Allaudin and the adventure during joota chupai!

So you were introduced to our wonderful cook-cum-family, Alauddin in the last post. That was not the end of his story. See, underlying Alauddin's brilliant culinary skills, is a desire for alcohol, more severe than his incapacity to digest the liquid. Therefore, throughout this शादी, one (and all) could spot Alauddin swinging around, drunk as a sponge and getting so emotional about the wedding that I knew I had at least one blog post ready right there! It was the night of the wedding. When we reached the venue of the wedding, Alauddin started drinking. We ate snacks. Alauddin downed a few. The varmaala were exchanged. Alauddin gulped a few more pegs. We danced and Alauddin kept up his visits to the bar. We ate dinner and Alauddin was still drinking. We returned to dancing and Alauddin returned to drinking. This should give you a very vague idea of what Alauddin's state was, when the फेरे began. The astrologically-fixed time for the फेरे was 1:30 a.m. and by then, everybody looked pretty much besotted, whether under influence of alcohol or नींद. We were sitting around the पंडाल when I spotted Alauddin standing right behind my brother and his almost-wife, swaying dangerously but looking intently at the ongoing पूजा. I went over and asked him to sit on a chair so that he wouldn't topple over. Alauddin insisted on dragging the chair close to where the marrying couple were seated and watching on with love and pride. But while we all thought that Alauddin was in that happy place, the portals of which only alcohol seems to open, something else was afoot. Somewhere just before the start of the फेरे, the bride had summoned Alauddin and asked him to find my brother's shoes and give 'em to her friends, who in the absence of sisters and cousins, were stepping in for जूता छुपाई. We did not know this. The bride's side did not know this. Now I have always lamented over what a useless lot we are and allow me to present yet another glaring example. Here is the bride and her friends, who despite being weak in Punjabi ways had nonetheless gathered their troops and planned their strategy. And there we were- a population explosion in our own right- and not one of us even remember about the damn जूता छुपाई! But not Alauddin! The भाभी had commanded it and Alauddin was determined to prove his loyalty. The fact that he picked up Vivek's shoes and hid them somewhere, in his quest to hide my brother's already hidden shoes, we can safely pin to the fact that he was drunk. The matter was brought to light in the middle of the 4th फेरा (of course I am not sure but I doubt anybody will remember to correct me) So when Alauddin realized what he had done, he returned the shoes to Vivek and remained appalled at his folly. Vivek is दामाद. The दामाद is the VIP in the Indian family and Alauddin could not believe he had taken the दामाद's shoes. Plus, we were teasing him about switching sides and I am sure that did not help. Thereafter, he resumed his swaying on the chair. He would check how many फेरे were done after every five minutes, then laugh in a drunken-embarrassed sorta way and say "भाभी बोली थी तो हम दामाद के जूते छुपा दिए!" OK so back to my tirade. I cannot finger-point enough at my side's ridiculous sloppiness. We paid attention to the fact that my brother's shoes were gone only at the end of the फेरे when the bride's relatives came up to me and asked me to give them the shoes. They said it was a custom and that the shoes must be handed to them and any pleas of innocence that I made were understandably not accepted. Finally and thankfully, the lawyer friends came forward and owned up to having taken the shoes. So it all ended well. But Alauddin had one final performance before we exited. At विदाई, I step out of the wedding hall to see Alauddin weeping and my mother consoling him. I overheard my mother asking him what was wrong and he said emotionally, "बहु घर आ गयी, ख़ुशी हो रहा है". What a beautifully, emotionally-expressive soul, this Alauddin.

Alauddin versus the Marwaris

So the wedding of my brother Ram and his much-better half Mriga was a very interesting affair. Our theme for the wedding was food and we did little else except eat. Ranchi is known for its fine देसी चिकन and assorted meats, besides other scrumptious food-stuff.

Now we Kakkars do not think much of vegetarians but since they did gather the wedding as vegetarians inevitably do and since my father was all-enthusiasm for his son's wedding, he decided to make top-notch arrangements for "those" people too. But there was a catch. Our non-vegetarian food is made beautifully by the waiter-cum-cook at Ranchi club- Allaudin. Allaudin is an anti-God since God is creator and Allaudin begins with creation ends. But when it comes to meat preparation of any kind, Allaudin is akin to PG Wodehouse's Anatole (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Jeeves_characters#Anatole) if you can keep a tighter-than-a-corset watch on his chilly-use. Allaudin's list of ingredients begins with 'हरी मिर्ची' and ends there too. My मीनू भाभी would sit with Allaudin everyday and recite a highly drool-inducing menu (also pronounced मीनू by the older Kakkar खानदान, so for example चाचा would say, "मीनू आं मीनू दिखा दो" that somehow never ceases to amuse me) and she would then ask, "बताओ क्या क्या चाहिए बाजार से", to which Allaudin would promptly begin, "लिखिए हरा मिर्चा". Here, I would coming flying in the scene, dragging my father and shouting "हरा मिर्चा नहीं नहीं!!!" and prod my father in his perfectly-round stomach until he instructed Allaudin to listen to what I was hysterically communicating.

Make no mistake, my claims of being a free woman does not, for a moment, put me in doubt that I still need mine father to get anybody to even hear me. Ah, the sad irony! Sigh!

But moving on. Now it is a well known fact in Bihar/Jharkhand that the best vegetarian food is best prepared by the मारवाड़ीs. They make some 20 items that are served in tiny कटोरीs on a big थाली and oh, everything is heavenly. So my father pulled a few मारवाड़ी strings and a group of nice मारवाड़ी cooks agreed to come home to cook us some वाह-वाह खाना. All of us would stuff ourselves to the brim during every meal and then swear to skip the next meal but we were at it again as soon as the meal was served. Our stomachs were most unhappy and our taste buds on cloud 9.

But (yes you were waiting for this, weren't you!) there was a catch, of course. The मारवाड़ीs are pure vegetarians and they also tend to display a highly prejudiced viewpoint of religious fanaticism. We were unaware of the second and we forgot about the first. So on day one, we had Alauddin come in to make his chicken and prawns and everything that was once alive. Oh brilliant stuff! We ate, we ate some more, we cried a little bit पेट पकड़ के and then we resumed eating again. बीच बीच में we danced and side में the पापा-भैया लोग drank. It was well past midnight when we all slept.

The next morning, we woke up to some very unappealing हल्ला-हंगामा. Problem: The मारवाड़ी cooks were on their way and the cooking area resembled a graveyard. ओये होए, वड्डा स्यापा! With marvelously swift movements for a bunch of groggy पंजाबीs, the site was cleaned of its meatish sins and we all ate a nice breakfast of चिवड़ा, amazing melt-in-our-mouths चीला,fruits that nobody cared to look at and चाय of course.

Thereafter, we kept a close tab on the situation and realized to our annoyance that my father had set-up a land-mine in his schedule for Alauddin and the मारवाड़ीs. So Alauddin would cook downstairs in the kitchen while the good vegetarian blokes were stationed on the terrace, which also had a room storing all food supplies for the शादी. One day one, Alauddin wanted हरा मिर्चा (rolls eyes) and he was asked to fetch it from upstairs but he looked at the speaker with the best "दिमाग ख़राब है" look and refused to fetch what he needed with a very noble reason- "हम को कुछ हो गया तो मीट सब कौन बनाएगा". What a man!

But it all proceeded without causalities and ended with a lot of upset-stomachs that told us how much people couldn't resist the food. The stories of Alauddin do not end here and will be shared in a later post.

Rewinding Monu's Wedding: The one where Bada Babu drugged us!

I have been meaning to write about specific incidents from Monu's wedding and so here is the highlight of the entire celebrations: Bada Babu drugging us on the day of the विवाह!

Now Monu's wedding happened in Mussoorie, which as I'm sure everybody knows (this is your cue to pretend you know about it, even if you don't) is an-incredibly-easily-accessible-and-hence-over-crowded-hill-station a stone's throw away from Dehradun. A big blotch on our family's honour and pride is that despite having lived in Dehradun- so technically among hills- all our lives, we are the first ones to throw up at the absolute beginning of the mountain road that I, UNaffectionately call "गोल गोल".

Now throughout the pre-wedding functions, starting with the कीर्तन and through the सगन, cocktail and all others, we dressed up एकदम झिन-टाक झिन-टाक and the grand finale to the aforesaid dressing up एकदम झिन-टाक झिन-टाक was the actual wedding, of course. But to be dressed in our absolute best and then to have to go through the high puke-risk zone to arrive at the wedding venue was almost a cruelty.

So when Bada Babu (if you have been reading the blog you will know he is बड़ी बुआ's husband, our फूफा) offered us magical tablets that he promised will remove the faintest signs of nausea and queasiness from our systems, the first people to gulp this tablet down were Arjun and yours truly.

Arjun is my newphew and Bada Babu's grandson. He is a good kid who takes a little too long to dress up for my liking and other than this minor difference, we get along not very famously (and why would we) but we are quite close. For reasons that I cannot remember, it later turned out that nobody else had taken the pill.

So after wasting time as one usually does when one is in the middle of a busy and important occasion like one's sister's wedding, the family dispersed to get dressed. Fast-forward through a lot of banging on the bathroom doors, screaming for combs and hair brushes and Sanjay जीजाजी drinking चाय out of a कटोरी because all glasses had been used up, the family assembled to leave for Mussoorie and were dispersed in batches.

Being a diabetic, one of my sure-shot symptoms of a hypoglycemic situation is when I feel an overpowering drowsiness and I cannot stay awake without super-human effort. So when I began to feel said overpowering drowsiness, I rushed to check my blood sugar only to find the BS levels stable. Confused, I still ate a biscuit and kept tab on my blood sugar over the next hour as I struggled to keep my eyes open.

I decide to wash my face once and after the required routine of tucking towels under the chin to prevent water from dripping over clothes when the clothes are your very best, I walked into चाचा- चाची's room to go through the connecting door into the bathroom and here I find Arjun slumped on the bed and snoring. Strange but connections are made rather slowly in my dim brain and I gave it no second thought.

Eventually, the last few of us were left at home. Arjun, who had been woken up after much difficulty was slumping against the wall where he had been placed and ordered strictly to not sit. I was made to sit on one of those cruel, straight-back chairs without any support of a dining table to put my head down on and Ram bhaia watched over the both of us and bellowed a very piercing 'OYE' every now and then. Even until then, we did not understand why we were so sleepy and kept thinking we were more tired than we had realized. Not the brightest bunch, as I always say.

Then while talking about nausea and the impending trip up the mountain road, I drowsily suggested Bada Babu's magic-pill, only to be told by somebody that said magic-pill is akin to the sleeping drought in the Harry Potter world

So that's how I ended up looking spaced out in Monu's wedding album and that's how poor Arjun was nowhere to be seen in the same album, him being passed-out in one of the comfortable-as-sin beds of the five-star.

All that was cooking at Sushil's wedding

I am still recuperating from the intense activities of two weddings and am, for a while bursting at the seams with not just my bulging lard-content but also stories from weddings. As it so happens, with the bagful of stories I have and all of them wanting to tumble out at the same time, they remained bottled-up all this while. Today, while riding my faithful scooter through the lanes of Dehradun, I spotted Krishna and knew that to be my sign to begin writing, even as I desperately tried to hide my much-bloated self from her easy view.

So for every shaadi in Dehradun and a few in Ranchi too, Krishna is the not-so-nice toothless woman who comes to cook the meals when the guests arrive. Like most of us Indians, she is corrupt and conniving and provides a rich source of entertainment through constant bickering with the women of the house. My Dad very wisely observed about the women of the house during Sushil's wedding: "खुद बनायेंगी नहीं खाना,ना चैन से बैठेंगी".

When Monu got married, Chachi let Krishna do the cooking, and her other objectionable tasks- stuffing a whole lot of food into her mouth, packing daily meals to feed who we suspect to be the entire neighbourhood and preparing some very fancy things that we never seemed to get a taste of, among others- without any interference. But the seeds of gossips about Krishna's ways were sown right then. When the time for Sushil's wedding arrived, the good women of my family began to sit around to exchange gossip while folding wedding cards or packing mithai and other sweets or just to purely gossip. There, the skeletons from our खुरा where Krishna's workstation was set-up during Monu's wedding, were unearthed and by the time the day had arrived for Krishna to begin cooking for guests at Sushil's wedding, we were all looking at the skinny, toothless woman through heavily-coloured lenses.

Episode 1: Krishna versus Meenu bhahi.

My father instructed Meenu bhabhi- बड़ी बुआ's बहु- to instruct Krishna to make meat for lunch the next day. In his lame attempt at pampering Meenu bhabhi, who he reasoned would be tired after her journey from the state of Jharkhand to the state of Uttarakhand, my Dad ignited what would be a long-drawn battle of not-so-much-wits-as-angry-spats. Meenu bhabhi went up to Krishna and announced her supervisory role in the preparation of meat. Krishna naturally took offence and clicked her tongue disapprovingly, except that it sounds not very click-like when you have no teeth and a sagging jaw-line like Krishna does not and does. So when Meenu bhabhi asked for the प्याज-अदरक-लसन-टमाटर मसाला to be भुनो-ed well, it was भुनो-ed not so well. And when Meenu bhabhi said less salt, there was barely any salt. The end result was a watery curry with some rubbery chunks of an animal killed for nothing. Krishna-01, Meenu-00

But wait! Meenu bhabhi wanted the last laugh so when Krishna asked her how the meat was, Meenu bhahi went out of her way and through several other ways in praising the preparation. Krishna kept saying "नहीं मैं तो अलग तरीके से बनाती हूँ और बहुत अच्छा, पता नहीं इसमें नमक कैसा था" and Meenu bhabhi spent all the time she was supposed to utilize in resting after her long journey, convincing Krishna that it was marvelous. What is victory if the enemy won't accept defeat! Krishna-01, Meenu-01

Episode 2: Krishna versus mommy.

So after the meat episode, Krishna labelled us all the bad sorts and gleefully proceeded to make life hell for the women. During this शादी time, I would stop at बड़ी मम्मी's for breakfast on my way to work and my mother would scurry to the make-shift kitchen to get Krishna cooking. She did not appreciate it, I can tell you expecting to sit and have some चाय and gossip before committing to the grind.

On Saturday then, I walk into बड़ी मम्मी's in my jammies and with my weekend chirpiness at the same time as usual for my breakfast when I bump into Krishna as she was hurrying to or from somewhere. "कैसी है मेरी बेटी?" she asked a now very-surprised me. I mumbled a few words about my good health and she said "अज ते दफ्तर नी जाणा? मैं नी जाणे देना तेन्नु अज दफ्तर" before briskly walking away. Thus with the glow of a stranger's love still warming my heart, I entered the house to seek my food-procurement person, i.e. mommy. Mommies responded to the cry of her (not-so) young and was trotting of in search of Krishna when K walked in herself. Now for reasons not yet clear, mommy said to K coolly, "श्वेता के लिए नाश्ता बना दीजिये, उसको काम पर जाना है". Krishna looked at mommy equally coolly and said "मेरी बेटी ने अज दफ्तर नी जाणा" and walked off with her cup of tea to sit in the sun and chat...

Krishna- 01, Mommy- 00

... and walked off with her cup of tea to sit in the sun and chat...

Well, almost. Mommy, displaying reflexes to compete with Spiderman's, stood in front of Krishna and said menacingly, "मेरी बेटी उठते ही नाश्ता खाती है. अभी बनाओ". Never mind how mommy's statement reflects on me, I was so happy I was getting breakfast that I forgot everything else.

Krishna- 01, Mommy- 01, Me- 4 परांठे

Of course, as always happens among Punjabis, after Sushil's शादी when Krishna packed all that she could from the day's meals and bid farewell to the lot of us, she hugged all the women one by one and told them how much she would miss them. The feeling was reciprocated by some of our women and appreciation for Krishna's skills and efficiency was granted by all of them.

The anonymous, in-the-shadows heroine

If asked why this blog has not been updated in so long you would think I have been sleeping wouldn't you? Well you wouldn't be entirely off the mark. BUT unbeknownst to you, reader, in the cover of Internet anonymity and in the secure distance between phone calls from Dehradun to Mumbai (where our not-so-evil villain-sibling Ram resides), I have been waging a lone battle. While the country sleeps at peace at night, I am also usually sleeping and when the country is awake and vigilant, I am mostly still sleeping. However in between, I have been fighting to protect our fundamental freedom of expression and the more important, fundamental Punjabi constitutional right- the RIGHT TO GOSSIP.

After Monu’s wedding, it seemed that there would be no posts to share until the next wedding is fixed. But at our age we are living in, as Jason Mraz says “an island of reality in an ocean of diarrhea” and the diarrhea is marriage. So we are surrounded constantly by questions like ‘की सोच्या तूं’ (highlighting yet again that marriage is the only thing one should be thinking about), ‘हुण settle हो जाना चाहिदा ऐ, right age ने’ and so forth. Now plenty has been afoot since the last post and this time, it concerns our two brothers, Sushil and Ram.

Why, you will wonder did I not post anything on this blog about these developments earlier? I will tell you why.

The thing is good folks, not only is Punjabi gossiping all-pervasive and omnipotent, it is also highly complex. The two figures below will explain the vast complexities underlying and overlying Punjabi gossip:

Figure one shows the entire gamut of gossip there is about, say Ram’s roka. So when did the roka happen, when was it decided when the roka will happen, when was it decided that it will be decided when the roka happens, who decided that the roka will happen, who decided when the roka will happen, who decided who will decide when the roka happens... you get the drift, right? Now from all of this gossip, there is some part that one Buaji will deem appropriate to be shared. Maa will have another part of the entire gossip appropriate to be shared and Chacha will have yet another part.

There is also the concept of receiver-appropriate gossip (see Figure 2) so Buaji might select some bits from her total gossip deemed appropriate to be shared to be relayed to one person while she may choose to provide her entire portion of gossip deemed appropriate to be shared to another person. The same thing is followed by all other family members and the entire situation is made even more complex (you did not think that was possible, right?) by the fact that the family members often have overlapping receivers of information. So if the entire information is alphabets A-Z, Chacha will tell PQR to मनोहरलाल वीरजी while Buaji will tell ABCDMNOPQR to मनोहरलाल वीरजी and then Chacha will crib that Buaji told more to मनोहरलाल वीरजी and मनोहरलाल वीरजी will call Maa and Badi Mummy and Buaji and Chacha and Chachi and do some fin Punjabi गिल्ला about how “सान्नू ते कोई कुछ दसदा वि नहीं है”.

Why am I telling you all of this? Because this is exactly the reason, mine good folks why I withdrew into the proverbial shell and refused to update this very fine specimen of a blog. Sushil believes in free speech so he is cool with anything written here. But older family folks have come to consider this blog as a bit of a pain in the ass. Ram is a bit of a private domain/public domain person who compartmentalizes information worthy of sharing like the freakiest obsession. Plus I am scared of him.

See I am woefully indiscriminate in sharing information; the proverbial open book. I will, for example, at the slightest provocation of how my ‘भाभी ’ (Ram’s fiancée who by the way retches at the word 'भाभी') is, share details of her hairstyle and her apartment and the fact that she has a nice tattoo on her ankle that is Japanese for “bittersweet life”. See why this blog gets me in trouble so often?

Anyhue, I have been biding my time and fighting my secret battle to update the blog for several months now. In the process of my forced silence, I have acquired the habit of reciting blog posts to myself that I could not write, much to the concern of Sonu who until recently was sleeping in the same room as I do.

But all is good, my unsuspecting-and-blissfully-unaware-of-the-iron-gloves-clamped-on-my-fingers-for-so-long-so-that-I-cannot-type readers. Only this morning did I receive a gracious ‘you can write what you what on the blog’ call from Ram and Sushil was equally sporty about his wedding story.



Watch this space!

Because one cannot burp

One may think that by not getting entangled in the matrimonial web, one would be able to steer clear of awkward dinners and such meetings with unfamiliar folks of the spouse's family. One would soon realize that one has been terribly wrong to make this assumption.

Ever since the wretched siblings of mine have turned on me, switched sides and embraced the famed matrimonial bliss, I find myself in the midst of such dinners and parties, smiling ज़बरदस्ती as I desperately try to recall the name of the sibling's spouse's brother's wife's nephew. Not a happy place.

This is not in any way meant to be taken as a reflection on the respective families of the spouses of the siblings. They are all lovely people and I am always very happy to meet them (briefly). See, I find myself unable to relate to the societal norms that are followed during a dinner or time-out with people in general. Which is a way of saying I don't know what to say when there are a bunch of people sitting around a table (or standing randomly for that matter). Take the example of Sunil Uncle who is a relative of ours in some way and who owns a guest house in our area. Last year, he decided to throw a party on new year's eve at this guest house and he calls Chacha and says EVERYBODY must attend. Chacha says, of course and thinks nothing about it because there cannot be a Punjabi party where EVERYBODY is not invited to attend.

Now my New Year plans are always the same- wave the rest of the family goodbye and then prop myself down before the TV to watch movies while eating unhealthy food and attending calls from drunk friends. This time, it turns out Sunil Uncle was serious when he said EVERYBODY must attend. Chacha was feeling very proud as he walked into the party because I am told that my anti-social antics are bequeaths of my Dad and my Chacha and so HIS accepting an invitation without any drama is actually a feat. Chacha struts into the Guest House but finds Sunil Uncle blocking the entrance. "Where is Shweta?" he says and continues to block Chacha's entrance for a while. Let us cut the long story of how he harassed all of us about my absence short by stating that my potentially very (happily) solitary New Year's eve was marred by incessant phone calls from a drunken Sunil Uncle whose party, for some inexplicable reason was ruined because "साड्डे बच्चे सान्नू घास नि डालदे ने". Let me point out here that until very recently, Sunil Uncle did not know I existed.

But we digress.

The reasons that I avoid such formal settings begin from not being able to scratch or burp but do not end just there (For example, why can I not sit चौक्ढ़ी मार के without getting stern warning glances from my family members?). And when the 'people in general' is replaced with सम्धि family, the pressure to entertain and please is too much to bear.

So my happy plans about the added perks of not getting married, i.e. not having to deal with strangers who are suddenly your family all seemed to disappear like those Death Eaters in the Harry Potter movies do, as soon as my siblings began to get hitched. Life, good friends of mine is not easy. And life, good friends of mine is especially not easy when they don't let you wear a t-shirt and pair of shorts to a dinner. Because life, good friends of mine cannot be easy when you are squirming uncomfortably in fancy clothes and burping silently inside your own mouth.

The most unimaginable thing, however is that nobody seems to understand my very logical grumbling.

Becoming slightly incomplete

I have been mulling over this post and fighting in my head about whether I should write it or not. Then I decided that I wanted to. This blog had been started for family to connect through, and a death is as much part of a family's coming together as a celebration like a wedding is.

Sushil and Radha's dad; our Bade Papa passed away recently. It was the first time any of us had seen a death this close and felt its cruel swipe take away something so integral to our existence that we have been left staggering since then, trying to find our ground again.

The physical absence of Bade Papa is striking in the house. The simple, single-storey house in Dehradun with its simple little garden is the place we called home for sometime when my Dad and Chacha moved back from Ranchi to Dehradun in the beginning of the 90s. This is where we bonded as the family that we are today and it is here that we learnt the value of a life that is shared- with equal love and intensity- with parents, uncles, aunts, siblings and cousins. I will not pretend for one minute that living together has been all roses and butterflies; there was and continues to be constant strife and problems but it is nothing compared to the love, security and happiness we get in return.

The physical existence of a person is defined to a large extent by the essence and traits of the person. Bade Papa's presence is etched strongly in our house and will not fade away, I can say with complete confidence.

When we were in school, he would sit down every evening to sharpen our pencils and to rub our erasers clean against the rough surface of the back of a clipboard. We would return from school and eye him warily while eating our lunch because just as he saw we were about to finish, he would walk into the store room and bring out the blankets for our daily afternoon naps that we royally resisted to no avail.

A few years down the line, it was time for us to apply to colleges and that phase of our lives is linked intricately to us calling Bade Papa and asking him to get us innumerable drafts for innumerable applications that we sent off, every which where. Bade Papa worked at State Bank of India and he would get us our paperwork- applications for opening bank accounts, pin numbers for ATM cards, drafts that we would ask him to make and then forget about and so many other such things- at home for us to sign like a bunch of princes and princesses. For many years, none of us knew our accounts numbers or branch names and when there arose a situation that we needed these details, we would call him to find out!

Those years while he worked at the bank have similar stories that are a part of us. Bade Papa was an avid cards-player and his evenings after work were spent at the Doon Club with his "table"- a group of people who always played cards together at the same time and with the same "kitty" (pool). But never was he late in reaching home and by 7:00 p.m. he would be back home to spend the rest of the evening with family. Sunday morning and afternoons were entirely devoted to Badi Mummy and the rest of us. We went to the Dargah where we ate the bhandara and then onwards to the Doon Club for a round of Tambola and the snacks and cold drinks that made Sundays the best day of our childhood time. Even after us kids moved away from Dehradun or stopped going to these Sunday entertainments, Bade Papa and Badi Mummy continued to go, every week.

There are so many other things about him that are permanent and unfading. The fact that while he was working in the bank, he would never answer our calls on his mobile but instead, disconnect our calls and dial back from his office phone. The fact that he would use "cool slangs" like "yo" and "OK dude" without understanding what they meant and always accompanying them with a high-five. The fact that he spent his morning hours moving from one end of the house to the other, driving Badi Mummy mad, cleaning this and cleaning that and therefore never reaching the bank on time.
The place where he would sit with his brothers during the routine round of drinks every evening, the way he would call his wife "Veenu", the way he would smilingly look down, nod his head and say "अच्छा" when somebody would pull his leg or the way he always said "खुश रहो, स्वस्थ रहो, चिरंजीव रहो" every time one of us greeted him. The last was true even when he was in the terminal stages of his cancer and could barely speak.

The death of one of your own takes away a part of you and maybe that is why it is so hard. They say 'memories make a man' and when somebody who is a big part of all your memories is suddenly taken away, it leaves within you a void that will never fade. I had heard earlier that time heals wounds but I realize that the death of a close one is a wound that cannot be healed. The void is here to stay and what the passage of time will do is teach us to live with this void.

Less than a week after Bade Papa's death, we are already beginning to smile and laugh and joke with each-other. The family members are slowly returning to their respective towns and cities and life is resuming to the same routines and same pace.

Only now, we are living it as slightly incomplete people who have lost a part of themselves in losing a father.