A requiem to Dad (a real life incident as a memorial for Fathers Day)

A requiem to Dad (a real life incident as a memorial for Fathers Day)

Fathers day’!! And I remember my first drink!! It happened way back in’72. I was all of  15 and was out with the boys. We had climbed up a little hill in St.Thomas’Mount,Madras (about 1000 ft), the parish had installed the way-of-the cross along its steps and it was our haunt thru’ our teens.At its the base  on one side we had the army camp,the Officers Training School beside that was the domestic airport and

the other part of the base was civilian areas. We usually got together in the evenings each with his own musical instrument, harmonica, melodica, guitars, mandolin, flute and the little bongo’s, climbed to about just below the top and sat on the ‘table-top’ (a flat outcrop of rock) serenading the stars, rocks the steps and statues. Oh man! We really made music, everything was music back then, these were the days of the Beatles, remember?

T’was on one of these occassions when one of the guys got a little ‘hooch’ (illicit liquor, liquor was prohibited in Madras back then) mixed it with Coke (cocoa-cola was just introduced in India) and passed it around. Happily sipping our brew I was’nt aware of the real effects until we rose to go home. Now I began to ‘see’ sound and ‘hear’ colour. I felt like I was doing the ‘moonwalk’ even before Michael Jackson made his debut on the international music scene. Vivid memories of that walk back home and up the stairway to the first floor, where we lived. I pushed open the door and the next thing I know I was flat on the floor. Woke up the next morning in the sitting room, where I had fallen, wondering what the smell was, I opened one eye and then the other to see myself in my own ‘puke’. By now the full impact of the scene hit me like a sledge-hammer, was dad around,? had he seen me like this,? it was 8am and he usually woke at 5am. Ever so ‘quietly’ went to the  bathroom, a hot bath with lots of Dettol did the trick. Revived and refreshed I got out, and was relieved to see that mum had already cleaned up the mess. No one said a word.

I was just beginning to lower ‘my guard’ when dad came out of the room, I had that ‘sinking’ feeling in the pit of my stomach and waited for the ‘storm’ to hit with all its ferocity. Oh boy! Was I in for a surprise, dad put a bottle on the table walked over to the kitchen brought a glass and a bottle of water, called me over asked me to sit then sat down opposite me opened the bottle (it was a sealed bottle of rum, probably from one of his army friends, I never asked) and told me to pour myself a drink!! Can you imagine, if I did it I would get the worst and if I did’nt it will be the same, I could’nt imagine the best of him in this situation. I did’nt move, fearfully I looked at him, pleading to get it over with quickly, but he was in no hurry to teach me what he wanted. He looked at me steadily for the longest couple of minutes I could remember. (I now recognize the look in his eyes was of that  painful question ‘did I fail?’)

He poured  a shot into the glass and topped it up with water. The glass stood between us on the table and he asked me: How’s the head?  ‘heavy’, I said, dad said ‘drink that it will cure you’.

Then he said something I never forgot : ‘Son anything you want to do you can, but not all things are good, I did not expect this from you, but the next time you can come home and have a drink if you must, because then, even if anything untoward happened I will be able to treat you with the dignity you deserve but it will not happen if you did it outside of this home’.

An ode to my father God bless his dear soul!

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