In desperate need of feedback
I checked with tfa and they have no issues with online publishing, so back by popular demand (three of my alters out-voted the fourth), here's spaces.
Chapter 1
Me
Father never remarried. In 25 years, he let no one get near him. The few who knew him at all, didn't find his reclusivity alarming. I once heard grandmother say that for as long as she can remember, he had always been by himself. Occasionally, he would let another person get a brief glimpse of the joys and horrors hidden behind that benign yet reclusive facade, a privilege granted to a very select few. Until recently, I had always believed he had granted me that honour.
Now, looking at him stooped over old sepia photographs bent at the corners and old letters creased and torn from overuse, I'm not as naïve. Something tugs at me deep inside when I see him. When I was younger, he was my hero. Although he shrunk to a normal human being as I grew up, I never could see him as just as a man. A part of me retained the memory of him in his prime, larger than life. In the dull yellow mix of twilight and a flickering near-death lightbulb, I appreciate, for the first time, how much he has fallen from grace.
As I enter, there is the barest turn of the head to acknowledge my presence. The hunch tightens, however, zealously guarding memories he will never share with me. His right hand clenches, as if trying to hold on to a grain of time that is surely slipping away from him. My mere presence callously wrenches him from the sweet memory that he so desperately desires to engulf him. The vision of things that might have been is torn, and the heart that wills them to be is broken. The right hand unclenches as he realises the damage his momentary anger towards me has wrought on the memories that sustain him. A crumpled photograph falls lightly on his lap.
That some of them do not involve my dead mother awakens the inner beast, but now is not the time. "Hmmm…?" He asks, trailing off in apparent nonchalance. Even the monosyllable quivers slightly.
I cannot intrude now. If I do, he'll only draw further away. "Dinner is on the table…pa." The affectionate moniker is insincere and he knows it, but we will both let it pass, as we've done a thousand times before. Sometimes, I wonder if it would hurt more if we stopped before the 90 minutes are through. I laugh at the football analogy as it passes by, musing on the heritage I've inherited through him. I've never lived in the football state, his birthplace; never seen our country's lacklustre clubs play unwatched games for unheard-of trophies. Once in a while, though, the footballer in him seeps into me too.
Not getting a response, I turn to go. Every fibre of my soul urges me to ask him, to tease out everything he's bottled up for all these years. It's not as if I haven't tried. Immediately after the change first came over him, that was all I ever wanted, to be confided in. But I can't blame him for it either. When he was finally ready to tell me, I had already drifted. Now, we go back and forth, see-sawing through phases of growth and degeneration. Over time, I grew used to the process, even predicting its waxing and waning. The wall hurts today, because I know there's little time left. He's already had a second heart attack, and though he holds on dearly, we both know there's no hope.
In less than four months, it will have been 25 years since the change, and he will have turned 61, but four months is a long time. Even as I wonder if he'll live to see that anniversary, I can see the same doubts haunt him. But, unlike me, he doesn't fear the more painful eventuality. There's a deep sense of resignation that pervades him and everything he does now. He sees the long haul coming, and packs his mental bags one by one. The photographs are the nucleus of that preparation. He sits in his lonely little shell, filling himself with the emotions locked into those memories. Half-torn from frequent handling, they are his last real connection to a long, and I believe, regretted life. They will be the last things he sees, and once he leaves, will be the only pieces I will have to put together a puzzle that I have yearned all my life to understand.
At the door, I wait for the briefest moment, hoping for the feeble cracked voice to tell me it's time to connect and lay the 15 years behind us. The feeble voice comes, but with the customary "Coming…", and I resign myself to it. An exhale turns, instead, into a quiet sigh of familiarity. Diya must fill the spaces again, conversational or otherwise.
Chapter 2
Father
I can feel the tautness in his muscles as Kabir walks out the door. There is a well of frustration in him, that is fed by my constant denial to open myself up to him. I breathe again when I can no longer feel his presence in the room. This is my space again, and the familiarity that disappears with the intrusion of another entity, has returned to settle on me comfortably and benignly. I don't resent his interruptions anymore. Our estrangement isn't as severe as it once was. In the first days, his unending curiosity, his unreasonable demand to be let into parts of my mind that I deemed deeply private, angered me. Why wouldn't he understand that being my son didn't grant him unconditional access to my life? I admit I wasn't the best father he could have, but he never went hungry or unloved a day in his life. Why then did he feel so rejected because some memories were too painful to be shared?
I cannot use age for an excuse. The distance between us, palpable from almost the first instant I laid eyes on him, was not a result of my own inexperience or immaturity. At a few months away from 28, I was as ready for fatherhood as I could ever have been. Until the day I first laid eyes on him, I was even eager to receive him, to bring into my world an entity that was a part of me. All that changed at our first meeting, as I felt an inescapable heaviness crash over me, a stifling vice I could never wriggle out of. Now, in retrospect, I see that my emotional seclusion is an integral function of who I am. I believe that was one of the things that had drawn me to Nazeera. She was as singularly solitary. Admittedly, the circumstances under which we had met were unusual. Yet, most others around us clung to anyone they could for emotional support. Not her.
I had watched her for days, as she maintained her independence, refusing to rely on anyone. While others seemed to instinctively break down their defences for the sake of survival, she put up higher barriers. It was as if she were afraid that emotional weakness were a syndromic disorder, and if she let her guard down, she would be broken forever. While those around her quietly scurried around, making whatever they could of what had been handed to them, she had retained her pride. The few reports I could glean about her said she had every right to that pride. Her father had been a decorated military man, and her mother, a well-respected professor of English. She had been well on her way to a Fullbright scholarship until the circumstances of our meeting. The week she spent outside of the camp, she held to herself, giving me only the barest details. I respected her privacy, and, to this day, have never discussed even those barest details with anyone else.
Our first conversation had surprised me and frightened her. It hadn't been magical or incredible. We had laboured through most of it, often finding little or nothing to talk about. But, she had sensed something in me that reflected her own needs then, something I had never been aware of. She saw another soul that needed attention, but not necessarily affection. Despite the discomfort, we had both come away from the conversation knowing more than we'd expected to find out, and saying more than we'd dreamed of saying. Actually, that conversation had frightened both of us.
For the next few days, we avoided each other, but the need for some sort of understanding drew us inexorably together. By day, she helped me with all the work I did, crossing the line from victim to rescuer. By night, we talked. Unlike all the others, she didn't seek catharsis. We hardly ever spoke of the things immediately around us. Neither of us had brought it up, and nothing had been said in that respect. It just never came up. We didn’t discuss our relationship with each other, either. It was just understood that our lives would change, that we would accommodate each other. No one had batted an eyelid when she moved all of her belongings into the small tent I had been given. Almost everyone had greater problems on their mind, but the few who had noticed, approved. When, at last, it came time to leave, she left with me and we were married to each other in less than a month.
She was unlike any other family I had had; unlike my parents and siblings, or even my few friends, she didn't ask to be included. She simply knew that in most cases, she would be. In the few instances when I chose to keep to myself, she accepted it without question. For her part, she didn't ask, but expected the same space, and I was only glad to give it to her. No one around us ever understood the real nature of our relationship. What they perceived as a lack of love, however, was only a lack of possession. I did not feel accountable to her for every action, and she not to me. Freed, as we were, from the stifling closeness of most marriages, our mutual affection thrived, until the birth of our son.
Suddenly, we were both accountable to another. Though we both understood our relationship perfectly, Nazeera didn't want to raise him in an atmosphere different from all other families. She did the unthinkable, she changed. Her adaption was perfect. In a single breath, she went from caprice to motherly protectiveness. I, who could not morph into another person as easily, withdrew behind a wall of propriety. Nazeera respected that barrier, and let me hide behind it, hoping that some day I would find some way to let it fall. Kabir, however, lacked the same understanding. For years, he tried desperately to get in, to break down the walls and really see me for who I was. And as his efforts grew more persistent, my desire to hide away got stronger.
If Nazeera had lived longer, I might have changed. After the initial shock of Kabir's birth, she had begun to nudge me out of my hiding place. Slowly but firmly, she created a space for the three of us, flexible enough to allow my idiosyncratic withdrawal, but strong enough to hold us together, and even bring me closer to Kabir. I cannot explain what she did then; mostly, I didn't understand what she had done. But grow closer we did. For a while, it seemed as if everything would work out to the best, and that I would finally rise up to shoulder burdens that I had unfairly laid on her, dwelling on my own needs instead. Then, she fell ill, and everything fell apart again.
I can never forget sitting beside her in the hospital, listening to the random thoughts that escaped her under the freedom of an incredible combination of drugs. It was then, when fighting the big fight left her with too little energy to care about the dozens of smaller battles, that I first realised how much she had kept to herself, out of choice, out of concern for me.
"I'm sorry," she began on one of the many endless nights I spent by her bedside.
At first, I thought she had lapsed into another of her troubled half-dreams, delirious with the pain. A recurrent feeling of helplessness came over me, as I watched her flit in and out of consciousness. I soon realised that she was more lucid than she had been in weeks.
"I'm sorry," she repeated, "for trying to make you change. I never realised that what had first drawn me to you would one day become so much of an issue between us now."
"Shh…" I tried lulling her back to sleep, not finding the energy to absorb anything of the magnitude she was leading up to.
Adamantly, she continued, "Maybe having Kabeer was selfish. I just woke up one day and realised that I didn't want to spend my life living in a secure space of my own. I wanted to share my being, really feel like I was giving something of myself away. I should have thought about you."
I could feel years of unexpressed sadness grow in my gut, threatening to consume me. "Don't be ridiculous." The words came haltingly, as I breathed harder, trying to hold back emotions I had never dreamed of feeling. "I'm the selfish one. I couldn't change. I was too comfortable in my own world."
"I won't ask you to make me any promises. Neither of us ever operated that way. But, I hope you'll try. Don’t leave Kabeer all to himself. He's a bright boy, and far too old for his age already. He thinks about everything more than a child his age should. He's going to get hurt, and hurt very badly. When that happens, try to be there for him. He won't need you to hold his hand anymore, but he might need you to listen to him once in a while."
I'd have given anything then to know that she would pull through. I had never believed that I could love someone as much as I loved her. I cried as I watched her slip away, wishing that I could hold on to her spirit as tightly as I held her hand.
Chapter 1
Me
Father never remarried. In 25 years, he let no one get near him. The few who knew him at all, didn't find his reclusivity alarming. I once heard grandmother say that for as long as she can remember, he had always been by himself. Occasionally, he would let another person get a brief glimpse of the joys and horrors hidden behind that benign yet reclusive facade, a privilege granted to a very select few. Until recently, I had always believed he had granted me that honour.
Now, looking at him stooped over old sepia photographs bent at the corners and old letters creased and torn from overuse, I'm not as naïve. Something tugs at me deep inside when I see him. When I was younger, he was my hero. Although he shrunk to a normal human being as I grew up, I never could see him as just as a man. A part of me retained the memory of him in his prime, larger than life. In the dull yellow mix of twilight and a flickering near-death lightbulb, I appreciate, for the first time, how much he has fallen from grace.
As I enter, there is the barest turn of the head to acknowledge my presence. The hunch tightens, however, zealously guarding memories he will never share with me. His right hand clenches, as if trying to hold on to a grain of time that is surely slipping away from him. My mere presence callously wrenches him from the sweet memory that he so desperately desires to engulf him. The vision of things that might have been is torn, and the heart that wills them to be is broken. The right hand unclenches as he realises the damage his momentary anger towards me has wrought on the memories that sustain him. A crumpled photograph falls lightly on his lap.
That some of them do not involve my dead mother awakens the inner beast, but now is not the time. "Hmmm…?" He asks, trailing off in apparent nonchalance. Even the monosyllable quivers slightly.
I cannot intrude now. If I do, he'll only draw further away. "Dinner is on the table…pa." The affectionate moniker is insincere and he knows it, but we will both let it pass, as we've done a thousand times before. Sometimes, I wonder if it would hurt more if we stopped before the 90 minutes are through. I laugh at the football analogy as it passes by, musing on the heritage I've inherited through him. I've never lived in the football state, his birthplace; never seen our country's lacklustre clubs play unwatched games for unheard-of trophies. Once in a while, though, the footballer in him seeps into me too.
Not getting a response, I turn to go. Every fibre of my soul urges me to ask him, to tease out everything he's bottled up for all these years. It's not as if I haven't tried. Immediately after the change first came over him, that was all I ever wanted, to be confided in. But I can't blame him for it either. When he was finally ready to tell me, I had already drifted. Now, we go back and forth, see-sawing through phases of growth and degeneration. Over time, I grew used to the process, even predicting its waxing and waning. The wall hurts today, because I know there's little time left. He's already had a second heart attack, and though he holds on dearly, we both know there's no hope.
In less than four months, it will have been 25 years since the change, and he will have turned 61, but four months is a long time. Even as I wonder if he'll live to see that anniversary, I can see the same doubts haunt him. But, unlike me, he doesn't fear the more painful eventuality. There's a deep sense of resignation that pervades him and everything he does now. He sees the long haul coming, and packs his mental bags one by one. The photographs are the nucleus of that preparation. He sits in his lonely little shell, filling himself with the emotions locked into those memories. Half-torn from frequent handling, they are his last real connection to a long, and I believe, regretted life. They will be the last things he sees, and once he leaves, will be the only pieces I will have to put together a puzzle that I have yearned all my life to understand.
At the door, I wait for the briefest moment, hoping for the feeble cracked voice to tell me it's time to connect and lay the 15 years behind us. The feeble voice comes, but with the customary "Coming…", and I resign myself to it. An exhale turns, instead, into a quiet sigh of familiarity. Diya must fill the spaces again, conversational or otherwise.
Chapter 2
Father
I can feel the tautness in his muscles as Kabir walks out the door. There is a well of frustration in him, that is fed by my constant denial to open myself up to him. I breathe again when I can no longer feel his presence in the room. This is my space again, and the familiarity that disappears with the intrusion of another entity, has returned to settle on me comfortably and benignly. I don't resent his interruptions anymore. Our estrangement isn't as severe as it once was. In the first days, his unending curiosity, his unreasonable demand to be let into parts of my mind that I deemed deeply private, angered me. Why wouldn't he understand that being my son didn't grant him unconditional access to my life? I admit I wasn't the best father he could have, but he never went hungry or unloved a day in his life. Why then did he feel so rejected because some memories were too painful to be shared?
I cannot use age for an excuse. The distance between us, palpable from almost the first instant I laid eyes on him, was not a result of my own inexperience or immaturity. At a few months away from 28, I was as ready for fatherhood as I could ever have been. Until the day I first laid eyes on him, I was even eager to receive him, to bring into my world an entity that was a part of me. All that changed at our first meeting, as I felt an inescapable heaviness crash over me, a stifling vice I could never wriggle out of. Now, in retrospect, I see that my emotional seclusion is an integral function of who I am. I believe that was one of the things that had drawn me to Nazeera. She was as singularly solitary. Admittedly, the circumstances under which we had met were unusual. Yet, most others around us clung to anyone they could for emotional support. Not her.
I had watched her for days, as she maintained her independence, refusing to rely on anyone. While others seemed to instinctively break down their defences for the sake of survival, she put up higher barriers. It was as if she were afraid that emotional weakness were a syndromic disorder, and if she let her guard down, she would be broken forever. While those around her quietly scurried around, making whatever they could of what had been handed to them, she had retained her pride. The few reports I could glean about her said she had every right to that pride. Her father had been a decorated military man, and her mother, a well-respected professor of English. She had been well on her way to a Fullbright scholarship until the circumstances of our meeting. The week she spent outside of the camp, she held to herself, giving me only the barest details. I respected her privacy, and, to this day, have never discussed even those barest details with anyone else.
Our first conversation had surprised me and frightened her. It hadn't been magical or incredible. We had laboured through most of it, often finding little or nothing to talk about. But, she had sensed something in me that reflected her own needs then, something I had never been aware of. She saw another soul that needed attention, but not necessarily affection. Despite the discomfort, we had both come away from the conversation knowing more than we'd expected to find out, and saying more than we'd dreamed of saying. Actually, that conversation had frightened both of us.
For the next few days, we avoided each other, but the need for some sort of understanding drew us inexorably together. By day, she helped me with all the work I did, crossing the line from victim to rescuer. By night, we talked. Unlike all the others, she didn't seek catharsis. We hardly ever spoke of the things immediately around us. Neither of us had brought it up, and nothing had been said in that respect. It just never came up. We didn’t discuss our relationship with each other, either. It was just understood that our lives would change, that we would accommodate each other. No one had batted an eyelid when she moved all of her belongings into the small tent I had been given. Almost everyone had greater problems on their mind, but the few who had noticed, approved. When, at last, it came time to leave, she left with me and we were married to each other in less than a month.
She was unlike any other family I had had; unlike my parents and siblings, or even my few friends, she didn't ask to be included. She simply knew that in most cases, she would be. In the few instances when I chose to keep to myself, she accepted it without question. For her part, she didn't ask, but expected the same space, and I was only glad to give it to her. No one around us ever understood the real nature of our relationship. What they perceived as a lack of love, however, was only a lack of possession. I did not feel accountable to her for every action, and she not to me. Freed, as we were, from the stifling closeness of most marriages, our mutual affection thrived, until the birth of our son.
Suddenly, we were both accountable to another. Though we both understood our relationship perfectly, Nazeera didn't want to raise him in an atmosphere different from all other families. She did the unthinkable, she changed. Her adaption was perfect. In a single breath, she went from caprice to motherly protectiveness. I, who could not morph into another person as easily, withdrew behind a wall of propriety. Nazeera respected that barrier, and let me hide behind it, hoping that some day I would find some way to let it fall. Kabir, however, lacked the same understanding. For years, he tried desperately to get in, to break down the walls and really see me for who I was. And as his efforts grew more persistent, my desire to hide away got stronger.
If Nazeera had lived longer, I might have changed. After the initial shock of Kabir's birth, she had begun to nudge me out of my hiding place. Slowly but firmly, she created a space for the three of us, flexible enough to allow my idiosyncratic withdrawal, but strong enough to hold us together, and even bring me closer to Kabir. I cannot explain what she did then; mostly, I didn't understand what she had done. But grow closer we did. For a while, it seemed as if everything would work out to the best, and that I would finally rise up to shoulder burdens that I had unfairly laid on her, dwelling on my own needs instead. Then, she fell ill, and everything fell apart again.
I can never forget sitting beside her in the hospital, listening to the random thoughts that escaped her under the freedom of an incredible combination of drugs. It was then, when fighting the big fight left her with too little energy to care about the dozens of smaller battles, that I first realised how much she had kept to herself, out of choice, out of concern for me.
"I'm sorry," she began on one of the many endless nights I spent by her bedside.
At first, I thought she had lapsed into another of her troubled half-dreams, delirious with the pain. A recurrent feeling of helplessness came over me, as I watched her flit in and out of consciousness. I soon realised that she was more lucid than she had been in weeks.
"I'm sorry," she repeated, "for trying to make you change. I never realised that what had first drawn me to you would one day become so much of an issue between us now."
"Shh…" I tried lulling her back to sleep, not finding the energy to absorb anything of the magnitude she was leading up to.
Adamantly, she continued, "Maybe having Kabeer was selfish. I just woke up one day and realised that I didn't want to spend my life living in a secure space of my own. I wanted to share my being, really feel like I was giving something of myself away. I should have thought about you."
I could feel years of unexpressed sadness grow in my gut, threatening to consume me. "Don't be ridiculous." The words came haltingly, as I breathed harder, trying to hold back emotions I had never dreamed of feeling. "I'm the selfish one. I couldn't change. I was too comfortable in my own world."
"I won't ask you to make me any promises. Neither of us ever operated that way. But, I hope you'll try. Don’t leave Kabeer all to himself. He's a bright boy, and far too old for his age already. He thinks about everything more than a child his age should. He's going to get hurt, and hurt very badly. When that happens, try to be there for him. He won't need you to hold his hand anymore, but he might need you to listen to him once in a while."
I'd have given anything then to know that she would pull through. I had never believed that I could love someone as much as I loved her. I cried as I watched her slip away, wishing that I could hold on to her spirit as tightly as I held her hand.
posted by RTP | 10:28 AM
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