Father and How We Are Living

(This piece was written almost four and a half years ago)

“Son, why haven’t you cut your hair? It’s gotten so long.”

The day before yesterday evening, after returning from Sylhet, I stopped by home briefly to see Baba before heading to a career meetup. These were the first words he said to me. Baba can’t speak like he used to anymore. He talks very slowly, a little at a time. Baba was always a man of few words anyway. After his stroke, his speech gets stuck now, he mixes up one word with another. He barely speaks unless he has to. When I was away, Ma would say, “Talk to your father on the phone. He seems a bit happier when he talks to you.” Seeing me, Baba was overjoyed! He told Ma, “Mom, give Bappi something to eat. His face looks so gaunt.” Ma couldn’t hold back her tears. She said, “In the week and a half since his stroke, this is the first time your father has called me by name.” Baba is ill himself, yet pays no mind to that. When I was stroking his head affectionately and asking how he was, he was asking about me in his very faint voice. Where I live, what I eat, whether I go to the office, when I have to join in Khulna, if I’m having any problems, and so much more! That same familiar smile on his face. Baba always has a smile on his face. He never gets angry. Even when we tease him, he doesn’t get upset—just looks at us with a smile, sometimes lowering his eyes bashfully.

These days we deliberately ask Baba, “Baba, what did you eat? Who came to see you? What’s on TV now?” These things and more. Baba can’t quite remember what he ate a little while ago. He forgets who came to visit. We’re doing this lately to help Baba remember. We also have some fun with it. Yesterday at the dinner table, Ma was saying, “We’ll get Bappi married! Your daughter-in-law will light up our home. We’ll all go traveling together. It’ll be so much fun.” Baba says nothing, just bows his head and smiles. I said, “Baba, what do you say? Should I get married?” Baba slowly lifted his eyes and said, “Yes.” I said, “But Baba, I’m not finding any beautiful girls. All the beautiful girls are busy falling in love. What’s the point of marrying without a beautiful girl, tell me! Baba, didn’t you marry at 33? I’ll do exactly the same thing. Marrying young isn’t good. By that calculation, I still have 3 years. If I wait a little, I’ll find a beautiful girl. Just like you waited and married a beautiful and good girl, right? Like that.” How terribly embarrassed Baba became! I said, “What, Baba? Isn’t Ma beautiful?” Baba turned red with embarrassment and said, “Yes, son, your mother is still very beautiful.” Two drops of water rolled down Ma’s cheeks. A glimmer of laughter in Pappu’s eyes. The poor boy has gotten into quite a predicament. Shopping for the house, cooking, helping Ma with all the work, buying medicine for Baba and Ma, all the household chores, his own studies—he has to do everything. When Baba was healthy, we two brothers never had to go shopping. It would be very difficult, but he would still do everything with his own hands. Ma was a bit unwell, so when he came home, he would help her with all the housework. I never saw Baba having anyone else do his own work. Pappu does all this work now. I can’t stay home because of work necessities. He does everything. It’s really taking a toll on the poor boy. He’s having a very hard time. Even so, he always has a smiling face. This is Baba’s teaching. Good thing, Pappu knows how to cook quite well! Today Ma was mischievously saying she’ll put Pappu and the daughter-in-law in the kitchen during my wedding feast.

Ma and Baba think they won’t be able to see my bride. This is what all the worry is about. In our family, there’s absolutely nothing to worry about. An impossibly happy, peaceful, neat, ideal family. All this worry that Ma and Baba do seems like a luxury to me. There’s really nothing to worry about. But still, there are concerns. When they get older, all parents probably want to see their son’s wife. But how do I explain to them that marriage isn’t like the BCS exam or IBA entrance exam where you take it and come first. Getting married is very difficult work! If someone asked whether I’d take a marriage exam or ten more BCS exams, I’d choose the second. I was telling Ma and Baba all this jokingly, and immediately Pappu piped up, “Ma, there’s no point telling Dada all this. We need to bring a sister-in-law and put her in his hands. There’s no other option.” Another major problem has been added to this. Our housemaid has left—she’s getting married. Modern people live in very difficult times. You can get by without a wife, but without a maid? Absolutely not! Someone who has both a wife and a maid at home is a very happy person. On top of that, Ma is unwell. We’re frantically searching for a maid but can’t find one. Finding trustworthy help is very difficult. Pappu has to handle all kinds of pressures. It’s quite a small family, but Ma somehow finds so many tasks. She tries to keep everything sparkling clean. There are 24 bookshelves in the house, and Ma often cleans their glass while talking about me, tears streaming down her face. When she cooks something good, she thinks of me and calls saying, “Son, are you eating properly? When will you come home?” Baba used to say these things, but now he doesn’t say much—he remembers less about speaking. He just looks at everyone and keeps smiling. When we ask, “Baba, what do you want to eat? What are you craving?” he says, “I don’t crave anything anymore.” His right hand and right leg have gotten a bit weaker. But he’s been a little more cheerful since I came home. I think, “Ah! I could have stayed home!” Baba has become completely childlike. Whatever anyone says, he just smiles. He can’t quite remember what he ate a little while ago. He talks and moves like a small child. Baba never had any complaints against anyone or any demands of anyone, ever. This trait is even more apparent now. He doesn’t ask anyone for anything. He sleeps most of the time. When he watches TV, he just keeps watching and smiling.

Baba is a lawyer by profession, studies extensively on many subjects—the habit of studying came from him. Baba has to write a lot. I never saw Baba without reading or writing. Now he can’t read as much, when he tries to write he can’t remember letters, and after writing for a while his head starts to ache. It’s very painful to watch. Our relatives and colleagues are coming home to see Baba. Baba was completely an ideal, pure-hearted good man, never hurt anyone, always wished people well, never cheated anyone, always lived very simply. (I’ve written a lot about Baba before. I haven’t collected those writings. I’ll gather them and write again, let’s see.) Baba never mistreated anyone, or got angry, or spoke disrespectfully to anyone, or gossiped about anyone—none of this ever happened. He handled countless cases for helpless people, for free or for little money. When someone said they had no money, that they were poor, Baba would very easily believe them. He would tell us, “Son, people don’t surrender unless they’re truly helpless. In this world, whatever you give, you’ll get back many times over. That’s the rule.” Hearing this would make me terribly angry then, I’d get annoyed just seeing Baba. Now I understand, Baba’s life philosophy was correct. He often says, “Always try to help people. You’ll get a hundred opportunities a day to harm people, but the good fortune to help someone might not come even once in a hundred days.” I’ve been watching Ma and Baba since childhood, helping people selflessly, giving good advice. I know Baba lives in the love of many, many people. I’ve heard many say, “Your father has never suffered in his life, never will.” We really are very well off. Thank God. The power of people’s love is much, much greater. If you get this in life, you don’t need anything else. Colleagues come to see Baba and break down crying with emotion. They tell me, Pappu, and Ma, “It takes good fortune to be in the company of such a good man. A very good-hearted, simple person. He’s turned away many cases that he could have fought but would have caused great harm to someone. You don’t see this, son.” Hearing such things makes me feel as if all the happiness in the world has descended upon our home. What greater success could there be in a person’s life? You might earn a little more money by harming people, but life passes very beautifully even without that extra money. Being able to live with your head held high before family and society is a matter of great good fortune.

My father’s stroke was discovered on April 7, 2015. Ma and Pappu saw that Baba was just lying there, sleeping, unable to speak, unable to do anything for himself. Ma and Pappu thought perhaps his blood pressure had spiked. They rushed him to the doctor immediately. The doctor said he needed to be admitted to the clinic right away. Later tests revealed it was a mild stroke. The doctor believed Baba had the stroke on April 6th. Baba always hides his ailments. He never tells anyone anything, not even Ma. He’s a deeply anxious person by nature, terrified of doctors. He avoids going to doctors at all costs. You can’t even force him to go. The day before, he was feeling unwell but kept telling everyone at home it was just his blood pressure acting up, nothing more. He even went to court that day, worked as usual. If we could have taken him to the doctor immediately then, the damage to his brain would have been minimal. Now I think how much better it would have been if we had a doctor in the family. Baba is somewhat better now than before. But he’s still not well enough to return to court. Baba is such a workaholic—sitting at home is not easy for him. Everyone comes to visit Baba at home. When he sees someone, the way Baba smiles so peacefully! That smile is incomparable. You could do anything for that smile. Yesterday I noticed blood seeping from some spots on Baba’s foot. When anyone asks, Baba says, “Ants bit me. It’s nothing serious.” But it’s nothing like that at all. Baba doesn’t want us to worry about him in the least. Pappu spoke with the doctor over the phone. The doctor thinks it might be related to diabetes, said to apply one-time bandages to those areas for now. We’ll take him to the doctor again this evening. His name is Ehsanul Karim, a medicine specialist. Such a good man, always cheerful. You could call him our family doctor. Just talking to him makes a patient half-better. We’re also seeing another doctor—Hasanuzzaman, a neuromedicine specialist. We’ll go to him today too. We’ll discuss everything, and if we need to take him abroad, we’ll do that. A little while ago Ma said Baba seems to be hiding even more problems. He’s not telling anyone what’s happening inside him. How can we know if he doesn’t tell us? Ugh! Why is Baba like this? Always hiding things! It makes me so angry!

I went to Baba’s room to talk with him. Baba wasn’t in the room—he was on the balcony. Sitting on a little stool in this fierce summer afternoon, gazing at the bicycles and rickshaws clanging and rattling down the street below, smiling absently to himself. In that smile there was no complaint, no wanting, no clamor, no worry—not even any mystery. It was the smile of a simple man. Tears came to my eyes. I said nothing to Baba and came away. How can you be angry with such a person!

A final word. I never write about my personal sorrows on Facebook. There’s no point. Everyone assumes others are better off than they are. They think they’re the most miserable person in the world. Therefore, it becomes their duty to advertise their suffering with illustrations. Nobody comes to Facebook to hear about others’ pain. Whatever they might say out loud, deep down nobody really thinks about anyone else’s troubles. But this is the first time I’ve written about my own pain—I felt such a strong urge to write, that’s why. If my readers are annoyed, I hope they’ll forgive me.