February 2003 Issue - Essay # 9
When a
Father Becomes a Child
By Uma Girish
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It
all started to go downhill for him that fateful day when he was knocked
off his bike by an uncaring speedster, I say to myself. It
is time for his mid-day injection. The sight of the syringe makes him
whimper. I move closer to him and comfort him, much like I would a
two-year-old about to take his measles vaccine. He gathers my hand in
his, a vice-like grip that communicates his extreme fear. The nurse
pokes and prods searching for that elusive vein on his bony arm, and
prolongs his agony. When
Mother approaches his bedside with a bowl of lentil soup, he purses his
lips in displeasure. “I want a dosa," he demands insistently, and
Mother gives in, but even she must draw the line at his request for
chutney as an accompaniment. As
I took leave of him last night, he held my hand, and shook his head from
side to side. “Don’t go,” he whispered when the words found his
tongue. “I’ll come back early tomorrow morning,” I promised
feebly. “Always … stay … here ....,” he was making an extra-special
effort through the fog that clouded his brain. My eyes brimmed over, the
tears lodged between my lashes. Unable to walk out on him, I waited
until he drifted off, and then tiptoed out of the room feeling like a
colossal cheat. Father’s
once-dexterous fingers now take forever to make the journey from his
sides to the "dhoti" around his waist. And when they eventually find it,
they seem to take an eternity to gather the folds to the right and tuck
them in. But Father stubbornly refuses any offer of help, keen to
accomplish the feat himself. My mind goes back in time--to the day when
my two-year-old concentrated furiously, coordinating eyes and hands to
stack a tower of blocks. “Why
didn’t you go to school today?” he chides me, his memory sliding
back and forth in time. I invent an excuse about a holiday, and he smiles
weakly, glad at the thought that I will remain by his bedside. The
frequent shifts between home and hospital have confused his mind further
where messages already run amuck, colliding and jostling, rarely
reaching the destinations they are meant for. “Take me home,” he
would say, lying on his bed in his own bedroom. “But this is home,
Appa,” I would try. “No, this is not my home. I want to go that
other home. That home … where my mother lives.” His mother died over
twenty years ago. We
encourage his fantasies and play out his mind’s desires. Many times we
fail to understand his garbled questions, but we nod intelligently,
supplying answers that satisfy his muddled brain. He may be reduced to a
hapless child from the fiercely independent father I once knew, but we
never let him know that he inhabits a different world. It’s a world
where the characters are very real to him and totally unfamiliar to us.
But the past, we realize, is more alive to him than the present. He
lives in a world that abounds with childhood memories, happier times.
His mind has decided to wander back in time, and slide into a
comfortable, unthreatening niche. And Father believes he is making sense
to all of us. That is the most important consideration of all. |
| Author's Biography Uma
Girish is a full-time freelance writer based in Chennai, India. She
contributes features, articles and interviews to newspapers and
magazines in India. Her first love, however, is fiction--both children
and adult. She has won a couple of fiction writing contests, one for children and one for adults, this year, and has been published online at Absolute Write and Einkwell.com. Uma
loves the personal essay form because it helps her write from deep
within, in a voice that is intimate. E-mail
Uma at umagirish@vsnl.com
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Essay
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