An era concludes

When you look at individuals, the intial feeling am saying... you have this intuition with you... this person is nice or this person is bad.........you look at my father... and the first thought that comes to your mind, "genuine"... his smile says it all...

Yesterday was his last day at office... yes, he retired after a long innings as a civil servant working in various capacities. His colleagues at office had organised a small function for him, felicitating him on his contribution to colleagues and the department. Unlike the churlish ones that we have in school, college and in some cases PGs, this one was bereft of theatrics and melodrama. Quite expectedly though given the crowd is physically not in a condition to go "Chiggy-Wiggy". All of us went for the function - my mother, sister, my brother-in-law and me of course. It was a smallish hall with a seating of about 100 people, but it was not filled to capacity.

The event began with a some Mr. Sharma talking at length on my father's contribution to the office, his honesty, his integrity, hardworking, helpful, insightful, and most importantly a very non-controversial personality. For a second I felt that I was attending a PTA meeting except that the child in this case had just turned 60 years. Since, it was not a public speaking competition, the others that followed found solace in using the same set of adjectives in praising him. Quite banal but innocent I thought. At the end of it, my father was asked to make a final comment on the proceedings. My father is not the one to come out with immediate topics of interesting conversations and definitely not the one great at public speaking , but rather somebody who mostly prefers to speak only when forced to do so. He thanked the most important couple of people like seniors and colleagues (we were never mentioned.. imagine the error) and he thanked the rest. There were refreshments post that.

While returning from the function we had this little fight over what we wanted to do after the function. While we hijacked him to the nearest 5-star, he came out of the car mumbling. "What?", I asked. "I wanted to go to temple first.", he said. "You should have told so?", My mother responded. "You just took me here, what was I supposed to do?", My father retorted. "So, lets go there. Its anyways not too late.", my sister said. I told my father while returning home, "Lets keep the channels of communication open... always."

It was only till the time he retired to bed that I saw him relaxed. He was all nervous and excited the whole time. I wanted to reason it out and so did others, but I managed to shift the conversation to some friendly family gossip.

At night I thought of his journey from tamil hinterland to the babu in delhi. To have found his lady love in a place at least a 2,000 kms from his birthplace. To have managed to master an alien language and culture. To have moved from a single room flat in naraina to a two bed-room apartment in Dwarka. These things are material in nature and have probably not changed the person inside him who remains forever restrained. Though I felt I would write alot.. but may be I am so overwhelmed that I am short of words.. I would prefer it that way..

Dev always says, "Stop romanticising everything around you." Thats true, but I think in this one I would beg to differ...