The speculated susurrations still strike my ears. Although, I could not harken when you whispered them they were conveyed to me drenched in a stream of tears. On your deathbed, when you wanted me beside you as you were expending your last moments but I was not near alludes to my misfortune. I was not near, not because I did not love you but because you were not fatally ill, nor there were any suggestions of death. You felt slightly ill and you were rushed to the hospital by your elder sons. I remember you having morning tea on that day with us directing us to knot the paddy stalks thin as it eases the threshing process. But I know fall does not need time and reason. It happens when it has to happen. None can halt its happening. What, I often reflect, did you want to tell me? Did you want to give me some important guidance? Did you want to reveal any secret to me that I did not know before? You went with lots of mysteries that never revealed themselves to me. You went with the loaded heart that only I could lift but time had not permitted me to reach to you. I still find myself in that hospital ward where you lied to never get up, where you closed your eyes never to open them again but I know with your spiritual eyes you see me every day I can wager on that.
Since your departure, springs lost charm. Your domesticated cock ceased giving Adhan at dawn and we don’t rear any cocks now. Your pet birds stopped chirping mesmerizing songs. The swallows never built their nests in our house. Pigeons disappeared from our courtyard. Our paddy fields minimized their annual produce, our walnut trees do not bear similar fruits, and our home lost the sense of belongingness, since your departure, a rupture has occurred in our lives that can’t be dispelled now. Sometimes things do not fall, they collapse badly. The threat of insecurity looms over us day and night. People recognized us by your name. You had a great social recognition. You still have it. Death popularizes us more than life. We lost our recognition now. People know us no more than they knew us during your life. This brutal world turned against us. We roam here now sans living. You had been the best Dad. We badly miss you.
It was the month of September, a decade ago, when you went away and left us here to confront the mayhem of this world where mercenary ends matter in every field at every step. This estranged world is empty of love, peace, joy and care now. This September used to be full of euphoria as you used to sip two cups of morning tea with us followed by the gossips on various difficult dimensions of life. This month has become a memory now. It reminisces now of your presence. It is only a remembrance now as Dominic Riccitello puts it, “I used to love September but now it just rhymes with remember”. This month has become the most painful month of the year. It is to us what April is to T.S. Eliot. When people ask me to talk about the autumn season that commences with September, I stop for reflection to collect words and courage to express the pain that this season holds for me. It fetches despondency. It fetches death and decadence. It fetches the gloom that overshadows everything. It fetches the doom, the doom of my spring, you were the spring of my life. Since your demise, there has been no spring. What remains is the eternal autumn. Had I been P.B. Shelley I would have said that some autumns remain far behind never to be followed by springs. Everything is transformed now as gloomy and despondent. I had never gone into the field since your death. It reminds me of you o! Dad. I feel you coming towards me and asking me to hurl paddy stalks while you weave the paddy stack. I feel you working diligently and cautiously so that not a single grain of paddy is lost. Since you went away, we either give our land to be tilled on lease or we hire labourers to plant, weed, reap and thresh the paddy.
Loved ones never die, they are alive in the memories of those whom they left behind. Marcus Tullius Cicero beautifully and painfully says, “The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living”. But the burden of memory is not easy to be carried on one’s shoulders. It is painful. The pain multiplies when this memory is of one’s father who meant the world to you. But, indeed, we can never lose a person who is dear to us. He stays forever. We should never consider our demised loved ones gone forever. They live with us, in us and through us. We think about them. We talk about them. We remember them. We assimilate their principles of life into our lives. We adopt their ways of dealing with the problems of life. What Lycidas meant to John Milton, my Dad meant the same to me. Everything mourned for the premature doom of Milton’s beloved friend, everything mourned the death of my father. Every patch of my farm, every tree of my garden, every street of my town, every friend and foe laments on my father as he was appreciated by everyone on account of his honesty, diligence, simplicity, kindness and most importantly his perseverance. He never gave up before the completion of his task. He was the renowned man of my town. I was proud to be his son.
As John Donne believed death should not be proud, for it can not alienate us from our loved ones. I reiterate this belief to me. I know death failed to separate us. The son-father relationship is so strong that no day passed since your death when I did not remember you. On Thursday night every week, I pray two units of prayer and dispatch its recompense to you. I know it reaches you and you are proud of me as well because I have dreamt of you smiling in the world of joy. As Mitch Albom says, “Death ends a life, not a relationship”. We still talk to each other in the language that is intelligible to us only, in the world that is accessible to us only, the ideas that only we understand. I take your guidance whenever I require it. you never cease to appear when I need your help and I need it always.
The writer can be reached at [email protected]

Fida Hussain Bhat