by Rajat Gupta
Uncle’s face was somber, but he nodded affirmatively. “You must go directly to the hospital. We’ll go to the house later.”
As we drove through the city streets, past sidewalks crowded with people in their best clothes, laughing and celebrating, I began to cradle a small flame of hope in my heart. Baba was not dead. Surely this had all been a misunderstanding, an overreaction. After all, when we had left him just a few days earlier, he had seemed fine. We’d just spent several weeks traveling as a family, hitching our little caboose to the trains that criss-crossed the country. It was a happy, carefree trip—falling asleep each night to the rhythm of the train; waking in a new city to the familiar cries of the chai wallahs selling sweet, spiced tea in little clay cups. Baba had been with us the whole time—a rarity for a hard-working man who usually only joined our summer vacations for a week at most.
I knew, however, that he was not strong. The many years he suffered in prison during the fight for India’s independence had taken their toll, particularly the tuberculosis, which had left him with only one lung. Although he was only fifty-six, his body was failing like that of a much older man.
Earlier that same year, he’d spent several months in hospital in Delhi. I remember that period vividly, because it was the time when I really got to know my father. While we were growing up, he had not been much of a presence in our daily lives. He was often busy writing his editorial for the newspaper when we returned from school, and rarely home for dinner. During his hospitalization, at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, I visited him every day after school. Sometimes I would sit by his bed and massage his feet or his temples. Other times, when he felt a little stronger, we would walk in the tranquil gardens of the hospital for many hours. It was on these slow afternoon strolls down the tree-lined avenues of the campus that my father came into focus as a person. The vague and slightly distant authority figure of my childhood became more vulnerable, more reflective, and more intent than ever before on imparting his life’s lessons to his eldest son.
During those walks, he told me a lot about his life, trying to convey what the struggle for independence had meant to him. He recalled his friends, the sacrifices they made, the years they all spent in and out of jail. He reflected on how he had made a different choice to most of his former comrades—while many had gone on to become leaders of the nation they’d liberated, he had chosen a career in journalism, seeking more stability for his growing family than politics would have offered. He remained closely connected with many of the political leaders of the day, including Prime Minister Nehru, President Radhakrishnan, and Opposition leader Lohia, and would frequently accompany them on official trips.
In the quiet sanctuary of the hospital gardens, he would also ask me about my day, inquiring as to how school was going and encouraging me to think about my future and plan my career. I knew he was proud of my good grades and approved of my choice to follow a science track. In the past couple of years, I’d shed the naughty, headstrong attitude that had characterized my childhood, somehow intuiting that my role was about to change. Now my father’s words confirmed my sense of impending adulthood. “Ratan,” he would say with great seriousness, using my childhood pet name, meaning “jewel.” “It is time for you to become more responsible. When I am gone, you must take care of your mother, your sisters, and your brother.”
Those words came back to me as the car sped through the dusty Kolkata streets toward the hospital, the heavy silence inside contrasting sharply with the celebrations all around. In little tents, families were lighting candles for the Kali puja. The acrid smell of fireworks hung in the cool night air. I had known the day would come when I would be the man of the family, and Baba had known it too. But surely it had not come so soon?
My mother was waiting in the hospital lobby, at the top of the stairs. Her face was streaked with tears as she gathered us all into her arms. “Baba is gone,” she said. My sisters broke down sobbing, but I couldn’t take it in. As Ma comforted the girls, I turned to one of the nurses. “Where is he? Which room?” She pointed down the hallway.
When I entered the small room, my father lay before me, looking strangely diminished in the hospital gown. I stood, frozen, for what seemed like an eternity. His face was still and serene. Suddenly, a tiny movement drew my eyes to the tube coming out of his mouth. There were bubbles moving in it. He was breathing! I spun around and ran out of the room, colliding with my mother. “He’s not dead!” I exclaimed. “Look, he’s breathing!” She gathered me to her, sobbing louder. “No, Ratan, no. He is gone.” Finally, I broke down, my flame of hope snuffed out by a wave of grief.
His body was brought home to my uncle’s house for viewing. Death is not hidden away in India, but is on display for all the family, including children. Baba was washed and dressed in his clean white dhoti. An earthenware lamp was lit at his head, scented water sprinkled over his body, and garlands placed around his neck. As soon as the morning papers published the news, a steady stream of visitors began to appear. Some were friends and family, but many were strangers—people who knew my father by reputation, even some who learned about him just that day, and came to pay their last respects to a hero of the freedom struggle.
As the long day wore on, we prepared for the cremation. Hindu tradition holds that the soul will escape more quickly if the body is burned, and the ceremony must be conducted before a full day has passed. My father’s cremation would follow this custom. He was a man of faith, but as a member of the reformist Brahmo Samaj sect, his belief system was non-traditional, incorporating aspects of Christianity and Islam and rejecting the rituals of Hinduism while honoring its Vedantic core. Hence, knowing he would not have wanted it, I chose not to follow some of the traditional Hindu practices, such as shaving my head in mourning. We would have a Brahmo Samaj memorial service later, after ten days of mourning during which we would gather every evening and sing the beautiful music of Rabindranath Tagore that my father had loved so much.
As the eldest son, it was my role to be chief mourner. My mother and sisters did not attend the cremation, since only men were allowed at the burning ghats, and my brother was too young. The red sun was sinking toward the hazy skyline as I dressed carefully in a white dhoti- kurta, just like the one my father had worn every day, and we began the slow procession to the ghat. Here, the body was placed atop one of the wood pyres that dotted a large outdoor area. Some were already engulfed in flames, some were reduced to glowing embers, and some stood freshly built, awaiting their sacred burden. Families gathered around the fires, and the sound of prayers and weeping rose with the smoke into the still night air.
“O Lord, in thy name we consign the mortal to ashes, but the immortal lives in thee.” Standing at the head of the pyre, I repeated the prayer that would guide my father’s soul to immortality. “Prosper the departed soul in its voyage heavenward and let his blessed memory live amongst us and join our souls to the next world.”1
The priest handed me a burning taper, and I reached down and lit the pyre. The dry wood quickly burst into flame, and the sweet fragrant incense that was poured into the fire did little to mask the sharp stench of burning flesh. As I stood there silently, watching my father’s body turn to smoke and ash, I knew that my childhood was over.
Coming of Age
In the weeks and months following my father’s death, there was little surface change in our circumstances. The Sarkar family, who owned the newspaper where my father worked, graciously told us we could stay in the company-rented apartment for as long as we wanted, and they continued to provide a stipend, although my father had had no pension. My mother was frugal by nature, and over the years she had saved money, out of reach of my father’s overly generous and always open hands. This, along with her teaching salary and the stipend, was enough for the family to live on. My siblings and I were all offered scholarships so that we could continue attending our private schools. I was in tenth grade at Delhi’s Modern School, a very good school where I had many fri
ends and a rich academic and extracurricular life, so I was relieved to be able to stay.
Emotionally, it was a time of tremendous upheaval. I had always been a disciplined and motivated student, but now an unfamiliar sense of lethargy took hold. In the highly competitive academic environment of my high school, this was immediately apparent. My grades plummeted, my enthusiasm for extracurricular activities waned, and I fell into a depression that lasted several months. This was compounded when the names were announced of the six students who would have the coveted leadership role of prefect in the coming year. Everyone assumed I would be on the list, but my name was absent, sending shocked whispers through the assembly. I smarted at the unfairness. I didn’t mind being bested in a fair competition, but this felt like an injustice, and there was nothing I could do about it. This wasn’t a role one campaigned for; it was a mark of recognition that I clearly deserved. Everyone agreed that I was one of the most qualified students. It only added to my sense that the world was turning against me and no one cared about me any more since my father had died.
At home, I had a similar feeling—as if our family had somehow become irrelevant. When father was alive, the apartment had always been bustling with visitors—senior politicians, civil servants, fellow journalists, and various friends and family members he was helping out. Now, it was just us. As hard as it was for me, in retrospect it must have been harder for my mother. She had been accustomed to a vibrant social life, accompanying father to official dinners, embassy receptions, and other social events. Suddenly, she was a widow, spending most evenings at home, grieving the man she had loved for three decades and trying to remain strong for her children.
In a culture where arranged marriage was the norm, my parents had been a love match, overcoming great obstacles to be together. They met while my mother was a student at Bethune College in the mid-1930s, when my father was hired to tutor her in economics. Their romance blossomed despite the watchful eye of my grandmother, who chaperoned every session. A native of Punjab, Ma broke custom and went against the wishes of her family when she got engaged to a Bengali. That he was a notorious freedom fighter and was in and out of jail every few months only served to reinforce her family’s disapproval of their daughter’s choice. Keenly aware of his uncertain future, but deeply in love, my father told my mother he could not marry her until India was free. They remained engaged for almost a decade, eventually marrying in early 1947 when independence was in sight. None of her family attended the wedding, although later they would soften and come to love my father as their favorite son-in-law. His loss, at such a young age, was devastating for her, although she tried hard not to show it.
As the spring and summer months passed, my depression slowly lifted. When school began, to my great surprise, the principal announced that a mistake had been made, and I was made a prefect after all. Clearly, there had been protests. Feeling relieved, I trained my sights on the twin tests that would mark the end of my final year: the all-India high school exam and the entrance exam for the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology.
Like most young people in the Indian education system, by the end of high school my career path had narrowed to a single clear direction. I’d already made the choice, years before, to focus on science rather than humanities. That’s what all the boys did, at least those with academic ability, and so naturally I did too. This kind of herd mentality defined educational decision-making in those days. Then, I chose to focus on mathematics rather than biology. Hence, while some of my fellow science students would be applying to medical school, I along with dozens of others would apply to engineering school. And the IITs were the best, so of course we all wanted to go there.
Founded in the 1950s to educate the next generation of India’s workforce, this network of engineering schools was seen by many as symbolic of the changing nature of our nation. Nehru, who was instrumental in starting the IITs, called them the “temples of modern India.” The IITs were well funded, with state-of-the-art facilities and an unusually meritocratic admissions process that refused to succumb to the corruption and nepotism so prevalent in India at the time. They offered a high-quality engineering program that was supplemented by a very broad-based curriculum, so students were also exposed to history, literature, language, and the arts. Specifically, I wanted to attend IIT Delhi, which was known for its mechanical engineering program, and stay close to my family.
The IIT entrance exam was notoriously tough, and my family could not afford to send me for extra coaching. However, some of my friends were attending a prestigious coaching center near my home, so I invited them to come and visit afterwards and I would help them with their homework. That extra preparation paid off when I sat the entrance exam, along with about a hundred thousand other young would-be engineers; I came first in my school and fifteenth overall. I was also first in the all-India exam for physics, chemistry, and mathematics combined, and was awarded my school’s Rudra Prize for best all-round student. I’ll never forget the pride on Ma’s face when I told her. I just wished Baba could have been there to share it.
IIT Delhi was a residential school, about an hour from home. Moving into the student hostel, along with a dozen or so of my high school classmates, was an adventure, and I quickly became immersed in campus life. Along with student politics, one of my passions was drama, and I acted in several plays a year, in both English and Hindi. At weekends, I would return home, but in contrast to my school life, our home began to feel oppressively quiet.
A strong and independent woman, Ma concealed her grief well, but we would soon realize what a toll it was taking on her. She began to lose a lot of weight and suffer chest pains. Her tall, elegant figure became gaunt and frail. Finally, she went to the doctor and was diagnosed with aortic stenosis—a dangerous narrowing of the arteries. They gave her medication to ease the pain, but surgery was not an option. Later we would learn that she had suffered from rheumatic fever as a child, which had weakened her heart, and the shock of my father’s death likely triggered the disease.
During my second year at IIT, I was in rehearsal one afternoon when I received a message that I must return home immediately. Mother was not well. A car and a driver were waiting, but once again I was too late to say goodbye. Only our maid, who cared for her, was with her when she suffered a massive heart attack. Her children came home in the reverse order of their birth, starting with my younger brother, Anjan, who arrived back from school just moments after she passed. Kumkum came next, then me. As soon as I saw people gathered at the house, I knew something bad had happened. Before anyone had a chance to tell me the news, I saw Ma’s body in the front room, and my siblings crying.
Didi had received no message, so she arrived home bubbling over with excitement from her graduation ceremony where she’d received her bachelor’s degree in chemistry. I was waiting for her on the veranda, not wanting her to find out the way I had. She ran up the steps in her graduation gown, clutching her certificate, but the moment she saw my face her expression changed from joy to trepidation.
At the age of nineteen, I was an orphan.
Orphaned
“We’re going to stay together,” I insisted, when well-meaning relatives and friends tried to step in and offer homes to one or more of my siblings.
My uncle shook his head vigorously in disapproval. “Anjan needs a father figure and your unmarried sisters cannot live alone at their age—it is not proper.” He proposed that I complete my education at IIT while my siblings return with him to Kolkata and move in with various family members.
My sisters and I had already discussed these various options at length and decided that under no circumstances would we allow ourselves to be separated. We would keep the household together until Anjan finished high school. He was only ten, and attending Modern School, as I had done. Both of my sisters were at Delhi University, with Didi just starting her master’s program. Four young people living alone was an unconventional choice in the culture of that time, but we were determined
. We had also anticipated Uncle’s objections and were prepared. For propriety’s sake, we decided we would invite an elderly spinster aunt to live with us. Having no children of her own, she was ill-prepared to advise us as we navigated the transition to adulthood, nor was she worldly-wise when it came to handling money. In fact, we ended up caring for her, when her health declined. But her adult presence quelled the opposition to our plan.
My memories of Ma’s funeral are less clear than those of my father’s, likely because my attention was already consumed with the responsibilities that had fallen on my shoulders. The one thing that stands out above all else was the moment I walked in to the memorial service and saw more than half of my Modern School classmates filling one side of the room. Many of them had traveled across the country to be there. I was overwhelmed by this show of support, and many of those people remain my friends to this day.
Once again, we were blessed by the generosity of my father’s former employer, Ashok Sarkar. When I went to see him and told him our plan, he reiterated that we could keep the apartment as long as we needed, rent-free. The bank also showed great kindness, quietly transferring my mother’s accounts into my name without requiring that we go through the usual slow succession processes. “It would take a year to go through all the procedures and the lawyers,” the banker told me, “so I’m just going to do it.” I learned how to manage a strict household budget, something that was new to me. I’d never had to deal with money before. Every weekend, I hurried home across town to take up my role as surrogate father and man of the house.
