<p>It’s been seventeen years since my father passed away. He was a skilled surgeon with a legion of patients. They all swore that he had a healing touch and long before key-hole surgery became popular, he performed small incision surgery that healed with an almost invisible scar. He had trained several young surgeons and treated rich and poor patients alike. A self-made man, he lost his father at age fifteen and worked his way up through college and medical school. His Australian-born Professor so loved him that he made sure my father set up his practice before he left India. </p>.<p> Our house was an open house in those days and because father lived in the big city of Madras and was a surgeon, there was a constant stream of visitors coming in--to recuperate, deliver babies, undergo surgery, pursue college or find a job through his contacts. Perhaps not possible in times like these. Among many memories, I remember him talking about the time when fear of widespread plague gripped the city and people evacuated their homes.</p>.<p>On some earlier death anniversaries, I have been in transit or travelling but this time I was home-bound due to the lockdown. There was no priest coming in to do the rituals and veggies and fruits were in short supply. I lit a lamp and offered my father his favourite fruit--apples. I would have made some of his favourite badam-kheer had we not run out of almonds, but instead offered some cake that the grocery shop boy had sent by mistake instead of soda that I had put down in my list two days ago. Maybe he knew that my father liked cake.</p>.<p>Sacrilege you might think but my father and I have always defied convention. After all, being the only surviving child at the time of his passing I lit his funeral pyre</p>.<p>Simple offerings made I sat down in front of the picture of my parents and had a brief chat with my father. I thanked him for the kind of role model he was, for all that he provided--the education, upbringing and the values and qualities that I imbibed from him. I remembered the decisions my mother influenced such as the school I would go to--farther than the one my father wanted to put me in, down the road. </p>.<p>This was a different way of commemorating his passing. There were no rice balls, til seeds and darba. It was a change without a doubt, but it was heartfelt. Who would have thought something like the Corona outbreak would have engineered it?</p>
<p>It’s been seventeen years since my father passed away. He was a skilled surgeon with a legion of patients. They all swore that he had a healing touch and long before key-hole surgery became popular, he performed small incision surgery that healed with an almost invisible scar. He had trained several young surgeons and treated rich and poor patients alike. A self-made man, he lost his father at age fifteen and worked his way up through college and medical school. His Australian-born Professor so loved him that he made sure my father set up his practice before he left India. </p>.<p> Our house was an open house in those days and because father lived in the big city of Madras and was a surgeon, there was a constant stream of visitors coming in--to recuperate, deliver babies, undergo surgery, pursue college or find a job through his contacts. Perhaps not possible in times like these. Among many memories, I remember him talking about the time when fear of widespread plague gripped the city and people evacuated their homes.</p>.<p>On some earlier death anniversaries, I have been in transit or travelling but this time I was home-bound due to the lockdown. There was no priest coming in to do the rituals and veggies and fruits were in short supply. I lit a lamp and offered my father his favourite fruit--apples. I would have made some of his favourite badam-kheer had we not run out of almonds, but instead offered some cake that the grocery shop boy had sent by mistake instead of soda that I had put down in my list two days ago. Maybe he knew that my father liked cake.</p>.<p>Sacrilege you might think but my father and I have always defied convention. After all, being the only surviving child at the time of his passing I lit his funeral pyre</p>.<p>Simple offerings made I sat down in front of the picture of my parents and had a brief chat with my father. I thanked him for the kind of role model he was, for all that he provided--the education, upbringing and the values and qualities that I imbibed from him. I remembered the decisions my mother influenced such as the school I would go to--farther than the one my father wanted to put me in, down the road. </p>.<p>This was a different way of commemorating his passing. There were no rice balls, til seeds and darba. It was a change without a doubt, but it was heartfelt. Who would have thought something like the Corona outbreak would have engineered it?</p>