My Father's Eyes

I can still remember freshly those distinct sound that the TVS Luna made as it limbered towards our front entrance. Those were the times when we would all be bundled up by 7:30 in the Friday evenings, and eat our lumped rice sorted out in small little round bowls by our mom with Usha Albuquerque reading out the evening dossier of the country in front of our Ondia Television sets. ( Yes.. Neighbour’s Envy , Owner’s Pride) Usha Albuquerque along with her cast of DD newsreaders and the Onida Mascot , were the face of Indian media back then. Our creaky wooden door would open to the sight of my father easily identified by his trademark chequered Chirag Dinn shirts. His was a frail frame back then, and his eyes would look weary after the work done for the week. But customary as it was, he would take me out for the evening ride after his meals on that Luna to the Alembic Bridge.
Vadodara is not exactly a city known to many for the right reasons. Yes, this is where Irfan Pathan comes from and yes, we have a very good Ranji team. It’s also known as a hotbed for communial riots and the culture capital of Gujarat. But once you do become a resident of the city, you get endowed with an ability to see beyond the stereotypes of a city and identify with it’s symbols in your own unique way. To me, Vadodara is the city of silent streets by night with laaries lined up the road with the aroma of spices and street side food filling the air. These days, whenever I do get back a chance to go to the city, I ride my worn out down bike with my limited driving skills around the city at 11 in the night to take in a view of a city that seems almost at peace with itself. I breathe in the comfort that I feel on escaping the urban chaos of Mumbai, and watch the night lights in the city as they light up the increasing number of malls which have taken up the city streetside.
Tonight as I drive past that very bridge, I stop and decide to take a look at something that I have been missing for almost 20 years now. Having parked my bike at the entrance of the bridge, I climp up and almost miss the cemetery that stands in the background. Screeching Skodas and Honda City pass by, and I manage to find a place next to the footpath for walkers. As the beggars prepare to sleep satisfied by the tiny morsels that they have had for the day, I watch the goods train in the night go past by under my own eyes in the middle of the night.
20 years back, this place was a lot quieter. There weren’t many cars around, and Bajaj Scooters competed with the japanese vehicles which had just entered the jittery Indian Markets. The air was a lot more cleaner, and there weren’t many of these flashy orange lights that you see nowadays. Even in the dim lights that we had back then, with my nascent memory which had just started forming its first roots back then, I could remember the image of my father as he stood with me on those nights.
His frame belittled in a way, the hope that he carried in his eyes. He carried in those eyes the hope that Usha Alberquerque and alike talked about every evening in the news. This was the hope of a change, as the country back then was transforming itself from its ultra socialist leanings to embrace the culture of merit and prosperity. Rajiv Gandhi led the nation, and there were ads of the Information and Green Revolution through the public broadcasting arm of the government. The media oscillated between showing Rajiv as the blued eyed boy of Indian Politics, burdered by the responsibility on his young shoulders and the image of a young Sachin Tendulkar, as he walked out to a packed crowd in Lahore for his Test Debut
A lot of things have happened since then. Sachin Tendulkar’s genius has overshadowed the cricket field for 19 years and the little master is all set to go into the gentle night of his cricketing career. Rajeev Gandhi is long since dead and on our new flat TV Screens, Aaj Tak, IBN and NDTV jostle to show Rahul Gandhi and Omar Abdullah as the next hope of our Indian Youth. The Dal Lake which used to be on the postcard of every Indian hall now is mostly barren and the land of Kashmir, once the proclaimed paradise on earth, now stands ravaged and torn by ethnical and regional strife. Madhuri Dixit has now become the ‘Dhak Dhak ‘ girl of Ram Nene and ultra thin heroines now grace the silver screens with oodles of oomph.
All this , in the span of a quarter of a century that a generation along with me have been witness to. We have been fortunate enough to be privy to the comforts of liberalization, and to watch a country which has been in the very heart of the change that is taking place around the world. I would marvel at the perfectly shaped bottles of Coca-Cola, Fanta and Sprite as they replaced our Gold Spot’s and Mazaa’s in the fridges. We would not remember them so much for their brand value, but rather because we identified them with an 18 year old girl called Aishwarya Rai , who with blue eyes stormed into Aamir Khan’s house to ask for a ‘PEPSI’. Then there was the scrawny figure of Kumble, as he ran through the West Indies line up to get a career best 6 for 12 at the Indian mecca of cricket, Eden Gardens in ’93. The bearded figure of Prannoy Roy as he introduced sophistication and content in the news media, reporting with unnatural horrific expressions the demolition of the Masjid on the evening of Dec 6th, 1992.
Like every other boy in this generation, I underwent the metamorphosis from a boy to a man through that glorious phase of adolescence in college. Unknown environments led to new found perceptions, which remained encased and solidified like a hard stone in the labyrinths of my mind for a long time to come. This was a generation that witnessed the advent of internet and late nights to watch Desibaba getting loaded in 15 minutes for their first sight of carnal pleasures. This was the generation that got lost in the surreal lyrics of Morrison’s poetry coupled with excess of the most unimaginable kind. This was the generation that laughed together and found new friends while getting drunk for the first time and roaming merrily on the streets together. The generation who grew up to realize that education was not one to be gained through writing sheets and sheets of paper , but one to be lived and enriched with experience. Ironically, this is also the generation that is now dispersed and lost in all the parts of the world through irreversible realms of binary logic and late night shifts for support calls for a company on the other side of the world. They make their breads learning the most subservient expressions in the most concocted accents to live what is the great Indian service dream.
As for my father, he doesn’t visit the bridge anymore. I still see him on Friday nights on our balcony though, with that same expression of staring into the vast open distance, almost endlessly for hours. The bags under his eyes are more pronounced because of his age, and he bears the omnipresent symbol of the great prosperous middle class, the paunch.

As for the hope, I think it is still there.