Standing on My Brother's Shoulders

by Tara J Lal

  Shambhu possessed a fundamental belief that what is meant to be will be. He spoke of the profound effect a meeting with a disciple of Rishi had had on him. He recounted how the experience had washed away his cynicism, engendering in him a belief in destiny and spirituality.

  ‘That’s utter rubbish, Shambhu. You know, if it wasn’t for Joanna and Tara I wouldn’t care about anything, and if the world ended, it wouldn’t matter, quite frankly.’

  I was stunned by the bitterness in Dad’s voice, and found the sadness that followed almost intolerable.

  ‘The only wish I have is that when I die one of my daughters will be holding my hand,’ my father said quietly.

  The following day we sat in the car, jostled around by the uneven road that led to the village where my father had been born. I looked out of the window at the dusty road. I thought of Adam and his journey.

  Everywhere, the yellow dried mud dust reflecting the hazy, hot rays of the sun, wooden shacks and red concrete walls. The air is so sweet and sickly. A blanket of moisture that cuddles itself around you in immotile smog. Fingering into your throat as you breathe and all the time it comes as if laden with the dirt and rotting of the streets themselves.

  All of a sudden, my dream came flooding back to me with vivid brilliance. I knew instinctively this was it, the place of my dream. I had walked along this road, trying in vain to carry Adam’s weight. And with that thought came the realization of how much India held for me. It was to be a vital place on my path.

  Eventually we drove into Burhpur, the village of my father’s birth, which had since been engulfed by the town of Fategah, six hours’ drive north of Lucknow. The old family house, however, still remained, owned by relatives. As we entered the grounds, an old lady, the wife of one of my father’s cousins, greeted us, bowing her head, crouching to kiss our feet. I cringed in a sea of cultural awkwardness, just as Adam had.

  I do at times feel so alien to Indian life that it is difficult for me to cope. But then I have not been overly endowed with social skills. I find myself thanking everyone all the time and smiling. I am so unused to all this pampering.

  Then I saw my father’s face light up as he caught sight of the old front door.

  ‘I remember hitting my head on that metal knob there,’ he said softly, shaking his head gently, as if he couldn’t believe he was actually here. His eyes became alive in a way I had rarely seen, as if they were opening to another part of his soul that had been tucked away, kept private.

  My father and his brother walked around their old house slowly, stopping to relive the memories as they went.

  ‘Ah yes, yes. I remember playing marbles over there.’

  ‘And do you remember how we used to fly kites on the roof?’

  Shambhu took his elder brother’s hand to steady him as they ascended the steep spiral stairs.

  ‘And this is the room you were born in, Shivaji.’

  And there, in that room of his birth, we sat to drink tea and eat brightly coloured Indian sweets.

  Finally we returned to Lucknow, to one of the many cousins’ houses. It was a humble place, which they had turned upside down to accommodate my father and me, vacating their own beds for us. The small living room was dominated by what I can only describe as an aeroplane propeller which doubled as an air-conditioning unit.

  Over the course of the evening relatives began to appear, some of them having travelled for days just to see us. Before long, the small living room was overflowing with immaculately dressed cousins, uncles and aunties. Many didn’t speak English, but seemed happy just to come and look. When it got too hot, the propeller was switched on, creating such a racket that all conversation was drowned.

  The women in their colourful saris fussed and pampered, urging us to eat, yet touching nothing themselves. My father didn’t seem to be bothered that many of our visitors didn’t speak English. He began to monologue incessantly, ranting about India and its socio-economic problems. Although Shambhu tried to tell him that the caste system was much less harsh than it had been, Dad motored on without listening, telling everybody how it should be changed. He made judgment after judgment about India, stating that everyone must want to get out of the country, completely unaware of how he was insulting the others in the room.

  ‘That is utter rubbish, Shivaji,’ my uncle would interject.

  It was clear that everything Dad knew of India came from books he had read and from his own childhood memories of his birth country some seventy years before. His conversation bore no meaning to those around him. He did not hear or listen to anything anyone said, merely continuing on his relentless tirade, a turbulent sea of knowledge that ebbed and flowed, allowing no rational response, no human interaction. I looked at my father as he rocketed from one subject to the next, and I found him arrogant. I saw the madness in him.

  I started to keep a tally of Dad’s monologues as a way of keeping myself sane. I recorded the maximum time spent in continuous flow, without interruption: nine minutes, quite impressive. The number of monologues per day ranged from five to a seemingly infinite number. Occasionally, when I tried to curtail one with a gentle nudge or a look, Dad would say, ‘I’m talking too much.’ Then we would have a moment’s respite before he motored on.

  I watched Shambhu contemplate his brother. He tried to argue with him, telling him that he was talking all ‘cockeyed’ but he could see Dad wasn’t listening. Then, when Dad continued his monologue, his brother would say nothing or walk away. Shambhu would look at me as he did so, and his smile of empathy was worth a thousand words.

  I tried valiantly to remain calm in the face of my father’s madness. I breathed, I meditated, I wrote a journal, and I practised compassion … until finally I lost my temper. I took Dad aside and screamed at him:

  ‘Just be quiet! Be aware of the people around you, for Christ’s sake. You’re not listening to a word anyone says. You’re judging people in their own country. It’s embarrassing. Arrogant. They live here, Dad. It’s their country!’

  He responded as if he were a child: ‘Fine, I won’t say anything then.’

  Then he sat quietly in the corner of the couch, eyes scrunched up, silent.

  I felt guilty then. Was saying those things wrong of me? How should I have dealt with it? Was I merely projecting my own beliefs upon my father? Did I react out of my own fear that Dad’s negativity would infect me? Did I want him to be quiet for my own sanity? Or was I just trying to protect others from my father, trying to save them from the discomfort of their embarrassment?

  My father and I were two reacting elements, both vulnerable and frightened. Unknowingly, he pressed all the triggers within me that had been sensitized by my past. I realized that the anger I felt was telling me something, only I didn’t yet know what it was.

  ‘I’m sorry, Dad. I shouldn’t have shouted at you.’

  ‘That’s okay, Tara.’

  Then he went straight back to talking, as if I’d given him a leave pass.

  ‘What happened to Adam?’ my uncle asked as we sat in the car on our way back from visiting Philibit, the birthplace of my grandmother.

  I glanced at my father. Until that moment, I had been unaware that Shambhu had never been told what had happened to Adam.

  ‘Adam took his own life,’ I said quietly. ‘He’d been depressed for a while. It was hard for him after Mum died. He wasn’t happy at Oxford and I think he found it very difficult to adjust after he came back from India.’

  ‘That’s rubbish, Tara,’ my father interjected. ‘It was those bloody deans at Oxford.’

  ‘Dad, he was booked to see a counsellor the week he died.’

  ‘It’s so bloody corrupt. They should have seen. No one took responsibility for what they did. Why would Adam have done what he did? Why was Adam wearing some bogus Indian clothes when he came back from India?’ Dad almost spat the words in his bitterness and rage.

  I wanted to scream, What about you, Dad? You were his father and you didn’t see it coming …
but I didn’t. I couldn’t do that to my father. Instead, I said this:

  ‘You know, I have learned so much from everything that happened. Of course I wish he was still here, but maybe I wouldn’t be the person I am if Adam hadn’t died.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Tara. You can be so bloody naive.’

  I felt a tightening sensation across my throat as the toxic negativity of my father’s words swept over me, massacring my hope, the very meaning for life I had sought so hard to find. It was as if Dad was seeking to shred every bit of understanding and peace I’d found. Shambhu saw my hurt and when he spoke it was as if he was speaking my thoughts for me. He seemed instinctively to understand, validating me and helping me to hold some peace.

  We took an overnight train from Lucknow to Agra to see the Taj Mahal. The train was several hours late and by the time we reached the Taj the sun was beating down. The journey, the emotion and the heat took their toll on Dad and he became faint and dizzy. I held him and we rested. As we sat, I pictured my brother sitting in the very same spot twenty years before, and before that, my mother in 1962.

  I reached out to steady my father. He looked frail and vulnerable. Is this all too much for him? I helped him to his feet and we walked slowly toward the Taj Mahal. I watched his face brighten with wonder.

  ‘Are you glad you came here, Dad?’

  ‘Yes, yes, I am … I have learned so much,’ he said softly.

  ‘Do you still need to talk with Shambhu?’

  ‘I still think my father was wrong to make him stay in India. I don’t believe what Shambhu says. Why does his leg twitch when he talks to me?’

  ‘Shambhu has told you. He was desperate to join the army. He loves India.’

  Finally we travelled to Pune, where Shambhu and his wife Urmila lived. I recognized the house from Adam’s photographs. Dad slept in the room where his son had slept. Adam had left his diary in that room – the diary I had with me now, which Urmila had passed to Jo when my sister had travelled to India.

  Shambhuji took me for a ride on the back of his scooter. I couldn’t stop laughing as we wove our way through the streets of Pune, smiling as I related to Adam’s experience of Indian roads.

  An Indian road is a very strange strip of land, used by innumerable conveyances and animal types. You are never quite sure what will happen on it next. Things tend to wander with scant regard for others, all the time sounding loudly their presence with those infernal horns. Put all this together with the hordes shouting in excited voices and the constant stream of tooting rickshaws, bicycles, scooters and trucks and the chaotic bombardment all your senses receive can be half imagined. In fact, the nasal information you encounter seems so far to be a good analogy of life in India. One minute you are enjoying the spicy aromas of food cooked on open fires or in clay ovens, and the next you are stifled by the stench of sewage.

  Adam was so right: India is chaos that works.

  My uncle introduced me to a young friend of his: ‘This is my niece from Australia.’

  ‘You are not looking alike,’ the young man commented.

  Shambhu smiled, ‘Ah yes, so different in looks but in the heart, the same.’ And he placed his hand on his heart and patted it gently.

  Emotion overwhelmed me, the tears of twenty years welled in my eyes and in my heart. I had known my uncle for ten days and yet in that short time he had had the impact of a lifetime. So many times my uncle had said the words I would have said myself. We had grown up in different cultures, a generation apart; we had led such different lives, but we shared so much. I had never known if I was like my mother, and I know I do not think like my father, yet in my uncle I saw myself. I found the validation I had sought so hard to find in my father. I have no doubt that we were meant to come into each other’s lives at this time. He touched my heart and I his, I knew this.

  The day of our departure had come. We were running late, caught up in the chaotic Mumbai traffic. I started to get anxious that Dad might miss his plane. We were on different flights, his due to leave eight hours before mine. Shambhu wasn’t allowed into the ticket hall without a ticket so he waited outside while Dad and I rushed toward the check-in area.

  I started filling in departure forms frantically. ‘Hurry, sir. Please hurry!’

  It was then that I realized that Dad had not said goodbye to Shambhu. I knew that they would never see each other again and suddenly it seemed as if the whole trip would be meaningless if they didn’t get to say their farewells.

  I dragged Dad away from the check-in counter. Dad hobbled and limped behind me. I could hear the agitation in his voice. He needed to say goodbye.

  At the airport doors a guard stepped in front of us.

  ‘You cannot leave the airport, ma’am.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Once you enter, and have shown your ticket, you cannot leave.’

  ‘But my father needs to say goodbye to his brother!’

  In desperation, I scanned the sea of Indian faces outside, looking for Shambhu, willing him to appear. It cannot end like this, I thought.

  After what seemed like an eternity, I glimpsed my uncle’s smiling face and there, in the chaos of passengers, doors, trolleys, luggage and security guards, the two brothers embraced. Seventy years of emotion in one short hug between two old men.

  My mission was done. I had not been able to bring my father the peace that I had wanted for him. It dawned on me that one doesn’t find peace in another person or a place or even an experience. I had to find my own peace from within; only then could I help Dad find his. Similarly, Shambhu hadn’t been able to take away Dad’s guilt, but I had faced my fears and I knew that I had helped Dad face some of his. That was the best I could hope for.

  CHAPTER 25

  I sat in my father’s living room at his home in Norfolk.

  ‘Uh, Tara …’

  ‘Yes, Dad.’

  ‘I need to get some new shoes. These are really quite uncomfortable.’

  ‘That’s fine, Dad.’

  I looked down at his feet. The entire back part of the shoe was crumpled under his heel and I had to bite my lip to stop myself from laughing.

  ‘Um, Dad, you’re supposed to put your heel into the shoe, not on top of it.’

  ‘Ah, I see, I see.’

  I watched my father dither, his increasingly diminishing frame dwarfed by the piles of books in his living room. He was wearing an old hat; his trendy cargo pants, bought for him by Jo, sat on his hips, lopsided, due to the twist in his spine from the tuberculosis that had ravaged him as a young man. His white goatee beard shone against his Indian skin, still silky even now.

  ‘Ah … yes, yes …’

  He talked to himself softly as he walked over to the washing machine holding the milk, only to realize at the last moment that it wasn’t the right place for it.

  ‘Ah yes, the milk must go in the fridge,’ he muttered.

  I would have laughed if it hadn’t have been so sad. I went to the sink and began washing the dishes, scrubbing the thick layer of scum from the sides of the cups. I felt my father’s presence over my shoulder, hovering.

  ‘What are you doing, Dad?’

  ‘Ah, I see …’

  ‘What do you see, Dad?’ I questioned, trying to track the train of his thoughts.

  ‘I’m just watching how you do that.’

  He studied my hand intently as it scoured the cup.

  ‘It’s the washing-up, Dad. I’m washing up,’ I said, bewildered.

  I was stuck somewhere between the urge to fall on the floor with hysterical laughter and feeling a deep concern for his welfare. How much of Dad’s behaviour been due to his illness, how much due to his own particular brand of eccentricity? I didn’t know. The previous year he’d sent me a birthday card, only it was a Christmas card that Dad had adapted by crossing out the word Christmas and inserting ‘Birthday’ in its place. I had smiled when I’d received it. Classic Dad, I’d thought.

  He had developed his ow
n methods to help him negotiate his way through the world. He carried a little notepad everywhere he went, scribbling in it to remind himself to ring me in case he should forget. He even wrote down what questions he should ask: 1) How are you? 2) How is work? 3) How’s your flat?

  When we spoke, our phone conversations went something like this:

  ‘How are you, Tara?’

  ‘I’m good, Dad.’

  ‘How is your … um … err … personal life?’

  ‘I’m still on my own, Dad, if that’s what you mean?’

  ‘Oh, oh dear …’

  Thanks, Dad, I feel so much better now.

  ‘You can always adopt, you know?’

  What? Where the hell did that one come from?

  ‘It’s not as easy as that, Dad, and anyway, I’m okay. I’ve got lots of good things in my life. I’m happy here.’

  ‘Yes, but you’re all alone.’

  Thanks for pointing that out, Dad.

  ‘I have really close friends that are always there for me.’

  ‘Ah, but that’s not the same, Tara. People always have others things. Their own families.’

  ‘My friends are my family, Dad.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Tara. People will always take advantage of you.’

  Hmmm … Time to change tack.

  ‘I’m lucky, Dad, I’ve got lots of good things in my life. I love my job—’

  ‘Oh, you shouldn’t work too hard.’

  Okay, try again.

  ‘I’ve been out to the pub with some friends.’

  ‘Oh, you’re not drinking too much, are you, Tara?’

  By this point I wanted to explode. It was as if I wasn’t allowed to be happy or optimistic. He could never just say, ‘That’s great, Tara. Well done.’ Everything that I did, everything I had achieved and was proud of, he quashed with toxic negativity. To me his pessimism and regret felt like the silent contaminants contained within the smoke created by a fire. Once inhaled, quietly and insidiously morphing into a deadly cancer.