I am woman ,if in love with a man could easily love his towel,shaving kit and bathroom slippers let alone his mother,father,friends and every other minuscule particle associated with his life.I have often smelt the shawl he used in Jamshedpur winters in my dingy paying guest room.I looked at the rings that he had blessed me with.The grip of the rings made me feel his fingers between mine.A secure feeling of love and care if I perceived never existed but had existed all the time.
Between my eyelids closed in prayer, I can visualize the figure of a man in white "dhuti-panjabee" and a red dupatta tied on his waist...two earthern "Dhunuchis" (earthen pots to offer Arati to the Goddess)one in his hands and another balanced on his magnificent forehead.....With an angelic smile as the "dhaak"(A bengali drum announcing festivity) roles begin into a vibrant Taal...The man danced with poise,devotion and prayer to Ma Durga as if it was the last dance of his life.The drum rolls got harder and louder and the feet of the man bounced back and forth in the air till the sacred ash aroma-ted the holy air of Ma Durga's prayer days.
We were taught to call him "sunder kaku" from our early childhood..which literally means "beautiful uncle".Not sure why a bald man who spent his life working in the heat of steel furnaces in tropical May summers of an industrial town;disbursing his hard work for a family which in blood was not his own...had to be called "beautiful" when there are hundred other adjectives in the English lexicon to describe a man with extra ordinary intellect,talent,language and skills in art way ahead of his time..but this was his name.
Some men are born ordinary and lead extra ordinary lives and then die and ordinary death.Much like a statistical bell curve.Sur Kaku's life in my eyes is like that.Not everyday you would find a man born half a century ago going to a European country,learning to speak fluent German and living with friends.Then setting up a whole business from scratch to a successful level where budding children grew to be successful and truthful human beings.Sur Kaku didnt marry in his entire life.He perhaps loved a woman unconditionally...an acumen for money making,dedication and hard work multiplied with the skill to make sandwiches for sick people and be my their bedside...and this is where I stare at the paradox of life...Every girl's dream men remain eligible bachelors for their entire life...perhaps no women are good enough to be worthy of his love..
...I slept in his arms many times even though I was over age to sleep in a parent's bed.I held him during my hostel days saying I didn't want to be left alone in an alien city in a den of alien girls...he was my first date in Bangalore,a city bustling with young dating couples.We watched Mission Impossible 2 together and he bought me a blanket in my first Paying guest I inhabited in this city which is now my home.Years passed and he represented my parents by travelling to my college hostels in Delhi and Bangalore..assuring in the train journeys that I got the best pillow in the journey and my feet didn't ache..He wept the day I graduated from business school.He wept on the day when my mother expired saying "tumi amar ma"(I knew I meant the world to him more than all the children of the house who were his own not by blood but by virtue of a strange love affair that is beyond the understanding of someone who has not met him.At one instance I remember, I gifted him a trophy saying "world's best human being" and another instance where he told me how helpless he felt for not being able to find me an eligible groom.
I suffered massive heartbreaks,dumps and relationships.And in those instances I made him a part of it by explaining on our weekend phone calls how painful life can get.Days passed,years passed.I lost both my parents and Sur kaku lost his friends whom he had stayed his entire life with.But he said he would do till the time he could and whatever he could.Rajendra nagar pujo committee didnt see his exponential leadership in organizing the community durga pujo of our colony anymore and he slowly concealed himself in a shell with a white shirt,prayer and dedication to his friends and responsibilities.
He wept when I laughed.He said "tomar mukh dekhlei ador korte iche kore"(feel like loving you when I see your face).He wept when I cried.He wept the day I got married when he solmnly prayed for my happiness and did my kanyaa-daan to my husband.I was sitting by the pyre..still unsure whether I was marrying the right man and I glanced at him from my heavy viel and wished this man was 40 years younger ;then finding a groom in this mad world filled with people of high expectations would not have been a long tough story for me.He wept and wept.
And that was perhaps the last time I saw his tears.Several times in this incredible era of perennial heartbreaks I sent him a text message saying "Please dont leave me and go to God..I am still not independent,I need you".My heart feared of the humongous deadly and devilish agony of a heartbreak that would crumble my already broken heart if he left me forever...but he just complained of minor illnesses and weaknesses of old age concealing his ill health under his patience.
He breathed his last.I was in Goa with my husband enjoying a vacation.A phone call customary to my phone every weekend ceased almost suddenly.I didn't cry.I didn't move.He left me with a divine grace wrapping all my fears of losing dear ones in heart breaks and death so strongly...much like the steel furnaces he had worked in all his life.No fears touch me.No insecurity holds me anymore.I dont cry into my pillow because people leave me and go.He took away with him ,the most ugliest part in my personality, my insecurity of losing dear ones through heart breaks and death.I have received many gifts all my life.But the strength I feel from within is the biggest gift I got that night.
"At times we do not know what we actually want,our parents know it and grant it as a gift to us when the time is right"
