an envelope, put your letter in it and then find gum to close the letter—I never mastered the art of sticking a cover by using the gum originally put on it by the envelope maker—and then stick a postal stamp on it. All this can be avoided by using a post card. I understood all this when I had crossed my middle age and reached my fifties. I also began to follow your other practices as my age advanced. Now I switch off fans—not only in my own house but wherever I happen to be—which are circulating air in empty rooms, I switch off lamps which are burning unnecessarily, I switch of television sets if no one is watching any programmes on it. I shut off taps which are running uselessly. These have become my daily tasks. I can’t neglect any of these. You used to do the same thing. I can’t overlook any of these and go ahead without bothering about it. When you used to do it, I would pity you. I was then at an age where it was normal to walk out of a room keeping the fan on. Today, I have become a strong opponent of such tendencies. I feel righteously angry with those who do any of these things. I wonder why they don’t understand that electricity costs money. That there is a shortage of water. I often feel that, without my being aware of it, I am slowly beginning to be like you and I often feel that no one understands my anguish. Water and electricity continue to be wasted. I experience your anxiety and often wonder whether all efforts to improve mankind and the world will meet the same fate.
Nowadays, I feel like writing to you, informing you, talking to you and reaching you in some way every day and every moment of my life. But that is impossible. Then I keep saying these things to myself. Mostly in my mind, but at times even out loud. This is a one-way dialogue that is going on with you though you are no longer a part of my life. Or you could call it an often interrupted but never- ending soliloquy with me. Along with this I also talk to my son who is no more. Some young people who are still alive come and join me in this. I call all this a never-ending soliloquy with you, my great novel—maybe till the last moment of my life this will continue to be written in my mind.
I have given it a title: “Father”.
But in this soliloquy, most of the time, it is you who is present. Why should it be so? The answer to it is in the title of this essay. This is the only tie that binds us two tightly together.
It is several years since you passed away.
The funny thing is that in the pile of pictures that I have with me I don’t have one of my father, i.e. of you. The need for a photograph arose when you expired. And I searched everywhere for it. I went to the company where you had worked as a clerk for several years. That originally British-owned company had become an Indian company. All the group photographs of the old staff had been lost. I went to Kolhapur. We lived for some years in Mangalwar Peth in Kolhapur. In the Jamkhedkar wada there used to be a painter by the name Rajput, who was a multi-talented person. All of us would visit him. He was fond of photography. Once, when you were in one of your good moods, the actor in you got stimulated and you mimicked a drunkard to entertain the group gathered there. The painter was moved to photograph you and took several pictures of you on that occasion. When I went there I found that the Painter had now become very old. He climbed to the loft of his house and searched for negatives of the pictures of our family. They were in good condition and he sent me pictures of Mangesh, Tai, and me but he couldn’t find any picture of you, not even the picture he’d taken of you mimicking a drunkard.
After searching everywhere I was able to find at home a group photograph in which your face was the size of a thumb. I made a contact print of that photograph and got it enlarged by an artist for your death anniversary. That day we got the photograph framed and hung it up in our Pune house. Today, that picture is with my younger brother, Mangesh. But I don’t seem to see enough of you in that picture. That painter had never seen you in person. While enlarging the picture the face underwent a change and the enlargement does not resemble you. Not that there was no resemblance in it at all, but it seemed different.
Even now whenever I go to Mangesh I look at that photograph and I feel that the person who gave birth to me has altogether slipped through my fingers. He no longer exists for me. Even when I try to remember you, I can’t remember accurately. And I try to recollect you in my mind and talk to you for hours in my own mind.
That is also a kind of a game. I see you nowadays, sometimes in the bathroom mirror in the form of that approximate photograph that I have got made. I see that picture and then it disappears. It is early morning. I am standing in my bathroom for a bath, having taken away all my clothes. I feel my age all over my body. I have lived longer than you did by about nine years. This mirror is also old, dotted with stains. I look at myself in the mirror. I find an increase in the grey hair on my head. The hair is no longer thick; it has thinned down. I see grey hair even in my eyebrows. There is white hair that has made its appearance recently at the tip of my nose. There are a few grey hairs also peeping out of my nostrils. I see a few hairs on my ears. All of them are grey. I have circles round my eyes. The eyes look empty, somewhat faded, and the face looks drawn in as though I have had no sleep, though I have had a sleep of about six hours, though the sleep is often restless. Recently I feel even after sleep I feel stale. I feel as though I am looking at a picture of mine as it was last evening before I went to sleep. Every dawn I look at this old man with a drawn face and faded eyes in my mirror and for a moment I see you in the mirror. You don’t look like the contrived photograph in Mangesh’s house. I see you as I knew you. I find you looking at me with a tired, empty but fixed look.
Just for a moment.
And then you are no longer there.
I stand looking at you in the mirror and keep on looking searching for you even after you have disappeared.
The meaning of this fantasy is clear. You are in me somewhere. It is not unscientific to say so. But then why do I not find you in me whenever I want to? Or does it mean that you are so much a part of me that it is madness to search for you outside of me. You are me. Or have you and I have become the tired, old man that I see in the mirror? Or does it mean that you are increasingly entering me with every passing year? Or is it that with age my face is undergoing change and has begun to resemble you?
I don’t believe in the soul, in rebirth and the existence of another world. You did. You also believed in God. You missed your daily two-hour meditation only on the day that you died. I don’t believe in God. If the word God comes to my lips out of habit, I quickly wipe my mouth. This is also something I must tell you. I can’t give the names of the rationalists or philosophers in the country, or the world, as the cause of my lack of faith in God. Because, I have not studied them. I am not the persevering, scholarly type. I began my life in the same manner as you did and under your shadow, borrowing some belief in God and other established beliefs. Later. I found that my experience and the surrounding world did not support these beliefs. I feel that someone had created the notion of rebirth to enable man to bear the inequities and sorrowful experiences in this world, for which there is no earthly cause. In the same way, God is a concept created by man in an ancient world and he keeps playing with that idea as it suits him from time to time. When it is necessary, he regards this God as being endless and without a beginning. Sometimes, he tries to tune in to him with his mobile; sometimes he makes a ball of him and plays with it. And often, he forgets him at home and does many things forgetful of Him. But I have reached to a stage, where I think that God is nothing but a plaything of man. I have come to a stage where I can deny many other beliefs that I had filled my mind with over the years.
When I look with this Godless and somewhat disbelieving mind of mine you also do not exist. Once you accept that that man ends with his death it is now over thirty years since you died. May be even forty. We cremated your body with due ritual and immersed your ashes in the Indrayani river at Alandi.
We have no photograph of you. We have no recorded voice of you as is now possible. If any part of you is still left in the world, it is only in the form of us five siblings. Science says that in our genes there is a part of you mixed with that many of our other ancestors. Our mother and you had seven or eight children. Two or three died soon after birth. Five were left. Of them, two died after they had grown to adulthood. Bhai, your eldest son, took to drink and died of heart attack, brought about by a cold wave that had struck Bombay. He died in the area of Girgaum, where we had lived. He had not yet reached fifty at that time. I had to go the next day and identify his body at the Lamington Road Police Station. Tai, who was born after him, remained unmarried. In spite of the sincere wish of all her brothers, she declined to live with any of us and preferred to live in an old age home, until about the age of seventy, somewhat sadly, and then finally died in a hospital in Pune. Of the three of us still surviving, I am the eldest. But in terms of common sense and understanding, I was the youngest. Since I could manage nothing else, I became a writer by profession. In the opinion of all – including me – I had no business sense. On this point members of my family and those who know me will concur. Everyone in the family and around had the same opinion about you.
Mother always used to say that you did not understand business. Towards the end of your life, she used to say this with much agony because she had borne the consequences of your lack of practical sense, particularly during the closing stages of your life. You lived in the belief that there is dignity in poverty. You practiced utmost honesty. You spent a good portion of your earnings as a clerk on the eldest son, whom you considered gifted; but during the last years of your life, he was unable to give you any support. You tried to publish the books of your friends out of consideration for your friendship with them and lost money in it. You lost being in the good books of your superiors at work because of your pride in your honesty. You were angry with your eldest son and resigned from your job before reaching the age of retirement. As a result, you suffered financial loss. You tried to earn through various attempts at business and lost each time. You refused to attempt to find a husband for your daughter because you did not like the idea of taking her around to meet prospective families of young men, as though she were an object on sale. As a result, she remained unmarried for life. It was our mother who suffered as a result of this. During your last days, mother became very sharp-tongued. She was doing everything that needed to be done for you, but she continued to thrash you with her tongue. Your impractical nature was not just her opinion of you; it was her agony.
My own wife does not have a very different opinion about me. (She is still alive but she has stopped talking on this subject.) I wrote plays burning midnight oil. I used to gather people to read them out to. This was also at night. My wife not only had to keep awake but also had to go on supplying cups of tea. She would sometimes have to face a situation of saying that there was no more milk or tea leaves at home. Many plays were being written and they would be discussed, and yet quite often the play would prove a failure and there would no more than a few shows. There were rarely more than ten shows of each play. And the honorarium I would get would be only about fifteen to twenty five rupees per show. And sometimes, I would not receive even this honorarium. But I had to suffer a lot at the hands of the critics. We had no house of our own. We were changing houses regularly at the end of every eleven months. In some cases, it was not even a house but a car garage or a store-room in a house. At times, it would be just a wooden structure in need of repair and awaiting demolition in the municipal drive for road widening. And sometimes, the owners would be after us even to vacate that temporary shelter. They would harass my family, so that I would vacate the room. Then we would again begin our search for a house and for the deposit money required for the house. Since our house was temporary, there was hardly anything by way of furniture. We had many difficulties and four small children. The last of these was because of my wife’s insistence that she wanted a son. I would leave my wife in charge of them and go out to do some job with an uncertain income. Apart from this, I would indulge in my hobby of writing. Sometimes I would be at home but often I was away somewhere. And if I was at home, it was only around mid-night. My wife found this difficult to bear and once asked me, “You put in so much work but what is there to show for it?” I would pretend to be asleep. She often met house expenses by selling old newspapers. Whenever the money at home was exhausted, she would take the old newspapers and go out to sell them. … My wife used to say the people who enact your plays make money and you deceive me. He doesn’t give me enough money. He deceives me. She would hear that someone had bought a new house and some one had bought a new car. They do this on your plays. She would not be satisfied with the explanations I gave and yet she continued to support the house by selling old newspapers, without agreeing with the explanations I gave and without any complaint. When the shopkeepers from whom we bought on credit came to the door, she had to get rid of them by giving them some explanation. Her practical sense, which came to her from having grown up in a poor family, came to her rescue. At such times, I would either be out of the house, and even if I was at home, she would not let me appear before our creditors. She used to be afraid that I would make the situation worse by appearing before them. If I happened to resign from a job, the neighbours would ask whether I was not going to any office. She would find it awkward to say that I used to sit at home and write. What does he write? Then how do you manage your house? She would have no convincing answer to the questions that would follow. So she would try and change the subject at such times. Whenever I had a job, she felt she had some status in the community and she could move about freely. When they asked where exactly I worked, she had no ready answer. Whenever I was out of a job. she would avoid all social contact.
This was my life, almost up to my fifties. It was always uncertain and unstable. I had even less common sense than you had. This was the link between us. You at least accepted your responsibilities, whether willingly or otherwise. You kept on working as a clerk for many years, though you always used to carry a resignation letter in your pocket. My jobs never lasted for more than two to three years. I was removed from some jobs. My unstable life got some stability because of Priya’s – your grand-daughter’s - abilities and achievements. She brought the sheen of a middle class life to our home. She brought such comforts as I would never have been able to bring to the house. I began to be considered a man of means in society. I was accused of not showing any generosity, despite the fact that I had won so many awards and honours. This criticism often came from persons who had never in their own lives shown any generosity. I began to be hurt by such criticism. Such was the effect of the pretence of being well to do.
I remember the days when you died. Those were days of the middle of summer in Pune. Though your health had totally collapsed, you continued to work as a proof-reader in a press. You had a tin roof on your head and you used to cover your head with a wet towel. At home, my sister had begun to earn an income. She was a teacher in a school. Her earnings were small. Your eldest son was working in a big post in Bombay but he sent no help for the house in Pune. I was working on a prestigious but not-profitable magazine in Bombay as an Acting Editor. I would not get my salary for months. I had even to tie up the parcels of the magazine for despatch to other towns. I did not have a house to live in – not even a rented house. Since I was alone, I was not worried by it. I used to lay out my bed in a friend’s house. I was not worried by the instability of life. I had no thought for tomorrow. I used to sleep like a log. In Pune, you were trying to supplement the income of your daughter by working as a proof corrector in a press, even when your heart disease was getting worse.
Those were days of the celebration of Ganesh Chaturthi. Our office was shut for a four-day period. I was just loafing around Bombay. Since I had no house, my address was c/o the magazine where I was working. The phone was also located at the press. The day on which you lay in a serious condition awaiting death, happened to be Ganesh Chaturthi day. When you breathed your last, I was attending a private music concert somewhere. Telegrams from Pune had been delivered at the address of the printing press. I had been asked to return home immediately because your condition was critical. There was no chance of these reaching me, since I was not going to go to the press until after the holidays. On the fourth day, I happened to go to the press, for no particular reason since that was also a holiday. And the watchman handed me the telegrams that had been sent to me. I took the morning train the next day. I knew in my mind what the situation at home would be. I did not really want to go. When I did reach home, the situation was as I had expected. You had died the previous evening.
I could not reconcile myself to the Pune home without your presence. The rest of the house was as it was. Your sandals wear near the door. You would sit for hours with a worried look on your face in the outer room and sometimes read or recite songs from a play written either by you or by someone else. Your family gods and the place for you regular meditation, the cot on which you used to curl up with a blanket because of the shivering due to your heart condition, the cot on which you lay, your only coat hung on a peg – they were all there, but as though by some magic you were not there.
In front of me were silent faces. Mother’s face looked as though dead. (She might have been remembering all the harsh things she had said to you, things which would bite you and things which your weak health could not withstand. She may have been remembering the days she spent with you, the service she gave you during your last days, forgetting her own hunger?) And in my own mind, there was a deep thorn of guilt, because I had not reached in time before you passed away.
After that, I had to stay in Pune for a number of days – somewhat reluctantly because absence from the house made me feel restless. Besides, I had decided to marry – someone that mother did not approve. She was suffering because of that and was brainwashing me thoroughly, morning and evening. Once you had said to me in her absence, “Don’t wait for her approval. She won’t change her mind. You go ahead and marry.”
I did not accept your advice and stuck to my efforts to persuade mother.
Days passed, but there was no way I could get used to your absence from the house. If I was sitting in the outer room, I would feel that you were in the inner room. Sometimes when I was half asleep, I would feel that I had heard you speak. The cot in the inner room on which you slept during your last days, I brought it out into the outer room. I started sleeping on that cot. Once when I woke up it was still dark. I thought you were standing near the cot and were looking at me. I could not believe it and there was nothing to believe in it.
You and I played a strange hide-and-seek with each other in our Pune home. While we ate our meals after your death, mother would always tell us how you looked when you were dead. She said that you looked as though you were practicing the shavasan. She would say that your face shone with a special brightness. People who used to know you would visit the house and tell us their memories of you. They would tell us about how you always worked very hard, striving to do your utmost during your last days, though you knew that you were not physically able to make the effort. They would tell us about how you were honest and straightforward. When you realized that your end was approaching, you handed over a sum of money to one of your friends to meet the funeral expenses and mother told us that that friend brought the money and gave it to her when you died. As I heard these reminiscences, I felt like running away from home and from memories of you. But whenever I spoke of going to Bombay, Mother would stop me. The interesting thing is that your eldest son, who had stayed away from home for such a long time, came to attend your funeral a day after you died.
At last I returned to Bombay, where I had no home, had a non-salaried job, where I had often to resort to fasting against my wishes. I heaved a sigh of relief. I had come away from the consciousness of your absence at home and from the constant feeling that I had that you were still around in the house.
The marriage which I had postponed awaiting mother’s consent, I now went through without her permission. I married within the year because I was told otherwise I wouldn’t be able to marry until another two years had passed after your death. I married within the means that I had. Mother observed that as a day of mourning, going without food and drink. Apart from my elder brother, no one else from home was present. He also came like a guest and went away after handing over a present. I myself arranged and carried through my marriage. I started my family life in a car garage. It was broad, had a trench in the middle, and a broad folding-door, which would open out to its full breadth. When your wife entered your house without your consent, there was the same want of everything – utensils to cook, cups and saucers, and even a stove. Yours was a bare room, ours was a garage. The only utensils we had were those that came as presents at the wedding - some brass water vessels, metal plates to eat from, and a tray. Things began to get added one by one as the need arose. You were against treating your wife as a wife; my wife had been disapproved by my mother. She wanted me to marry a rich man’s daughter. She did not want my early married life to be as penurious as your life had been. But I did not abide by her wishes and she did not approve of my actions. The effect was the same. Both of us -- you and I-- began our family lives without the basic necessities for a family.
Another coincidence was that the girl whom I married had been chosen by you once. You were the Chairman of a meeting of our caste group and you had liked the speech she had made on that occasion. and you had told me after we returned to Pune that you thought she would make a good daughter- in- law in our family.
Later by sheer chance, she became my wife. She was one of twelve siblings. Her father had died when she was still young. I had not even passed my matriculation examination and was the third child of a man without any means of livelihood.
Sometimes, these days I have begun to see the similarities in your life and mine. Is it just a trick of my mind?
For instance, you were initially a hot-tempered man. You had strongly objected to our mother setting up a home with you. In reality she was not at fault. You had decided not to recognize her as a wife, even after a proper marriage because her father had offended you. You were going to separate from her and even after she came to live in your house, you refused to return home until late at night. (This did not mean that you were a man of doubtful character. No one would ever question your uprightness and you continued to have that reputation to the end of your life. You used to sleep alone in a theatre, located in the red light district.) But you refused to allow her such basic things as oil for her hair and tea powder for tea. You did not stop to think who had insulted you and whom you were punishing. Now look at me. The day we were married, my wife did not accompany me to live in a garage (She was living with her elder sister and her husband had detained her at the house. She lived with them as a dependent.) So I became angry and refused to go to her. I spent a restless night in the garage, harassed by mosquitoes. I decided not to go to fetch her, even if I were to die. Finally, after waiting for a couple of days, she came on her own. I knew that it was her brother- in- law who had stood in her way, but my anger was directed against her.
Your anger against your father in law continued for a long time. So did my anger against my wife though only for a brief time.
There is another similarity that comes to my attention. You resigned several times from the single post that you held. I think I spent my early childhood listening to your stories of the clashes that you had with your boss, who was probably a Britisher or Eurasian: your on- the- spot resignations and of course their subsequent withdrawals. As you related these incidents to someone or the other, Mother was usually present on such occasions. Your point of contention was always one of principle and then the boss would relent and ask you to withdraw your resignation. Finally, you actually resigned a few years before your retirement was due and took us all to Kolhapur. At this point, the reason was different. Your eldest son did not remain under your control and you had some new problem to face every day. All of this was a headache. My record of the jobs I did is more colourful than yours. One of the reasons was that since I was not even a matriculate, I had difficulty in finding jobs. Even under those circumstances, I must have resigned from at least a dozen jobs. I did every job with a resignation letter in my pocket all the time. And a few times, I even submitted my resignation, being confident that it would not be accepted. But more important was the fact that I was dismissed from quite a few jobs. I felt quite proud of it then. I sometimes made active efforts to be dismissed. There were reasons. There are always reasons why one wants to resign. But just as resigning was a matter of principle with you, I also used to feel very noble, for some time, when I had lost a job. I would sleep peacefully and my appetite improved.
In your later life, you had to leave home and take a job in Bombay. You were working as an accounts clerk in a store room for books. . I was working as a sub-editor in a newspaper. Both of us lived in the store room. We would lie down and spend the nights listening to the passing trams till we fell asleep. We would be awakened by the sound of the first tram in the morning. You used to bathe under a public tap. I was not used to it. I would lie down in bed for some time longer. You had arranged for me to have my bath in a house at some distance. I used to go there after I had got up a little later. We used to eat our meals in an eating house. You used to insist on my drinking a cup of milk at a nearby milk shop because the meals served in the eating house were not nutritive. But you only took tea. I used to feel sad that you had to live that kind of a life when on a week-end your eldest son, who worked in a good government job in Bombay, would come to us like a guest on his free days. In that suffocating space of a storage room, he would sit and smoke his pipe. He would say that you lived a hard life of your own choice. I would get very angry and say to myself, “Have you ever bothered about how we are managing to live? Have you ever given us any money? Then what right have to comment on the way we lived?” I used to hold my mouth by exercising some restraint. I expected that you would say this to him as his father. But you only used to listen to him. When Bhau would leave, I used to ask you why you never asked him in turn what he had done for the house. Once I asked you the question quite forcefully and you said, “You will understand it when you become a father.”
At that time, this was an evasive reply. I don’t feel that way now. You were right in what you said. Now I am able to understand, not only your behaviour with your eldest son but also my behaviour with all my children. I have understood it, after having become a father and reached your age.
Children are, on the whole, a testing experience for a father.
As I sit and think about the similarities between our two lives, I suddenly come to a glaring difference and then I stop.
The gap is a disturbing one.
My memory tells me that you were a very honest person and that you were mortally afraid of losing your good name. When a lot of stories about your eldest son’s wayward behaviour reached you, you decided to leave Bombay. You left off your job and took us all to Kolhapur. On the other hand, you could have stayed on in Bombay. You should have ousted your eldest son from the family and warned him and disassociate yourself from whatever he did. Most fathers would have done that. But you decided to punish yourself and the rest of us all. We suffered that punishment for three years.
I grew up and took up a job in Bombay. In order to help me set up my house, while you happened to be in Bombay, we travelled by third class toward Charni Road Station on the Western railway route. We were both standing. You had your ticket with you. The ticket chequer entered the compartment to check tickets. I was at ease but you began to get restless. You started searching your pockets. The checker was still far away. But your restlessness increased. I had my pass with me.
“What is the matter? Can’t you find your ticket?” I asked.
Still turning your pockets inside out you said, “I’d bought it but don’t know where it’s gone.”
Your movements were so preoccupied at the moment.
The checker was approaching us and your search continued. Your face went dark. Your hand was trembling. When I saw you in that condition, I said, “Nothing will happen. The checker may not even come up to you.”
But your search increased. You began to search the space around your feet to see if the ticket ha fallen down. I began to feel tense that your nervous movements would come to the notice of the ticket checker.
The checker was still far away and was checking tickets.
You couldn’t find the ticket and suddenly you got up and walked up to the checker and drawing his attention to you, said: “Excuse me. I don’t have a ticket. You can fine me.” And you paid the fine. Even when you were paying the fine, your face was like that of a ticketless passenger. You were feeling bad that all the passengers in the compartment were looking at you.
And you had bought the ticket.
You were afraid that you would be caught and because of that fear you went up and asked for the punishment.
Did I live the same way? The answer I get is “No”.
In Pune you were a proofreader in a press. That was the source of livelihood for your family. You were once entrusted with the proof- correction of a book written by Kaka Kalelkar.
I was sitting by your side and telling you whatever might be required by referring to the original manuscript.
The corrected proofs would then be read by the Acharya himself and given over to print.
Once the Acharya found an error in the corrected proof and he passed some disapproving remark.
You came to know of the Acharya’s remark. It was conveyed to you by the publisher himself. You were hurt by it. You were deeply hurt by the remark. You did not eat that day. You were restive the whole night. You reached the printing press early in the morning and obtained from the printer the original manuscript and your corrected proofs and brought them home. With my help you went over the whole text again and compared it with the corrected proofs and went to the publisher and showed him that the mistake was committed by the Acharya and not by you and then returned home. Then you had something to eat and had a sound sleep.
For many days thereafter you were hurt by the remark that the Acharya had passed about you. Your self respect had been offended.
On the other hand, I never felt the need to refute the charges that were made against me. I lived accepting them.
During the 1942 movement, the police had also arrested me in one of their surprise attacks. I was then but a schoolboy. The police detained me for a whole day in the police station. They sent the others to prison, but I was a minor. You were called to the police station. You were already nervous by the fact that the police had arrested me. That you were called to the police station made you feel even more nervous. I remember the atmosphere and the effect it had on you. As we went home from the police station your face was really looking pitiable. That night you as much as urged me: “Don’t do such a thing again. These are not things for the likes of us.”
When I remember that incident I recall your fear of the police, the court and the jail. Why were you so scared of these things? It must be related to your idea of leading a straight life and not swerving from the right path. You abided by the law in every letter and form. You found every kind of accusation something to be shunned, even if it was an accusation of having participated in the freedom struggle. For you to be called to the police station, to have to go there, to be warned even in respect of your son must have been very shameful.
In comparison, I think of my own life. I have done every thing that you considered embarrassing. Sometimes it happened to me for no fault of mine. There is hardly an offence that I have not been charged with. I was often accused of theft. I was accused of obscenity. I have been accused of character assassination. I have been arrested for various different reasons. I had even been sent to prison once – in the C category. Once I was beaten up in a symbolic sense. A crowd had gathered to watch it and there were reports of it in the newspapers.
This was nothing. During the Nehru Fellowship, I took up a subject for study, which you could not have borne to think of. I had chosen violence as my theme and spent night after night at the police stations. I went into lock ups, walked through prisons and spent two years in the company of major criminals. I got to study at close quarters, a subject which you would have avoided in every way.
Had you been alive, what would you have said of my way of life? Some of these things – e.g. being accused of theft – would have been enough to make you commit suicide. I kept on living. It is not as though I did not suffer, but I did not present any plea, even when it was readily available to me. It is my nature to hide when an accusation is made.
Take a simple accusation like having lied. You wanted always to be truthful. You considered speaking a lie to be a sin. I must have spoken falsehoods several times for different reasons and that too with ease. At such times, I would often think of you and you would become a problem in my way; but more often, I just evaded you.
You married against your wishes. And at that time, you were a handsome young man. You had a good physique, cultivated by regular exercise. You used to go into red-light districts because you were mad about dramatic performances. At that time, attending and acting in plays was not considered worthy of gentlemen. One could not find a place for rehearsals in a gentle neighbourhood. Because of your interest in plays, there had been much talk in society and you were proud that in spite of having moved about in such an area, you had remained free of blemish. You remained proud of your poverty to the end. Even later, you barely managed the survival of your family. You did not allow yourself to be diverted. Though you were fond of plays, you never thought of acting as a career. You really loved plays. But you did not want a life bereft of respectability. In reality that world was not entirely vulgar. There were people who lived with dignity, even in that profession.
Your house became your world.
I can’t say that about myself. I lived like a wanderer. I accepted all the temptations that came my way. I lived like a vagabond son of a gentleman. If I remained a generally straight person, I give the credit for it to the genes I inherited from my mother and you. I haven’t found another person like you, who vigilantly followed the straight and narrow path throughout his life.
When I compare – and a comparison is inevitable – I ask was your life simple and happy because you lived by following the straight path?
I don’t think so. You were a straight man but two of your children did not belong to that category. Your eldest son and I, your third son, lived complicated lives. We left the straight and narrow path and wandered away. If as a result we suffered for it, it was just; but so long as you lived, it also affected you. When I left school half way, you were greatly pained. You suffered silently and I am still aware of your suffering. Even when I was in school, I used to play hooky. I used the money meant for school fees to see films. I signed my Progress Book on your behalf. I still see the agony on your face when you came to know of it. Mother was very angry but you kept quiet. You stopped speaking.
Many years earlier, my elder brother had tried to commit suicide because he had fallen in love with an actress. I still remember your pitiable condition. I remember you passing through that experience. Though I was small. I could sense the mental stress and the silent suffering through which you were passing.
I now understand how our foolishness at that age must have disturbed you. And what was your fault except that you gave birth to us and tried to live your life by following a straight path?
Tell me truly, when we give birth to children, we incur heavy responsibilities. We are not aware of these responsibilities, when we give birth to them. I don’t know, if this is a good thing or a bad thing. Had we known it earlier, would we have stopped from giving birth to children?
I gave birth to four children. I let this happen during the period when we were repeatedly being told that one or two are enough. My wife wanted a son and she had three daughters one after the other. I still remember that when the fourth child was a son she was very happy. I was content with daughters.
She was very keen it is true. But why did I not refuse? If that had happened, I would have had just two daughters. But it is true that I did not refuse to have more children. The reason is that I like children. I could even say that during the childhood of my children, I became a child myself. I would even say that I want fifty children. But small children grow up and develop their own personalities and bring their own luck. They become adults with their good and bad qualities; adults who want to have their way. They easily forget what their parents have done for them. And they begin to live equal and separate lives. They make their own mistakes and suffer for them. They don’t insist that their fathers or mothers must suffer with them. But the parents have no escape from them and inevitably they become a part of their lives and suffer for and with them. We suffer their suffering, and worry about them without their asking us to do so. And if one of them dies, we suffer for it for the rest of our lives. It is not that we were unaware of this when we had our children but we did not pay heed to it then. We set aside what we knew and assumed that children will remain our playthings for our whole life and continued to behave foolishly... In due course, the children developed their own personalities, their own opinions, their own future, and they went ahead living their lives, driven by natural impulses and their own way of thinking. They continued their lives, making their own decisions and mistakes and as they went ahead we got dragged behind them. Now the decisions were not ours but theirs. We were helpless participants of the consequences of their decisions. Until then, we were living our own lives, now we had to live our children’s lives. They were the actors and, even without their asking us to do so, we became partners in their suffering. They were able to lose themselves in their efforts to do something; we had no option but to become witnesses to whatever the consequences.
I am saying this about myself. And I had seen this happening to you as well.
There was a time, when I remembered you as I had never remembered you before or after.
That was not just for a moment, not even for a day, but for days together.
My only son, about the same age as I was when I was arrested for getting involved in the 1942 movement, left the straight path and got carried away by the dream to be rich quick. (His dream of that period has now become the Free Economy of today. Money is everything and money can buy anything.) He was otherwise innocent, and very sentimental, and would get lost in watching trees, flowers and birds and animals. When he was small, he had three dogs, a cat, two rabbits, a monkey, and several fish as his pets in the small house that I had then. He used to look after them all. He used to claim that the fish spoke to him when he sat by them alone at midnight. He had given them pet names. Later, he became sixteen years old. Finding that I had to struggle hard to earn money, that his mother had to face lots of difficulty in facing the creditors, and finding that he could not do all the things that he wanted to do – such as owning a zoo of his own, have a farm house or make films of wild life – he became impatient and decided to become rich quick. He met an elder friend of his own temperament.
The two of them initially tried to do small businesses, which did not succeed. . Later they tried to start a bigger business in partnership by borrowing money from a bank and lost. His working partner disappeared somewhere and my son became a co-accused in a criminal case that the bank filed against them. Since I had been a guarantor on his behalf, I too became a co-accused in the case. We had to appear in a court as defendants. With us sat in the court along with many others, accused in criminal cases, theft, armed assault, and such other offences. All of us got the same treatment. In their opinion, we were just so many accused in different cases.
During the period of the Nehru fellowship, I got to see the world of criminals and the police organization. I moved among them day and night. I had seen the inside of a court because of cases against one of my plays and for having dabbled in social movements and causes. Even so, this new brush with the law was painful. I found it difficult to go through the same old experiences. For my barely eighteen-year-old son this was a wholly new experience. His world had consisted of animals, birds and flowering plants. He was in a hurry to present to his parents a life of abundance and the experience he went through in his efforts to do so never let him escape from that shock. He died at the early age of thirty-five in a state of mental depression.
During that period in my effort to save my son from the future doom, I went and met people and entreated them. When I went through these sufferings as a father, I had you before my eyes. You were with me every moment of the day and at night. I was carrying on a dialogue with you all the time. It was a dialogue between a father and a father.
You had also gone through these experiences on our – your children’s – behalf.
I knew that my son had been deceived, that he had committed no offence. But what was the use of my knowing this? Even his lawyer fought the case in the usual manner, convinced of his offence in his own mind. My innocent son had to watch all this.
He used to be in a pitiable state of mind every time he had to appear in the court. The fact that I had to appear with him as a co-accused was not an assurance for him. It was a matter of shame for him. He had dreamt of keeping me comfortable and letting me do my writing, but he had failed and felt deeply guilty. When we returned home after spending a whole day in court, his face would darken. He couldn’t sleep that day.
We both spent sleepless nights – he in his room and I in mine.
As I went through these experiences as a father, I thought of you. Our offences of that period, this included your having to come to the police station in Pune to get me released, my discontinuation of schooling, the experience of your having to listen to the things that I did when I stayed away from school, the visit of the police to our home when your eldest son failed in his attempt to commit suicide - many of these things come to my mind. I now experience the agony that you must have suffered then. I was at least a little blunted by my experiences: you were as innocent as my son was when you went through those experiences.
At that time, you and I came close together in my mind as never before.
There is another suffering far greater than this and it is when children hold you responsible for their mistakes in life. They make you listen to their complaints. They blame you for having brought them into this world. They don’t say it in so many words, but they communicate it by remaining silent. They hold us responsible for their destinies.
What should a father do? The same question arises with reference to mothers; but since I am a father, I am restricting myself to considering the father’s role. I am a father and I have children. I have a separate relationship with them as their father. I face special strains and special disputes.
If children hold anyone responsible for bringing them into this world, it is the father first. Children think that the mother is an unwilling accomplice in this business. And one can’t say that it is entirely wrong. But in the situations in which a child is conceived, how true is it to say that even the father had much of a choice? We are responsible and yet are not. In the case of Adam and Eve, neither of them had much of a choice. It was going to happen. That was destiny. Both of them were toys in the hands of destiny.
When I play with my children, saying that I would like to have fifty children, I am being as foolish– or may be even more – foolish than Adam. I understand this now. But is it not a part of the plan of nature that we should come to know our destiny only after we have committed our mistakes.
I say this as though talking to you, but I say it only to myself.
My first memory of you that still lingers in my mind is about your absence and my attempt to talk to you. It comes back to me again and again.
The door to our single-room house, on the second floor of the chawl, was locked from inside. The daylight was dim and one could not make out whether it was morning, noon or early evening. I was small and holding on tight to Mother in that light. Mother also stood holding on to me. She was holding herself in as though to protect herself from something and you were very angry and standing by us. I can’t remember your face but what I do remember is the fear that seemed to have filled Mother’s whole body.
I don’t remember any of the things in the room, not even Mother’s or your face at the time. But I sense the fear that filled her body.
I remember my closeness to Mother. I never returned the love you felt toward me. Behind this, may be this first memory of you.
Mother used to tell me that your angry temperament changed after I was born. Partly this meant that from that point, you stopped your efforts to send Mother back to her parental home. You forgot at last your anger against her father and at last accepted her as one of your own. By that time, you had had five children (Two of the children born before me had died in infancy). And you finally recognised her existence as a part of your family. Mother would often say that my birth had cooled down your anger. You had tried to rule the children born before me very strictly. You used to hit them from time to time for one reason or another. You never hit me. On the other hand, you met my every wish. Maybe that I was spared your anger because I used to be sick quite often, right from my birth. But it is true that my childhood was spent very differently from the childhood of my older siblings. I was treated leniently and you were the one who used to meet my every wish. I often had toys, which most other children did not have at that time, and you used to buy them for me out of your limited salary. I used to go round holding your finger through many small or big festival fairs, where I saw celluloid dolls - some without heads and some without bodies. Every Sunday you used to go to the bookshop owned by Tukaram Pundalik Shende. You would take me with you. You would leave me in the children’s section of the bookshop. You would buy for me all the books I had chosen. Since you did not have to go to work on Sundays, you would spend Saturday nights together. We would both sit with my new books and sitting in your lap, I would struggle through those books one by one. Every Sunday evening, you would take me to Chowpatty. If I insisted, you would take me from Charni Road to Churchgate by the local train. At times, on my insistence, you would repeat these trips several times on a Sunday evening. I don’t remember your ever having lost your temper with me while doing all these things for me. I don’t remember your having disappointed me. I used to build forts out of sand at Chowpatty. When you were directing an amateur group to put up plays during the Ganapati festival, I would go with you after dinner to the hall, where the play was being rehearsed. I used to go to sleep while the rehearsals were going on. You would carry me back home early at dawn on your forearm while I was still asleep. When I woke in the morning, I often remembered the bright kerosene lights and scenes from the rehearsals.
My childhood was enriched in many ways because of you.
Even so, I was drawn more to Mother than to you. I had a fear of you in my mind.
Maybe all children are afraid of their fathers at that age. It is quite understandable, if the father who is a strict disciplinarian is not a favourite with his children. But why do I feel that such an indulgent father should not be present at home? Why did I always keep away from you, though you never tried to exercise your authority on me?
Even later, when I had dropped off from school and did a number of things which gave you mental tension, you took care of me like a mother. When we lived together for some time in Bombay. both of us were doing our separate jobs. At that late age, you accepted all inconveniences and put yourself to a considerable trouble and protected me like a flower and yet I was displeased with everything you did for me. When after finishing my shift at the newspaper, I returned home late by 11.00 p.m. I'd find you waiting up for me in the store room meant for books that we shared. You knew that the eating house would be closed by then and so you used to buy fruit for me and keep it ready. . Most of the time, there would be chikoos. You would say that chikoos were good for the stomach. But I never liked chikoos. I used to get annoyed by even looking at the chikoos. I was not aware then that you had bought them specially for me, so that I would not have to sleep on a hungry stomach. I would be angry with you and go off to sleep.
During the cold season, even at your advanced age, you used to bathe early in the morning at the public tap nearby. But you had arranged for me to have my bath at some acquaintance’s house.
There was no place where I could sleep during the day after doing night duty. So you arranged for me to sleep in a shop near the storehouse of books where we lived. That shop used to be closed during midday and I would sleep there during that time.
Later, when I decided to get married, you were the only person who stood by me. You did not have an argument with mother on my behalf, but you advised me: “She won’t stop being angry, but you go ahead and get married.” Once earlier I had fallen in love with a girl older than me, you talked it over with me like a friend and pointed the risks involved. I listened to you but I was in no frame of mind to abide by your advice. The affair lasted for quite a while before it was over. I suffered for it for a long time later.
You must have given yourself the same advice, when despite your good health and good looks, you had to marry a girl with slightly protruding teeth because you were indebted to your wife’s family. How could a woman like my mother, who was barely literate, fit into the life of a man who was mad about literature, drama, music and poetry? Wouldn’t you have felt that your wife should be good looking and someone who shared your interests? In those days, many handsome artists had wives who were far from beautiful and were uneducated or barely literate. The reason for this situation probably lay in the discussion you had with me.
This much is true. You had not remained only my father. You had also become my mother and, later when I grew up, my friend. Such a father was rare in those days.
I had just begun to write in those days. Your opinion of my writing in those days was always discouraging. Some others used to speak well of it but you were reluctant to do so . So this added to my dislike of you. But later after you died, while I was going through the books and papers at home, I found two files in which you had put together clippings of my writings, cut out from newspapers. That day, I cried. You were doing this without my being aware of it. Even during the most depressing period of your life, you kept on this hobby of yours. You had in those days taken a copy of a one-act play written by me to someone in Pune, who in your opinion was an expert in this field , and you had made him go through it. I came to know of it after you had passed away.
You never praised me to my face. But you had great pride in my early literary efforts. You never spoke of it to me, but without my knowledge you showed your appreciation of it by your actions.
I often wonder why despite your great love and affection for me I never responded positively to it. I still remained committed to my mother. She strongly opposed my proposal to get married and maintained that opposition for a long time and yet I remained loyal to her. Your love for me remained one-sided right until your death.
Again and again that first memory comes back to my mind:
… the door of our one room house in a chawl on the second floor was closed. It was soft day light. I can’t remember whether it was early morning, afternoon or evening. In that light, I was holding on tightly to Mother and Mother was holding on tightly to me. She had drawn in her body as though she was trying to protect herself and you were standing there with a fierce expression on your face. I can’t remember your face. What I do recollect clearly is the fear that seemed to have filled my mother’s entire frame.
What one sees at a very early, tender age, probably leaves a lasting and deep impression on one’s mind. Could this be the case regarding my attitude towards you?
You passed away. I reached your house where you were not there and not likely to be. Then a realization dawned on me as to what I had lost. But it was already too late. You were not going to be a part of my life thereafter. I would not have the chance to correct my major error about you.
Now when I think of you, I am filled with the idea of your absence from my life. I go to the mirror as though I am dragged to it. I try to look for you in my face. I get a passing impression that I see you and then that impression disappears.
I get very angry with the old man, whose face I now see in the mirror. He had within his reach that which is most difficult to get and he never realized it. When he did understand, the chance had already gone out of his life.
There are times when I feel disgusted with myself. This fool was unfit to live this life, I feel. He understood so little of what he received. And now that he realizes the value of what he had received, his own life is nearing its end. His memory is now full of thoughts of what he has lost, of the things that he could have enjoyed but did not. He should have stood and celebrated life but he went ahead in a hurry, and as he ran on in a blind frenzy, he stamped on the things he should really have enjoyed.
One of the things he should have cherished was his rare father.
Here a comparison between us as fathers is inevitable.
I was not a worthy son to you.
How did I live my life as a father? Despite being a father, I lived a free life without any involvement. I evaded my responsibilities as a father and just loved them. I enjoyed the pleasure of being a father but left the responsibilities of being a parent to my wife. Later, when they grew up, I left them to make their own decisions and escaped the responsibility of making those decisions. The way I lived made it difficult for them. I lived the way I liked and left them to sort out the consequences.
All this was just the opposite of what you did.
You lived for your children. You made mistakes in playing your role but did them to ensure the wellbeing of your children. You were present at home while you made those mistakes. I lived for myself.
Some of your children died in infancy. You did not live to see your eldest son die on the road, having become an addict. I lived to see two of my children die.
I agree that even as a father my record is not very good.
Even in that sense, I cannot claim to be your worthy successor.
Towards the end of your life, I saw you spend hours in a state of despondence. You never told me, or any of the others in the family, what you were so despondent about, or what you were lost in thinking about. It appears now that you were ruing the errors that you had become aware of and regretting that you could do nothing to alter them at that stage of your life. You were writhing in agony over your helplessness.
The fact is that I have now reached the stage of life at which you were then.
Look at the fun of it. We both lived in such different ways, in two different generations, in different cultural contexts, by different values. You avoided fights; I seemed to attract them. You retained your pride of having lived a clean life; I earned a bad name. You lived the usual and ordinary style of life; my life was very conspicuous and unusual. But at the end, we have reached the same destination.
You reached it then, I have reached it now.
I have written all this, wondering about how this could be.
Your son, the I in You.
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This memoir—and the four earlier memoirs published in NQ167 & NQ168—were taken from Vijay Tendulkar's book in Marathi titled, "…Ten" (the first syllable in his surname), [Rajhans Prakashan, Pune, 2005].
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