A Letter

Let's Talk

Dear Father,

I hear you are not well.

I would have called you but your not owning a mobile phone makes calling you a tad difficult. Ma will call me from the hospital during visiting hours and hand the phone over to you. We will speak then.

I will ask you how you’re feeling. You will say you’re fine. I will be able to see three-quarters of your face (will your generation never learn how to hold a phone during video calls?) and you’ll look well. As well as one can look in the ferociously white, tube-infested setting of a hospital room. I will mumble a few banalities. Asking you not to worry and telling you - on absolutely no authority - that you will be home soon. You will say, “Yes”. Not in agreement, but to acknowledge you’d heard me because that’s how conversations work. After a few seconds of you looking at me and me looking at your forehead, you will return the phone to Ma because she has to go meet the doctor.

I will wonder if we could’ve spoken for longer if you were not a Luddite; if Ma was not the only bridge that existed between us, brought us together. But if we’re being honest, we will both admit it is not your blissful ignorance of technology that has kept - is keeping - us apart. We do not merely lack a means of communication; we lack a vocabulary, a shared language.

I do not remember how we got here. I go back to the beginning in search of clues. My earliest memories are of you singing lullabies - from an old Doordarshan cartoon I was obsessed with as a child - and regaling me, for hours, with stories of hunting man-eating tigers. (I would later discover you had “borrowed” these stories from Jim Corbett. I don’t think Mr. Corbett would mind.)

Did we use up all our words for each other in those stories and lullabies? Should we have been more cautious? Held something back for later years?

All I know about you is hearsay. I hear you have a degree in history. I hear you played cricket at University. I hear you bunked school to watch matinee shows. I hear you bestowed unflattering nicknames on your teachers - nicknames by which your parents addressed the teacher during PTA meetings because you had convinced them it was his actual name. I hear you, and your brother, often left home without informing the adult members of the household and would be missing for hours before returning home in the evening.

I have never asked you about any of this. Is that why you have never told me about any of it? Have you been waiting for me to ask?

Perhaps it is my fault. But you know how it is. I never thought to question you when I was a child and I never cared to know you when I was a teenager. (Teenagers are the worst, aren’t they?)

By the time I was feeling my way into adulthood - letting it settle on my shoulders, tugging at its unfamiliar sleeves and buttoning up to check if it fits - it was time for me to leave home. There was never any hope for us once I moved to a different city. Long-distance relationships are never easy. (Especially when one party does not own a phone.) Our drifting apart was inevitable I suppose but we let ourselves become strangers to each other, only capable of sharing awkward hugs and birthday greetings and pregnant silences. With every passing year, I wish it wasn’t this way.

By the time you read this (on Ma’s phone), I will be home. If it all goes to plan, you should be home too and, hopefully, feeling better. It’ll be good to see you again. I think you and I should have a chat. I think we have a lot to talk about. I think it’s time. Don’t you?