This story is rather embarrassing for me. I was too young to remember this. But my dad often told this story to razz me. And it usually worked.

So, this goes back – way, way too many years… 51 to be precise. Now to fully get the story, I have to give a little background here.

Back in India, all my life I grew up having my meals while squatting on the floor. In fact, even in Kalyani, when I would be with my parents – including my last meal with them – we would all sit down on the floor and eat.

The next thing you might want to know is that when we were growing up, we were sufficiently modest in our income that a square meal meant rice, lentils – called “daal” – and some vegetables. On a couple of days in the week, we had fish and then we had some special Sundays when we would have meat (always goat meat those days).

So, now, to hear my dad’s version… Apparently, we had finished lunch one day. And by “we”, I mean my parents, my sister and myself. My brother was not yet around. Mom had cleaned up the floor with a wet cloth (“nyata”, as we referred to it). Apparently, she missed a particular piece of lentil that had flung afar. That piece of lentil, over a couple of hours, had turned from a juicy bit to a hard and dried morsel well stuck to the floor.

My sister, ostensibly crawling around without any rhyme or reason, had spotted that hapless bit of lentil. And as every kid of that age does, she promptly decided that the lentil needed to be transferred from the floor to her mouth.

Like those best laid plans of mice and men, she was completely stopped in her tracks by that rather stubborn (“thhnyata”, as we would say) piece of lentil. It simply refused to budge. After giving it a few heave ho-s with her tender fingers, she decided to call in for reinforcements. In this case, her reinforcement refers to yours truly.

Like a knight in a shining armor, I appeared on the scene. After carefully evaluating the scenario, I apparently also proceeded to dig with my fingers. Except that my fingers were not that tender. At least not as hers. A few determined attempts and I succeeded in uprooting it!! The “daal” (lentil piece) was in my hand. I have no doubt that I was as proud as proud could be.

And this is where the story gets a little murky and somewhat anti-climactic. In an alternate universe, I handed over the dirty lentil to my sister who put it in her mouth and savored it as she dotingly looked up to her brother shimmying out of the scene.

In this real universe however, that knight in shining armor decided that since he took all the pains, he should get all the gains. And promptly put the dirty lentil in his mouth!!

And in this universe, my sister bawled a lot, my father told me!!

Things could not have been scripted out any better. After resisting going to India (my biggest fear being if I came down with Covid and needed hospitalization, that would be messy for everybody there) waiting to get the vaccinations, I finally got my second shot on my birthday. Immediately applied for an emergency visa that day. (I have a tourist visa to India and that is not valid during Covid period).

Indian consulate was very efficient and helpful. Within 24 hours, they approved my case and asked me to FedEx all my papers. Which I did in a matter of hours. All I needed was to get my passport back, put my mask on and jump on to a flight. Incredibly, within 48 more hours, I had my passport in my hand – with a new visa allowing me to make two emergency visits to my dad in the next few months. I immediately kept the passport back safely in its place.

And ever since, it has been safely sitting there. Never bothered to look for a flight ticket. The guy I was so eagerly waiting to go see had taken a different emergency exit a few hours before the passport could arrive!

Last year, out of a sheer premonition, I had asked him “What if mom died first?”. “I will die the next day”, he had confidently commented. And that is pretty much how it played out.

I consider myself fairly measured in how I let myself grieve. Slowly, but over a much longer period of time than most. But this one-two punch within a matter of a couple of months will call for the best in me to internalize.

Many moons back, sitting at a bar in Milton, Sharmila and I had decided that we will never let it be said that “we did not get to see our parents for a whole year before they died”. That resolution resulted in me seeing my parents every three months – year after year after year. The irony cannot be any richer or more cruel that after all that – it all ended exactly the way we were trying to prevent!!

Yet, what I did not get pales in comparison to what I did get. For somebody to be a father figure like he was to me when he had no role model for himself growing up (lost his dad when he was two and a half) – it could not have come easy to him. Growing up, I remember mostly the tough guy side of him. Only once did I see him break down – that too for a brief half minute – when he saw my grandmother’s dead body (my parents tended to my grandma when she had cancer and she took her last breath with me literally standing next to her). In his entire life – he never hugged me.

Those numerous trips for the last decade helped me see a completely different side of him. I got to know a lot more of his early childhood life that he had not divulged to me. For example, I did not know that he had a sister who died on their journey to grandma’s brother’s place when his dad died. He once surprised me by giving me his thoughts about adoptions of orphans and donation of organs! But the best moments were when we bonded over his sense of humor.

His ability to make light of a moment was only matched with his full throated laughter at a good joke. Nothing exemplifies his sense of humor more than that story of my visit to a nearby crematorium with my siblings!

In a full circle of life, eight years later, that was the exact place he was cremated ten days back. Frankly, knowing him, I would not have put it past him if he had raised his head one last time, looked around and assured those guys “Aapnader candidate esey gecche” and then went off to his eternal sleep.

I did not realize I will have to make this request of you so soon again… but please join me again in raising a toast to celebrate his life! For, what a life it was!!