by Ram Govardhan
Your death has exposed another chink in my armour: decision making, which was your forte, while repeating the same mistakes was mine. Ah, how quick-witted were you in pinpricking my foibles? Of course, I was, and am, a bundle of imperfections but, these days, people say I was, and am, an ideal father, husband and head of a family. However, you were the only one who knew I am none and, perhaps, as you loved to assert, worse than none.
“Being smart is of no consequence, what matters is decision makingSwift decisions aren’t enough, they must be rolled-out, come what may. Rolling them out isn’t enough, they must be pursued, to a nicety.” Those were your words to our lawyer whose bungling cost us the case, honour and millions. Since decision making was your sole domain, even on the rare occasions when you appeared undecided, none of us hazarded our ideas for you loathed even minor intrusions. Having made no decisions for over twenty eight years, having played the game within the confines of your decisions, now, in your absence, when I am required to take a call, I am unable even to imitate your art of arriving at decisions.
But our children have inherited more of your decisive genes, and your art is thriving in them, and I feel they have taken it to another level; the only difference is that they apply tact, which was not your suit. I see glimpses of you in them by seeing how they perceive, react, and decide. And, just as you, they too decide with ease, they too decide on their own, and, they too convey after firming up. At times, even you used to reconsider some of your decisions calling them hasty, but these guys invariably get it right on first take as it were.
A son sending a wedding card of his marriage to his father by courier is not unheard of these days. And we generally shrug off such things when they happen to others, somewhere else, but the truth that my son has ‘invited’ me to his wedding hit me hard, very hard, like a stab in the back. But you learn to shrug off this one too and move on for there’s no way out. The card is from Bernard, yes, that is the new given name of our eldest bundle of joy, Badri. No, the card is not made up of the yellow-pink stuff we adored, but a digital-age, designer one; when opened, the couple invite you to the ceremony in their own voices. They also thank you in advance, simply assuming that every invitee would turn up, but young folks cannot be accused of being too sanguine.
Orthodox fathers of our yore haggled with neighbourhood letterpress chaps until they rounded off the total. And both parents, armed with water bottles, handed out two or three wedding cards a day hopping on to two or three buses, returning with two or three bruises, upping their blood pressure levels by two or three notches. Badri has designed the card himself, addressed them, and sent one to me saying I am too old, too lost and too feeble to get hassled over such highly outsource-able services. How can I suspect his compassion for my arthritis?
Yes I know the question you are dying to ask: Who is the girl? Don’t worry, he comforted me, and claimed to have saved me from the drudgery of going around towns looking for a suitable girl, matching horoscopes, and wrangling over million other things. He has chosen the girl for himself, invited no one for the betrothal, had fixed the date, and fixed the hall for the wedding. In fact I didn’t even know the name of the girl until I received this invitation. Ruth is the name; yes, they are Christians and, hold your breath, she is to walk down the aisle the Catholic way.
While I was bedazzled by the chandeliers, the grandeur of the church took my breath away. There were none from our fraternity, except yours truly in attendance. Badri had not even invited Sandhya, who is in Cochin now. As I entered the hall, a sole, fleeting glance was what I deserved from Badri. There was no time for him to ask when I reached, where I checked in, or, after the ceremony, will I stay back, or go back. I knew his nature, so I had checked into the same hotel in Majestic that you loved to stay whenever we visited Bangalore. But then, Ruth spotted me searching for a seat in the back, asked one of her relatives to vacate, and made me sit in the front row. After getting me a cup of coffee, and after ensuring I was at ease, she rushed to be with her father, Clement—I liked the man and, true to his name, his chubby face radiated mercy.
The priest, groom, and the best man entered through a side door and waited at the altar. The groomsmen and bridesmaids walked, the ring bearer and the flower girl came next, while Ruth, accompanied by her father, walked through the centre of aisle up to where Badri, now baptized as Bernard, was waiting. Both of them, one after the other, vowed, “I promise to be true to you in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health. I will love you and honour you all the days of my life.”
The priest was vociferous enough to make up for the snag in the microphone, “You have declared your consent before the Church. May the Lord in his goodness strengthen your consent and fill you both with his blessings. What God has joined, men must not divide. Amen.” That was how they became man and wife.
Overwhelmed by a swarm of overzealous Christians jostling to greet their newly-inducted member, Badri was unmindful of my presence, but Ruth personally ensured that I was served vegetarian dishes. And you will be heartened to know that Ruth is a vegan, while Badri has turned a non-vegetarian, and he blames the juicy billboards of KFC, McDonalds, and the three-year stint in Redmond, where, he said, he had to survive on meat, both red and white.
With her calm disposition, a sweet singing voice, and a winsome smile, Ruth is a very affable girl. No way, no way could we have found a better bride within our fraternity that is turning carnivorous by the day and, since you always paid precise attention to detail, by the meal.
Unlike the beloved Garden City of temperate clime of our times, Bangalore is now almost as searing as Chennai, the only saving grace is absence of stickiness since the whole city sits on high altitude, far removed from the seas. Whenever we travelled to Bangalore, to climb the steep incline, don’t you remember, there used to be two steam engines pulling and pushing one train?
“The one in the front pulled and the one in the back pushed,” that’s how you used to describe it to nine-year-old Badri. But then, by the time he was mature enough to insist an outing by one such train, the railways had introduced powerful diesel engines, and only one in the front was doing all the pulling and pushing. And Badri thought you had made up the story of two engines and, no matter what I said, he is still unconvinced about the whole business of pulling and pushing. He says he had Googled enough about it and found nothing to that effect. “Over-active imagination,” he had recently declared.
From the marriage hall, they moved into an upscale apartment, fully furnished on day one. And what followed blew my mind away; Ruth conducted a Hindu style house-warming puja, just the way you used to do. While Ruth insisted on framed pictures of Hindu deities, Badri wanted only one big picture – that of Jesus Christ. Ruth’s point that his father, sister or other relatives may visit them and they may want to pray Hindu gods led to an ugly quarrel; Ruth gave in. But Badri hated every bit of what she said and, in the two days I was with them, I saw many of your qualities in her and many of her stances reminded yours but he hated every one of them; he seems to want a wife, not a mother. How can I find fault with him?
The apartment, to your utter dismay, is too small, as small as our bedroom, which is divided into three tiny bedrooms, each one smaller than the other, and all of them smaller than our storerooms. One for the two of them, one for the two kids they plan to have in three years, and one for guests like me. The spendthrift that he is, Badri is delighted to have invested in such a plush flat in such a ritzy neighbourhood, and happy to pay two hundred and forty fat monthly instalments. “My children would be adults by the time I pay up,” bragged Badri.
‘A petite beauty’ is how Badri describes his car, smaller than our retro-themed Concept One Beetle. Do you remember the days when fifteen-year-old Badri used to hate the Beetle saying it was too small to take his five plump friends to the playground? And their cricket bats? And the tattered mats? And his two coloured cats?
Just trust me when I say we couldn’t have found a better girl than Ruth. So have a peaceful time in the heavens until my next mail. Or until I turn up there, who knows? Also, believe me, this generation is not going to dogs; they are very smart, very candid, very practical, and like the latest, high-end electronic gadgets, future-ready.
Ram Govardhan’s first novel, Rough with the Smooth, was longlisted for the 2009 Man Asian Literary Prize, The Economist-Crossword 2011 Award and published by Leadstart Publishing, Mumbai. His short stories have appeared in Asian Cha, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Muse India, Open Road Review, The Bangalore Review, Cerebration, Writer’s Ezine, Spark, The Literary Yard and several other Asian and African literary journals. He lives in Chennai, India. Email: ramdotgovardhan@ymail.com
