DADA

DADA

Dada, our father who passed away at the ripe old age of 90 recently, belonged to the old school when PDA was a strict no-no.  So I have to really rack my brains to reminisce about some tender moments spent with him in my childhood days.

I do remember those early winter mornings, when I used to climb into his quilt and listen to the story of “Androcles and the Lion”. While narrating it for the nth time (for some reason, I always found this story fascinating) he used to nuzzle me with his perennial stubble, which was not a very unpleasant sensation. I still remember the coarseness and the tingle on my cheeks which must have been tender those days.

He was a selfless RSS worker (it took me years of adult life to accept this resignedly), hence he was always saddled with the most thankless tasks by the pompous asses who ruled the roost. He used to bicycle to distant “Shakhas”   (branches of RSS which conducted the daily drill and games), trying valiantly to keep them alive. As a child of 5 or 6, I had no option but to accompany him on these expeditions. In cold winter evenings, I used to ride the danda (the top horizontal bar of the frame) of his old bicycle (among other things, one of its pedals used to be always broken), always sleepy on my return journeys and often shivering with cold. Sensing my discomfort, he used to stop midway, take off his pullover, (knitted from cheap wool by my mother during her free periods in the government school where she used to teach) and drape it around my frail shoulders. I can still feel the heat of his body (generated from vigorous cycling) conducted through the pullover, dispelling the chill from my bones like magic.

Even in those good old days, it was not safe to leave the bicycles outside overnight. The locks could be picked in no time. So dada had to carry the bicycle up the stairs every night to park it in the balcony of our first floor flat. I remember one little game we often played to my great delight. While sleepily riding the danda of his bicycle on my return rides, when we used to reach home, I used to pretend to be sleepier than I actually was and refused to get off the bicycle when he had to carry it upstairs. The strong man that he was, from years of “Surya Namaskaras” (a yoga exercise), he could easily carry the bicycle upstairs with yours truely precariously perched atop, to my great delight and excitement.

I remember with love, a word he never actually uttered with us, the tingle of his stubble on my cheeks, the warmth of his pullover around my shoulders and the wild excitement of getting carried atop his bicycle over the staircase.