It was 14th November, 2015, a bright winter day. My father’s skull cracked open loudly, and his brain poured out- a viscous membrane- before being swallowed by the funeral pyre. The wind gently steered the heat towards me singeing the hair on my shin. I took a step back and looked harder at his evaporating body, realising that the only precipitate was an aggregate of images and shadows that I’ve had to carry, and probably carry, for life. Yet I felt lightness as I soaked in the last image of his being- a few shards of bones.
It was 6 in the morning when Maa had received a call from his friend relaying the news of his death. Within moments her sense of disgruntlement at being woken up from her sleep dissolved into tears. I hadn’t expected her to cry, especially since they’d been divorced- acrimoniously- for over 15 years. “Nothing changes the fact that I was in love with him once.” She said in between sobs.
I tried to take stock of my emotions as I pushed out onto the morning street, smoking my morning cigarettes, looking on at the streaming group of school kids being escorted by their parents, andit hit me how everything felt distant; I felt like an island.As I walked back home to calls from people I didn’t talk to, giving me condolences I didn’t need, I caught sight of a tiny, plastic dinosaur atop the refrigerator- I was 7 when I’d realized that my father hadn’t seen dinosaurs like he claimed. What about his claims of love?
A month before my father died he’d come to our tenement- a large, rectangular hall where I lived with my mother and younger brother- drunk, swinging his desire to stay the night with us at my mother’s traumatized guts. I was out drinking too, then, and had made my way home half an hour later, swaying to the rhythm of a love song.
Our room lay at the end of a short foyer. In the evenings we’d sit on the sofas lined up outside and soak in the view of the capitol road a floor below us. The apartment of the owner was midway down the foyer. In fact, the entire floor was a big apartment, which the old woman rented out in parts- interconnected through doors- to two families. I would visit home from film school twice a year; for most parts the inhabitants on the floor were all women, except for my 10 year old brother. Hence the gate separating the foyer and the stairway would be locked by 10.
I arrived home after 10.
My mother sat on the farthest sofa, looking out at the road, swiveling a cricket bat in hand. I tiptoed to the sofa beside her, taking care to push my breath away. Do you want to turn into your father, she said, her voice cracking further with every syllable, before narrating the incident. I don’t remember if I was seized by rage, guilt, exhaustion, or all of them simultaneously.
“When was the last time you saw him?” my father’s youngest sister asked holding me in a tight embrace. “Go, take a look at him! This is the last time!” she added further. It was a two storey building- a kilometer away from the state capitol- designed for comfort. Three playful mutts circled around the spacious living room excited at the sight of a crowd tensing around like electrons. And then, from the room at the farthest corner, his widow- from his third and final marriage- rushed out wailing and embraced Maa; then me. I was meeting her for the first time.
A week before he died he’d passed by our lodging, slowing down his white Scorpio, to wave at us. It was Maa who’d noticed him; I was scrolling my phone while sipping tea. I only caught sight of his arm loosening up against the door as he sped off. Afterwards we sat in silence distracting ourselves with the internet. The entire sequence of events was a fast montage, maybe only 8 frames of his arms waving.
The room where his dead body was placed smelt of fresh paint- his sudden demise put a halt on the wide scale renovation. However I could still recognize the wall outside the window- patches of moss still remained; although the snails that used to crawl on it, terrifying me as a child were gone. I remembered how out of boredom and curiosity I’d once ripped off the arm of a G.I. Joe, and flung at one of them. Rigor mortis had rendered my father’s arms with the same tactility; for a moment I wondered if it’d be as easy to rip them off and wave at all the descending ghosts. Someone asked me to touch and pray at his feet. I did, much less out of respect, rather an image popped up in my mind:
I was shuttled off to a boarding school in Darjeeling- a hill district in West Bengal- in the wake of their impending divorce. It was a tiny school that stood on a slope. A huge iron gate with a sliver a few inches off the ground opened into a large stairway that descended fifty feet. If one stood- a child- on the fourth step, they’d be at eye level of the sliver beyond which lay the road that in our hearts represented liberation, but most of all, the passage home. The second year of boarding, he’d paid me a visit. I was 9, and hadn’t seen him in over two years. The last image I’d of him, then, were his arms seizing Maa’s neck while two of my grandfather’s security guards tried to pry him off. We left his house immediately escorted by the guards, crying, walking a distance of two kilometers to my maternal grandma’s house at 2 in the night. In contrast, he sat placidly in the school office holding my arms gently. Maybe it was the smell of incense, or the bowed down statue of Jesus behind him, but he was a quiet man for all of five minutes. Later when he left, I stood on the stairs and watched his white sneakers contemplate the ground, before the feet of a woman appeared from round the bend and disturbed the stillness.
“He loved you a lot!” his widow said as we sat down in the evening after the funeral. “He’d cried a few days before thinking about you; he wanted to apologize.” One of the mutts looked at me from under the table while I sipped tea. “I’m sorry we couldn’t save the rest. He must have left the cigarette burning when he’d passed out one of the nights. Thankfully we could douse the fire immediately!” She said as she handed me a white envelope, before walking off to attend the rest of the family. Thirteen burnt photographs slipped out- a portrait of our relationship.
Brishbhanu Baruah 