Today, on Father's Day, I have a feeling that my revered father was no different than the protagonists in some of the classic movies depicting God and man. Why he even exceeded them by a good measure. The subject of god is very personal, and so I don’t want to tread on any controversial lines, but I'll just narrate the connection my late father had with 'his god'.
One day he was walking towards a temple entrance. His wife followed him, a few paces behind. And that was the norm for a couple out in the open in those days. He felt a shower falling on his head. He checked with his wife and she acquiesced, like always. Lo, he boasted to one and all that it was the god who sprinkled on him the holy water from the nearby temple tank.
Like a doctor with some reservations on the purity of water bodies near temples, he avoided them, although he never questioned their holiness. He used to narrate scores of such miracles to whoever he interacted with. Some of his tales were real (namely fortuitous I would say rather), and some were purely concocted. Yet all of us 'believed' him nevertheless, for he was a simple and credible man with a sound value system of his dos and don’ts while keeping an honest track record. Not believing Him would amount to doubting his integrity and also discounting all the faith that society bestowed on Him.
All our kith and kin considered him as a cult figure. He was a holy man by his word and deed that he proved all his life. He practiced what he preached, and never was off his guard even in sleep. He used to be a disciplinarian—up to 90 percent of the time. About the rest of the time, well, he blamed it on certain circumstances and people in his life whom he detested badly for no known reason. Ironically, his list ‘persona non grata’ used to be dynamic, with the names changing often.
Apart from many of his idiosyncrasies, I had to bear with his tolerable senility in his later days. But I should say he lived his life to the full and scripted his life story in all the minds and hearts he knew, including the door-to-door salesmen in his affable and unparalleled ways. He had no regrets about what life did not give him, yet he wanted to settle his score with God for not granting his 'bucket list of wishes' which are mostly hypothetical, of course. He used to defend his views on everything under the sun and would say that his words were no less than Vedas, and he found no one as pious as him, and also that he was none else than “god’s eldest son”. All these he used to say with a straight face.
To my father (May he RIP), god was created for his very convenience, lest he should be no god. He worshiped his many gods in the temples and home alike. He followed some self-styled procedures in prayers, which were like the way he dressed, dined, and walked about. Sometimes he bathed in the mornings and other times in the evening. He would appease the souls of his ancestors on their death anniversaries by engaging priests religiously and sometimes did the rites in freestyle by himself.
As children, once we had to face an unpleasant situation at our school, when the priest at a temple, who was only our math teacher doubled up, scolded us for having received my father’s wrath while he was on duty at the temple. In the sanctum sanctorum, my father took from the pundit the holy theertha (holy water). On the next morning, my dad complained to the temple management that the said priest distributed his sweat along with the holy water, from out of the silver container he held near his armpit. As my father was a senior government doctor, the temple suspended his priest duties. Like this, at any religious occasion in the family, we underwent tense moments that my father might find fault with the way the mantras were wrongly chanted by the priests.
My father went out of his way to give succor to many needy patients by doling out expert medical help, along with money and personalized services besides shelter, food, etc. He rose from humble middle-class roots, and through his sheer conviction and perseverance became a medical doctor around the time India gained its independence. He was about five feet tall and wore ‘unassuming’ yet, traditional clothes at home. Whenever patients came home for his consults instead of the regular hospital, he used to first make them sit in the front room acting as a paid usher. After dressing himself inside the house in a tie and white shirt he would go back to the front room and announce himself as the Doctor so-and-so. For him, his work alone was real worship and he never tolerated the faults of his colleagues during surgeries.
His library consisted of personal diaries, bounded snail mail saved from his childhood days along with the sundry bills and receipts, a Merck ( medical ) manual, and Hindu prayer books. There used to be a copy of the bible and some astrology books with his scribbling on them. I am skeptical about his interest in the latter, for I never saw him forgiving anyone totally, nor followed any auspicious moments to begin anything new, Vaastu, and such beliefs and practices.
In his opinion, if someone faulted to his personal experience and knowledge, there should be no room for clemency for that soul either from him or God, and reconsidering his already formed opinion on the said individuals would be a greater sin by itself. But when the time would come to help the same persons he would forget his list of ‘baddies’. However, no one in his circles had the gumption to question his logic.
He had his way to the last until he was in his seventies. He refused to go to the hospital for a checkup. He used to say that he was a doctor and the god-like persona in him confirmed his self-diagnosis. One late evening he stepped out of the house with his walking stick only to crosscheck with his doctor friend at the latter’s clinic for his suspected gastric pain and succumbed to his heart attack in the ambulance on the way to a bigger hospital. In his mind, he was an Alexander and Asoka combined in one. He never owned a vehicle or house He never deprived himself of good food and minimum comforts. He was a common man with great intellect.
He saved many lives by pulling his patients out of near-death events as an anesthetist. To him, God was an entity supreme only in the mind and all those serving Him must be His agents on board.
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