Evolution of Love 2

Legacies and memories of a father

Decades ago, I had just graduated from college, uncertain where the winds of fate would take me.

My father, a Bengali man like most of his generation, spoke little, except when sharing his worries about me.

But on a summer afternoon he told me that we would go shopping. More intrigued than surprised, I readily agreed. Off we went to some place in Connaught Place, where we would all head to do the important shopping in the Delhi of my childhood through the 80s and early 90s. We walked into a shop and my father asked to pick up a formal jacket.

At once, mortified and excited, I kept going through rows and rows of jackets, trying to figure out what to pick up. Having never worn a formal jacket ever (except secretly trying out my father’s jackets) I didn’t have much of a clue.

So I finally decided on a black one, calculating that the colour would go along with almost everything that I had in my wardrobe of three trousers and four shirts. I was excited that at last, I had something that I could wear to formal family functions and get closer to adulthood than ever before.

My father was driven more by pragmatic considerations than sartorial. “You will now need to start preparing for interviews and you will need one. So keep this clean and look after it well,” he said as he paid cash for my very first formal jacket.

That jacket served me for over 10 years, the only one that I had for a very long, long time. It stood through interviews, formal interactions, weddings and of course, interviews.

A little over 25 years later, as the 17-year-old prepares to leave school and head out into the world, my turn came. I probably have more money than my father had in terms of volume, but less in terms of value.

Over 25 years after his death, I wonder how he would have looked upon this day.

It is perhaps easier for me to spend on a suit than what it may have been for him. He was busy building a house and a life for us. Burdens, I didn’t have to carry, because he managed to settle those in his lifetime.

We hope that it will serve him well and some day he shall repeat this with his progeny. Life comes full circle and so have we, step by step, as we move forward, occasionally looking back in time.