My father and me

My father has been at my place in Chennai for the past 3 days. This night, he left for Dharmapuri, where our home is. This is a strange feeling I have felt for him. I seem to miss him now.

When I was a kid, I used to worship him. Going around wherever he goes, doing whatever he does. I would never leave his side when he was home for the weekend. He used to work somewhere far away, and my mother used to run the house.

Through our lives we have seen each other in many perspectives. I have him as the proud father whenever my sister won a medal. She was an athlete in her school days. I have made him proud too. And we just used to adore them.

I guess things go wrong between fathers and sons when sons go out into the world. They see the vices of the world and practice some of them, and see the same in the fathers also. Then the super human image of dads just fades away. After which I am an adult and my father is an old man.

Things started going wrong between us when I was graduating. My father was becoming steadily a drunkard. My mom was breaking down into alternating fits of hysteria and depressions, though I think she managed things extremely well for a middle aged lady. I got into my post graduation and went away to hostel. My dad has a heart attack, then the bypass. Then the second heart attack, then the onset feebleness.

I am still unable to accept my father as being unable to beat me in arm wrestling. My arms are a sorry excuse for a full grown man’s. Slowed down. Absent minded. This cant be possible. Will I be like this someday? How would I look?

When you send off an old man, a person who has suffered for his actions, who is still suffering, who is still fighting to come to terms with his present physical and mental exhaustion, what would you feel? You will feel scared at the vision this offers. There will be a day when I will be emotionally alone. When I will be unable to connect with the age and the generation. When I will a fool at using the “in” gadgets. When I will be scared of trusting my reflexes. When I will be feeble. When I will be senile. What would I feel then?