He Lives In Me…
He lives in you, He lives in me
He watches over, Everything we see
Into the water, Into the truth
In your reflection, He lives in you
-The Lion King on Broadway
It was a late Thursday evening. I sat at the edge of the bed, my chest heavy, a lump in my throat. My father sat across from me, both my aunts (his sisters) on the other side of the bed. In the middle of the bed lay an elderly man, struggling and straining to breathe, with his eyes closed. Was he conscious of our presence? I will never know. My grandmother held his hand tightly and my aunt rubbed his chest. They gently called out to him. The air was heavy with anticipation; he was at the threshold. His breathing started to become shaky. It slowed down to a whisper….and then there was a deep and long silence.
10 years ago, today (Oct 15th), our beloved Kaka (as his grandchildren affectionately called him) passed away, silently and peacefully, surrounded by some of the people who were closest to him. The scene of his passing has played out in my mind innumerable times ever since. After all, it was the first death of a loved one that I witnessed firsthand. Death is difficult to grasp at any age and my way of dealing with it was simple — place the memory in a box and drop it off in a faraway corner of the mind. I remember my mother had urged me to write something for him back then. “He was so fond of you and you both shared such a special relationship” she would say, but I could never get myself to do it. I was a 3rd-grade teacher at the time and I remember even going back to work the next morning. There was a sense of solace that I found in the classroom, surrounded by a group of 8-year olds who embodied life and vitality, a comforting counter-force to this first encounter with death.
That was 10 years ago. This year also happens to mark the 100th anniversary of Kaka’s birth and Sept 23 (his birthday) saw a stream of heartfelt tributes and memories from near and dear ones. Reading their words moved something in me and suddenly, the box that I had tucked away all those years ago was reopened. A deluge of memories came flowing out — the night of his passing, the lazy Sundays spent at my grandparents’ home in Lonavla, his booming voice calling his grandchildren to join him at the dinner table, evenings spent listening to his music, walks in the garden as he tended to his plants, his watchful presence as he sat in the living room or in the verandah with a cigarette, the sound of rustling leaves and chirping birds punctuated by the melody of his whistling. The list goes on…
A few months back, I had written a letter to my 22-year old self, the same self that had returned from university in the summer of 2010 and experienced the loss of his grandfather just a few months hence. In that letter, I had spoken about the importance of ‘mirrors’ — people and things that can reflect the very best in us. Kaka was one of my earliest mirrors — a powerful and steady presence for the first 2 decades of my life.
Interestingly, one of the most important ways he played this role was through the letters he used to write to me. Kaka had started writing letters when India was still a part of the British Raj and by 2004, more than half a century later, he continued writing letters having embraced a new medium to do so — the internet. So when my family and I moved to the U.S in the fall of that year, email kept us connected. This practice continued as I moved on to college in Canada and I could expect an email from him every few weeks.
Now, 10 years later, I realized that the ‘box’ I had hidden away all these years was right there — sitting in my Gmail inbox. I logged in and hit search — nbezbora@vsnl.net. Over a hundred emails popped up with subject lines that read ‘Hello!’, HAPPY BIRTHDAY’, ‘Congrats’, ‘A belated email’. The first email he sent me was dated 31 Jan 2005 and the last one was from 23 Jan 2010, 7 months before his passing:
My dear Arhan,
Just read your msg and both of us were delighted. We miss you so much that a mail from you bring you very near us! Avantika’s mail also gladdened our hearts!
I noted with interest what you wrote. Satisfaction with what you do is very important. It will enrich you in many ways. There should always be a purpose of doing a thing in a particular way with some goal in mind. With honest effort, everything is achievable. Devotion is required. What I know of you, you have all this. Perseverance is important too. Setbacks happen in everyone’s life. That is nothing much to worry about. Learning is a continuous process. I am still learning!
I pored through these emails — updates from school and college, words of advice, concerns about health, excitement at India’s latest cricket win, a periodic round-up of news from Lonavla. It was as if we were in animated conversation once again — long-forgotten memories emerged in a new light, mundane moments from the past were now anything but:
When I wrote my msg, I forgot to ask one important thing. How is your cold & cough? Is it due to exposure to the cold climate outside and the controlled temp. inside houses? So too much of exposure to temp. variation? Or, is it due to some allergy? Have you taken any medicine?
What’s more, the magnitude of Kaka’s influence on me suddenly became clearer.
In my teens, I developed a keen interest in science and I spent 4 years in college pursuing a degree in physics and mathematics. What many people might not know is that the early conditions for this passion were laid by Kaka — through bedtime stories of his life as a student at Benares Hindu University, the time he interacted with Prof. C.V. Raman at a lecture, through the many books and encyclopedias that he gifted me with titles like ‘Strange Worlds, Amazing Places’, and ‘Why In The World’:
Dear Arhan,
Hurray!!
Oslo: India born Srinivasa S. R.Varadhan has been named winner of the Norwegian Abel Prize, known as the Nobel Prize for mathematics.
Well done Prof. Varadhan! Congrats!!
And on another occasion:
I forgot to write about the great news of achievement of ‘Particle Physicists’ in testing the ‘Big Bang’ machine made after 20 years of research. This was to send protons at speed of light in a tunnel. I do not write any details. Your news papers must be full of it. Next will be to send protons from opposite directions to collide, simulating theories about how this universe was born!
My passion for science was accompanied by a love for sports and one of my earliest memories was sitting glued to the TV screen with Kaka in his Lonavla home, watching football games and endless re-runs of recordings of documentaries on the gymnast Nadia Comaneci, the 1983 Indian World Cup Team, and the 1932–33 ‘bodyline’ series between England and Australia:
The last test match was very disappointing for us Indians. After Sehwag was run out, all the others, except the tail enders Kumble and Balaji, went into a shell, allowing the Pakistani bowlers and fielders to completely dominate. Pakistan approached the game very well indeed. They deserved to win. There is a lot of criticism against Ganguly in the media. I hope he does well in the One-dayers both as captain and batsman. I hope he does not fold up.
It was not just sporting news in the media that he used to share with me. In the summer of 2006, when I experienced a heartbreaking loss on the tennis court in a state championship final, he was there for me and helped me see failure in a different light:
My dear Arhan,
I know, you must be disappointed when the final went in favour of your rival. Don’t lose heart. Yes, it would have been nice if you had won. But winning and losing depends on many factors, even though you were expected to win after pocketing the first set at 6–1. You were unlucky that the cramp came on the way. You were completely handicapped and you could not move! Everyone there knows why and how you lost. Under the circumstances, you did very well giving a fight to make it ‘6 all’ in the second set before losing at 6–7. Obviously it was not expected that you would be able to continue the fight in the 3rd set. Good thing is that you did not have any problem with your leg on which you had a surgery. Now it is history, so bury the past and forget about it. This is perhaps not the last match you are playing! One must learn from losing also. We all learn by experience. I understand you have a function in the school today. Go there with a smiling face, as a real sportsman.
Love to you all,
=Kaka=
He didn’t miss sending my mother a few words of consolation as well :)
Ina — Pl. do not worry. Arhan did well. The final was beyond him due to reason beyond his control. Although he lost in the final, it was a great achievement for Arhan to come out as a finalist. He played a captain’s game! I would rather congratulate him. We must not put pressure on him by expressing over expectation when he lost due to cramps. Go to the school function with Arhan in your normal composure. Arhan has not let down his school, but did what he could under the circumstances.
In 2010, I had a choice to stay on and build a life in Canada or return to India. It was Kaka’s own life-story that proved to be a key source of inspiration for me during this fork in the road. Kaka would often tell me the story of how as a young man, he was working in the U.K and had received an invitation to pursue an advanced course of study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston. However, those were also the early days of the fledgling Indian republic and the winds of the Indian Freedom Movement still blew strong. Responding to Nehru’s call to all Indians abroad to return home for the work of nation-building, Kaka gave up the option of a lucrative professional career and returned home, pioneering the establishment of the first two ball-bearing plants in post-independence India. The legacy of this choice influenced my own decision in 2010 to return to India to serve as a teacher in a government school (and in hindsight, if I hadn’t taken that call, I would never have had the opportunity to spend the last 4 months of his life with him).
India has another feather in its cap! Our Chandrayaan-1 space craft was orbiting the moon in an eliptical orbit about for some days at more than 100 miles from the moon . From there it sent photographs of the earth. Yesterday it entered the moon-gravity orbit and will go round the moon collecting various data about the moon and send back home. Everything is going according to plan. This is a great achievement. India is only the 6th country in the world to do so.
During his last year, while his memory occasionally failed him, he remained in high spirits, retaining his sense of humour and his irresistible zest for life:
My dear Arhan,
Your Kaka has gone ‘NUTS’! I addressed you as Madhur! Often I call Avantika ‘Jhuma’! Ha! Ha!! Ha!!!
As I unpacked the many layers of this time capsule, I couldn’t help but think— while Kaka left us 10 years ago, he continues to be present in my daily thoughts, actions, and choices, never too far away. While he might not always make an appearance in my conscious mind, he is nonetheless a director in my sub-conscious, manifesting through deeply held values that got imprinted in my mental and emotional DNA through our time together, a genetic code that includes habits of the mind — to be insatiably curious and always open to new learning, habits of the heart — to be in service of something beyond oneself, and habits of the hand — to be disciplined in one’s personal life and focus on living each day with presence.
As 2020 draws to a close and we enter yet another uncertain age, fraught with chaos and disruption (much like the world of his youth), Kaka’s life and example will serve as a guiding beacon for me and so many others whose lives he touched.
And with that, if I was writing him an email today, it would say — Congratulations Kaka — you have completed your Century. Raise your bat up high. And take a bow.
Note: One of the other qualities I have inherited from my grandfather is a ‘squirmish’ relationship with openly expressing love and affection (clearly, it took me 10 years to write this!). And it might have taken me 10 more if not for members of my family who shared an equally close bond with Kaka and whose heartfelt words and tributes inspired this post. You can find some of these linked below:
- A tribute written by my cousin Arjun Phukan shortly after Kaka’s death, painting a vivid and moving picture of our grandfather and his life’s work.
- A piece of Kaka’s music, shared by my cousin Sameer Barua (“To say he inspired me to become a musician would be an understatement. His approach to the musical workflow completely shaped the way I handle my own music from composition to recording, multitracking, and archiving”).
- A tribute on Facebook by my sister Avantika Bezbora (with some lovely personal anecdotes).
- A tribute on Facebook by my aunt Ruma Barua (accompanied by a set of beautiful vintage photographs).
