k9win Dadi, Dadi, Where Have You Gone?

Dadik9win, I’m sitting in Keoladeo National Park, against a serene backdrop of dense bushes and orange candy sunk9win, watching a young painted stork walk gingerly on the pavement. I am thinking of how, as a child, I thought you were my Valentine. I was dressed in my school uniform—a cream shirt and tight red-check pants—waiting to give you a handmade card and a rose wrapped in cheap plastic. But you kept snoring, and as the time for school approached, I had to first whisper in your ears, then prod you gently. You woke up with a start, listened to me, hmmed and nodded before going back to sleep again.

Once I told you about how a boy in the senior class had slit his wrist. The rumour that his girlfriend refused to take a rose from him had spread in school like wildfire. You were shocked by the brashness of boyhood and told me abruptly, “A girl who is also a friend is a girlfriend. Simple.” Then added, a little intuitively, “Always have a person in your life with whom you can share all your secrets.”

For me, you were that person, dadi.

For a long time, I harboured the idea of old age as a ‘second childhood’ that Shakespeare talks about in his iconic poem. Beauvoir calls elderhood the ‘crusher’ of humankind. Not only by virtue of biological decline, she argues in La Villesse, but also through social alienation, the old are pushed to the margins. I detested this eventual marginalisation—and thought our family would be different.

For me, you were the way out of that cognitive decline. You taught me the value of a life of dignity, autonomy, and courage. Not like a drab moral science lesson, but leading by an example. You couldn't see yourself as a 5th-grade school teacher in Derabassi; instead, you chose to live alone in a new town. You could have had a comfortable existence, gossiping, sunning, and shelling peas. Instead, you chose an intellectual life. I remember feeling inspired when you told me that you didn't let the son of a local MP use unfair means in the exam or quit your principalship on a whim when a bunch of men tried to bully you for buying books of Russian literature worth 400 rupees.

You taught me that money inevitably comes in the way of relationships, however intimate they might be, so always have enough of your own money. You worked hard—and spent with extreme caution—as your parents’ example had taught you that a bank balance can be directly proportional to dignity when the bladder becomes incontinent. You might have saved money by not buying expensive scarves or silk sarees, but you bought me the most expensive, flamboyant shirts available in our small town.

But now as the lashes of age whip you, you’re growing to become more like the image of Nani—sitting in vajrasana on a deewan in one corner of the dining hall and cooking farahs for me, silent, still, and sombre like a mannequin. That night, when I told you about the confusion regarding my sexuality, I was shocked by your impulsive, total refusal. Matlab? You said, pressing your head with both your hands, releasing an exasperated sigh. This was not different from the coming-out scenes in shallow novels or masala Bollywood films. And then we kept going over the same conversation again and again—I, a bleating lamb; you, the callous butcher with a glinting knife—till you decided to close your eyes and sever the jugular.

While the hurt has gone down with time, I’ve come to a strange realisation: it wasn’t so much your unacceptance as much as your resistance to think. Dadi, it's not the generation gap or age—the two master weapons you often use to cut the conversation short. If it was just (homo)sexuality, I’d have still accepted it, but it is your total negation of modernity that hurts me. Live-in, alcohol, dating, singledom: you dislike everything. Like other rosary-praying, mantra-chanting grandparents. You vociferously advocate marriage and family because ‘there is no better alternative.’ All this when you spent your life in the clutches of a terrible marriage and saw your sons being sapped off their passions in convenient, comfortable marriages. ‘Karo karo live in, do mahine kisi ke saath, das din doosre ke saath.’ you say crudely. You label these phenomena as ‘excesses’—like the guide who makes pointed remarks about western culture while telling us about storks who abandon the memory of their past homes after growing up.

I was taken aback when the other day you forced me to touch somebody’s feet using OUR culture as a lousy excuse. I feel abandoned when you forward propaganda messages on the family WhatsApp group villainizing Mughal rulers or melodramatic videos of old, haggard parents doting on their Amrika-gone children. Bile rose in my chest when, on Ram Sthapana Divas, you wrote a congratulatory message, even expressing a desire for a darshan, sending me the picture of the cruise ship.

This was not the dadi I had known all along. The dadi who made me read the controversial story of a pastor leaving his baptist life for love (also read sex). Or two girls living together in a hostel room preparing for the UPSC exam: one, a meek small-town girl; another, jubilant, vivacious, hooking up with men every now and then. While the Hindi readers found the latter story absurd, you found no dichotomy in the author’s decision to make the second girl more successful both personally and professionally.

But then there was another novel, one charged with obscenity in the Hindi literary sphere, which you liked first—but on a recent re-reading,hot646 login you found it tacky and vulgar. You even found certain portions objectionable, even sensational. What changed, dadi? The sweeping Hindutva tide that has injected the nation with a false victimhood, or your new friend—a conservative and conventional Hindi writer—who started hating Agyeya after listening to unfounded rumours about his liaison amoureuse with his mother.

Dadi, why have you become so bitter towards me, my choices, and my looming sadness? On days when I tell you that I feel sad and lonely, you blame me for my loneliness. For not having enough friends. For being arrogant and temperamental. You punish me by reiterating that I’ve wasted the fertiliser of your love to grow up into a barren bush.

It gives me jitters to think that you have started hating facts. That you have begun to feel that literature is about subtle truths wrapped in the cellophane of flowery language, artful expressions—and not about beehad truths that hit a reader’s head with the sharp thwack of a pestle. Once you were doing research on problem plays of Shaw and Ibsen, and now you don't want to verify the validity of things you utter, messages you send.

Where is that adventurous dadi who took a young child to the rugged, snow-capped mountains of Badrinath and Kedarnath? Where is that dadi who valued joy over money, forgiveness over bitterness, compassion over disappointment? Where is that dadi who told me about Urmila’s grief and Yashodhara's defiance and the love story of Urvashi and Pururava?

…

I think of the anguish of the woman looking at the ‘silver and exact’ mirror in Plath’s famous poem. Our teacher could only comprehend her tumult as loss of physical beauty, the shiny, supple skin giving way to wrinkled grooves. She had contempt for the woman, similar to what Ovid feels for Narcissus after the latter gets enchanted by his own beauty reflected in the calm surface of the river. The poem revealed itself in a sudden, spontaneous flash during a recent re-reading: although the woman's physical characteristics may appear to be the cause, her loss of self-control over her strong-footed self is what really caused her dismay. I wonder if all of us are that woman—trying to live up to the reflections of the elder figures we admired in our childhood.

Dadi, the image that I’ve held of you, and as a result, myself, cracked when grandfather’s quick, premature death caused you to tailor your expressions according to the expectation of the crowd. Silent, sorrowful, parroting he was a good man for others. The crowd included both your sons, your daughters-in-law, brothers, sisters, ad infinitum. Dadi, do you remember how much you sobbed in front of me for putting up that facetious act of grief, for spending recalcitrant years with that man? Do you ever ask yourself why you couldn't even imagine similar intimacy with others? That day, I realised if this was what years of conventional love entailed, then why should one constantly tire oneself down with it? Why not try out an unconventional way of loving people, even if they are transitory and transactional in your diction?

A large part of grief in the process of growing up comes from the sudden disappearance of this image. Like the sudden betrayal that hits Dorian Gray when he sees his portrait distorted into a cruel sneer after breaking off his engagement with the actress Sibyl Vane. Humse bhi Baune Nikale Humare Vindhyanchal, you would repeat your brother’s famous line. I would wonder if our relationship would ever reach such a phase when your pedestalised image would fragment in my mind. And then with the heady omniscience of adolescence, rule out all possibilities of such a breach and imagine, with a sudden rush of joy, that our relationship is special and would be spared.

You often complain that I don't love you the way I used to as a child. That was the fondness of a young, afraid child who wanted to believe that the elder figure would protect him with just a jadu ki jhappi. That’s why I used to cry when you traveled without me. I’d imagine scenes of your car being crashed or the plane plummeting into the sea and wonder if the next trip would be the one from which you wouldn't return, and all I could visualise was a pitch-black smudge in front of my eyes.

You must not confuse fondness with love or wonder if the fount of love has dried up inside me. Its nature must have changed, which, I believe, is inevitable considering that both of us are growing, albeit in different directions: the sun of my life preparing to shine at its brightest and harshest; yours dimming bit by bit.

The worst realisation that came with this cracked image was that while you tried to carry the world in your hand, its jute straps dug into your fingers. It happens to all of us—but with the passage of time and comfortable lassitude of social convention, even our awareness runs dry. Eventually bearing the pain becomes a habitual thing. The distorted face of fear lurked when you chose to not enter into the crematorium. Or felt indecisive about the impetuous decision of leaving your principalship. Or decided to sell your thesis to the kabadiwala, which you left midway after writing five chapters, because the needs of the household became too pressing.

It can never be fair play in a relationship like ours. The elders have to be endowed with an awareness that the young would first idolise them, then doubt themselves for doing it, then go through the agony of witnessing it being cracked, and later carve an image out of themselves. What else do elders have except feeling rejected, dissatisfied, and harbouring a searing sense of loss? I know the exact soreness of such a feeling because something similar is happening to me and Kakul, this time the tables being turned.

The youngster displayed goalkeeping masterclass in the shoot-out, saving all four of Pakistan’s attempts after the match was drawn 1-1 in regulation time.

Defending champions India will now face off against China, who beat Pakistan in the first semi-final.

Dadi, as I approach the stork chick, it tries to sidestep into the bushes and falters. It tries to spread its gunmetal grey wings, whips them into a vigorous flutter, but fails to take a flight. In our momentary glance, looking at his teared-up eyes, I feel an impulse to protect him. What if he is hunted down by a bullet, net, or the claws of an eagle? But I keep moving ahead, thinking about the joyous exhilaration of his maiden flight. The sound of his fluttering wings keeps echoing in my ears.