Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death...
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain...
He pretty much captured the above thoughts of his favourite poet John Keats’ in his unannounced death. He would often tell me after my mother passed away to stop and consider, for life is but a day, a fragile dew-drop on its perilous way from a tree’s summit, a rose’s hope while yet unblown, the reading of an ever-changing tale. And that death, when it comes, can’t be stopped, ignored or reversed as it is one reality none can change.
For me and, more importantly, my brother who left every single thing dear to him to take care of my father and escort him till his blood pressure stopped showing up on the life monitor in the ICU, an overcast July 17, 2012 became the reality that redefined our sense of loss, a never-before nag tugging the heart in scary perpetuity.
Many tell you that 80 years is a long life lived; that passing away without much pain is a boon for the departed soul. But for me, my father, 80 or 40, was someone who always needed to be there — my most unobtrusive anchor sheet, my only person to go back to whenever and wherever, my twice-daily phone call chatter, the keeper of my darkest secrets, my gentle prodder, and someone who shaped me as a person I am today. To not have him suddenly is a loss I fail to measure in words, or for that matter, fathom in my thoughts.
Everyone who knew him, even fleetingly, insisted he was the gentlest soul to come across. Indeed, he was that. But he was much more too. He was a noble way of life, a treasure trove of literary acumen, a person who saw life with a different eye. I once asked him why he never took a loan to build a house for post-retirement life. He told me, to take a loan would mean living beyond one’s means, something you should not do. I also asked him why, after retirement, he did not take up one of the many lucrative job offers that came his way. His answer was: If the Government has decreed that 60 is the age of professional retirement, he would not go against the dictum. “Post-60, I continue to work, but only on things personal and as long as I am honest to life and relationships, I feel I will be doing well,” he said.
In modern terms, such anti-money arguments seem stunningly inexplicable but we understood, actually not only understood but also derived from his immense capability of simplifying issues. “You do what is correct and you don’t do what is not. Where’s the confusion here,” he would ask you if you came to him with a knotty problem. Somehow, his sense of simple logic always took you down the right path.
Honesty for him was a natural corollary of professional and personal life and not something that needed added applause, just because it was a dying trait of an extraordinary league of gentlemen. Being with the Sales Tax Department, his honesty mostly came in the way of a chain of institutionalised corruption, but he preferred constant transfers to surrender and he often confided in me to say that his biggest achievement in life was that his two children had grown up to be honest individuals like him. The argument that poverty incites dishonesty did not go down well with him. “Will you stop taking the next paisa of illegal money, if your first need is met?” he would ask, pointing out that desire never limits itself to the basic need and that hard-earned money should shape desire and not the other way round.
Just a few days before he passed away, he called me in an agitated state. He wanted to write a long piece on how corrupt our political system had become since the days of Sardar Vallabbhai Patel. He could not believe how so many scams could have sailed in and out of Parliament without a hitch. He was also almost always agitated with MS Dhoni and his style of functioning. His main grouse against the skipper was his out of turn utterances against the seniors, especially during the Australian tour. He said a man’s true lack of character showed up in his toughest time and that Dhoni blaming the string of defeats on seniors showed him up as an abjectly weak man not fit to be a captain.
That, today, I am a person conversant with literature and philosophy — two things that shape your outlook to life and to a long extent your karma — has nothing to do with any of my depthless teachers. It was my father and his sound education grounding that has enriched me for eternity. I remember, in Class VII when most of my classmates were running after movies and candy, he would take me out for an occasional orange bar to talk about Shelly, Keats, Shakespeare and Wordsworth.
A Masters in English Literature from Allahabad University, my father was the favourite student of three doyens of literary teaching — Raghupati Sahai (Firaq Gorakhpuri), Harivansh Rai Bachchan and Sir Amarnath Jha. He has the singular distinction of getting a positive testament from none other than Firaq Gorakhpuri who wrote: “Sri BM Rao is one of the very few students who speaks and writes correct English. He takes full advantage of the teachings imparted in the class. He has a reliable and genuine understanding of literature which he can communicate to others. He is mentally alive and writes correctly and to the point — Raghupati Sahai, Reader in English, Allahabad University, 6-6-1954”.
This hand-written testimonial today lies framed next to his smiling photograph, reminding me of the immense faith he lent to me in going through life correctly. Today, if I know the philosophy of life — both good and bad — as Shelly, Keats and Will Durant, to name a few, analysed, it is only because my father, Sri Beni Madho Rao, ingrained it in me like Aesop’s fables. Inconsolable in my loss, I am told he lives on in my memories, in the way I conduct my life henceforth and in my smiles and tears. But what about him in flesh and blood, that’s the only form of him that I want him in.
For a year, he had always had a strange request for me — “I wish I could read your innermost thoughts about me — the obituary you will write after my death,” he would say. I never could, though I often thought I would write a letter to him, about him — daughter to father. I wish I had because emotions often defy expression in Indian way of life and I could never really convey to my father what he meant to me. I hope he is there somewhere reading this. His passing away is the end of an era for the family. Personally, I now realise that being an orphan at any age is excruciating.
PS: This is the last obituary I will put pen on paper to.
Source: 22 July, 2012, The Pioneer
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