Three months to the day, tomorrow…three months since Appa passed away, and I still feel like he is going to walk through that door any moment asking me something ridiculously irrelevant. Some memories never cease to exist. Worse are those memories that were once sweet and have now turned bittersweet. I put words in black and white today for catharsis. A catharsis that has taken a long time coming.
A month ago, as I lay breathing heavily at the end of a gruelling workout under the open skies, I saw stars. I saw the Great Bear and Venus. I saw a crescent moon overshadowing everything else. And in its shadow, I saw the pleiades struggling to be noticed. In those 30 seconds, I relived a lifetime with Appa. For it was he who taught me to identify those stars. During those innumerable summer power cuts, he would lie beside me on the terrace of my grandmother’s house, counting the stars. We would play a little game. How many of those stars could I identify? I would struggle. I would swat him on the arm playfully complaining that he was never helpful. And he would laugh, and say, “You will thank me for this one day.”
And then I remembered other things. Playing hangman with him while trying to guess some obscure word he thought up. Or playing a guessing game with numbers that I don’t even remember right now. At other times, he would discuss books. Books he read growing up, those he wanted me to read. Or he would patiently explain what “escape velocity” meant while I struggled to understand science fiction. I remembered those days when I would beg him for more chances to play those computer games. Games that needed restarting before I could play another one, thus taking away my chances at playing a little bit more. I remember climbing on to his lap as a 12-year old trying to gain access to his computer.
Much later, as I picked up my first Tamil book, I remember him patiently explaining the meaning of words I had never even heard of, to try and understand the text. As I struggled to make up my mind about studying engineering, I remember him sitting me down and telling me patiently, “I don’t care if you want to be a barber as long as you are the best that you can be.”
I could go on, but as I write this through a haze of tears, I can only wish we had a few more years together. Of all the things he could have taught me, it’s his words about being the best I can that I still hold dear. He is missed and will always be. I just wish I had told him more often how much I loved him. But above all, I am grateful that I had this much time with him and a relationship that’s as special as I could have hoped for.