A river ran through his heart

My father, Dr Asok Kumar Ray, died a few days back. I felt the searing, medium distance heat of the furnace as its doors opened briefly to welcomingly swallow the empty carbon shell of his body as it was pushed inside it. It felt like disposal. It felt like homage. It didn’t yet feel like grief.

Rivers never stand still. They only seem to. My father never stood still. All through his life.

His story had started in deeply humble origins. His destiny, as it had seemed then, was to merely mimic the motions of a typical lower middle class life-plot. Scrape through something resembling education, slide into something resembling love, barge into something resembling dignity and status, and eventually disappear into a surely certain oblivion. But my father, the riverman, knew that while you could never hold a river still you could, sure as sunlight, attempt to alter its course.

And that’s what he did.

He bent the flow of the river of his life in order to not scrape, slide or barge into his destiny. But to forge, craft and shape his destination. So that one day, his son will say ‘fuck you’ to oblivion. And write his story.

This is the story of Dr Asok Kumar Ray. Who put himself through med school. Hustled and busted his way to the topmost rung of his career, being on personal phone call relationships with the film stars, politicians and industrialists of the Calcutta of his times. He married a super achiever woman, my head turning, top ranking, drop dead talented mother. He took a sledgehammer or a stiletto to every one of the curved balls that his obstinate, destined destiny threw at him. Because he was not going to accept it.

When you fight for too long, you become your weapon. And all weapons rust. My father burned his candle from both ends. But the light he showed us, my brother and me, will last our lifetimes. Likely longer.

Today, as I pushed his remains into the Ganges and watched the river flow through his heart, I didn’t feel any of it flow through my tear ducts. Crying is for the comfortable. I want to die uncomfortable, dropping while stretching for the new. The unwritten. The unproved. It’s not just the mud I am made of. It is also what I owe my father. Because he made me.

I have learnt from my mother that there is good in this world. But my father has taught me never to ever take what I learnt from my mother for granted. And that’s my yin yang. That’s my tao.

Here’s looking at you, riverman. For I have learnt much from you. But you have taught me much, much more. Like fathers sometimes do. Like rivers always do.