Mum-and-Dad

From some of my earliest childhood memories, one that stands out particularly clearly is me in my dad’s arms, posing for a photo, when my dad impulsively planted a kiss on my right cheek, and the camera flashed! I didn’t know whether it was the flash that startled me more or the impulsive sweetheart of a kiss! (My family didn’t believe in Public Displays of Affection). There’s also this time when dad took me shoe shopping when I topped my grade, and we went berserk picking up virtually everything I liked. (We weren’t that well to do, either). Or the time when I was away at college, and he begged me to come back home, and not take up a job in Mumbai, his voice all choked up, because he was missing me. (My dad is the Rock of Gibraltar, and I’m sure you remember the NO PDA).

Mum was the opposite. Cute and childlike. She’d slap me for some non-issue naughtiness and then cry for hours in remorse. It was easier being naughty with her. She was kinda naughty herself. Like this time I was being way too unruly to handle, and she brought out this huge blowup of a spider photo, to scare me into obedience, accounting for a lifelong case of acute arachnophobia. (Dude, you had to be there. It would have scared the shit outta any 6 yr old). And then she would scour out the corners of bathrooms everytime before I had to go, because I was now terrified that there’ll be some eight-legged freak lurking there. Or every Sunday that she’d make puri-aloo for breakfast just because I wanted it.

Mum and Dad. The coolest people in the world. The greatest couple in the world. Like they say. All happy families are similar. Their word was gospel. Their beliefs, the truth. Their actions, to be emulated. Their ideas, to be imbibed.

So when did they become real people, the gods in my life? So they who could do no wrong, when did they stop being right? The paragons of virtue, the providers, the caretakers, the parents. Was it when dad lost his business, and with it his drive, his ambition, his persona? Was it when mum started drinking? Or was it when the affairs started? Or maybe the bout with cancer? Or the second one? Jealousy? Hatred? Suspicion? Suicidal tendencies? Where? Where was the beginning of the end?

Don’t even start. This is not a plea for sympathy. Mum’s still mum. Dad’s still dad. They are just not mum-and-dad anymore. But yeah, somewhere along the way, I discovered I was a separate person. Different. Distinct. Yeah, so the belief system crashed. Everything that laid the foundation was untrue. All the ideas that shaped my life were, to say the least, bullshit. Then I realized they had managed to create a stronger foundation than I gave them credit for. Instead of trudging along with a borrowed system, they had somehow given me the tools to create my own.

Now they are not the people I idolize. They are just the people I love.