Sanjay Shukla

I feel pain every time I remember you, or see something you loved or hated or some random incident I know you would have commented about. Sometimes I know exactly what you would have said. I know the look on your face and the tone of your voice just like you were sitting next to me.

Those moments put an ache in my chest, but I don’t know if that’s me missing you.

Sometimes I think it’s just regret.

I know I wasted so much time, but even now, I can’t say what I could have done to avoid it. It always felt like you had an overwhelming need to teach me, guide me, or to protect me. But I always wanted your respect more than I needed your protection. Who knows? Maybe I didn’t, but it felt like I did.

I am writing this to you, though you have been dead for several years now. Though I know it’s too late I wish you can see these lines. I feel I must say some things to you, things I didn’t know when I was a boy in your house, and things I was too stupid to say.

It’s only now, after passing through the long, hard school of years; only now, when my own hair is gray, that I understand how you felt.

I want to do what we didn’t do enough of while you were alive. I want to tell you the truth about some things – the hard things. I am not embarrassed of being an adult, and yet feeling like a child now. I must have been a bitter trial to you. I was such a fool. I believed my own petty wisdom, and I know now how ridiculous it was, compared to that ripe, wholesome wisdom of yours.

I miss your awkward silences whenever I came late home. I miss your radical political thoughts and philosophies. Inspired, I led a procession against government’s reservation policy in my college and we had a huge argument after you came to know it. You believed in the boys don’t cry theory. You lived up to it. But I have seen you cry once. It was when the police swooped down on our house to arrest me for standing up for a cause and you didn’t know where they were taking me.

I miss feeling judged, and found lacking.

I miss having to fight for a hint of admiration from the man I admire most, only to have it given with a pound of correction.

I miss accomplishing something big, and you being the first person I call.

I miss Mummy having to play the peacemaker.

I miss having to bite my tongue trying to control my temper whenever we had arguments.

Like any son, I miss showing off for you.

I miss knowing I had just made you proud.

I miss just knowing you’re there.

Most of all – I miss the hope that somehow things between us might somehow get better with time, even though I knew they never would. I don’t have to wonder about that anymore now.

Pappa – you were always my greatest hero, my biggest disappointment, my harshest critic, and my sturdiest shoulder; and if you ever doubted how fiercely I loved you– then I’m sorry, Pappa, because I do.

I always have.

But, I’m still not sure I miss you….