To My Father

Nellooli Rajasekharan

Was it a momentary pleasure? Or an accident?

Or a passion to see you spread into eternity?

Was it instinct? My Birth!

You cared, yet cared little to show you did.

While I blamed you as callous, pragmatic, materialistic,

you ran around thousands of miles a month

selling tea and coffee to feed me,

so I could disparage your taste,

brand you old-fashioned.

You ran around to educate me

so I could affirm you were

intellectually mediocre;

part of the private sector,

the bourgeoisie;

part of the establishment.

You cared for me quietly, but I never knew.

So I could complain you didn't,

while this waster of your son

pawned inherited fortunes that

you built from your sweat.

You let me do what I wanted.

I paid back nothing.

Today, when my son repays nothing

with compound interest,

I know I have earned it.

And more.

I never knew I loved you so much

until they told me, you died.

My children might know someday

when their children feel

their parents are old-fashioned, materialistic, ordinary,

with no aesthetic sense, not cool, no fun.

My children were always in me,

waiting in my loins or wandering in New York,

or doing anything else, anywhere.

They are me.

How can I blame them for anything?

Today, I recognize you, my father.

Why didn't you show your true self?

This stupid son may have fathomed that

I was never another to you.

Did you know that someday, seventy two years after

you first held me, in flesh and blood,

I would know this. Did You?

You beat me again. You are gone.

You didn't give me a chance. I'd never have it.

All I saw was your chilling grey ash,

dotted with cindered bones

that we ritually mixed with the slow, slushy waters

of a small rivulet to blend forever

with nature that today feeds me,

and my children.

Maybe there are souls. Maybe you are behind me,

peering over my shoulders as I write this.

I wish you were. I feel you are.

This lie gives me relief that you

finally know I was wrong.

And that I love you.

And that I will flow through, as you did,

to where we came from,

having known, atoned, repented, and loved.

I see an old picture in faded sepia,

Of the young you,

full of hopes that we later wrecked,

full of joy that we slowly doused.

You gave us too much.

Did my thoughts or actions cost your life?

I see you humiliated,

pleading with my college principal

to pardon your expelled son.

I see you climbing steep stairs

to my tiny apartment and gasping for breath.

You were warned not to climb stairs.

You cried twice. You should never have.

An uncaring father would've been

easier than a caring, crying one.

Something in me crashed that day.

I know now what it must have meant to you,

when I pardon my children

for all they do.

When I live feigning ignorance

of what they do.

When I condone their indifference.

When I quietly suffer their pain.

I'm paying back every penny I took

with interest.

I should've known that Karma

is a slow pay-back credit card,

with fathomless penal interest.

Now I see what you did and why.

But you are dead.

How can I ever tell you

that I know you now,

that I am sorry,

that I love you,

that I have now become you.

On dark nights, somewhere

I see a speck of alluring light.

Is it you?

In the cacophony around,

I hear a soothing note,

a melody on silent wings

that calms my heart.

Is it you?

In the splash of colours around,

I see cool blue, and I touch solace.

Is it you?

In pitch darkness that overwhelms me,

I see a golden glow,

a butter wick burning itself out

reassuring me that

no darkness is forever, and

again filling me with hope.

Is it you?

I am stupid if I am still unsure

that all of them are

You.

Written on Fathers' Day - 19 June 1999

Revised on Fathers’ Day - 16 June 2024