BAAP

When the courier delivered the manila envelope, little did I guess what lay inside. I rolled it over and recognised the logo and the address beneath it.

A blind folded lady held a scale in her hand and beneath it were the words-

JP Legal associates

Makers chambers

Marian Point

Mumbai 400021.

I tossed the envelope on the coffee table and meandered towards the balcony, my feet taking me as further away from that post as possible. 

It had to be from him. The wolf in a sheep's clothing. He had plagued my life for 22 years and even if I didn't wish to, I despised him from the bottom of my heart. 

I am talking of my 'Baap'.

I first met him when I was 12. 

I vividly remember the day when Mama had said to me that my father was going to come to take me home. 

Each and every day of those 12 years of my childhood days were spent in believing that my Mum and Dad had died in an accident.  Mama was a distant cousin of Aai  and he had looked after me as his own.

Or so I thought.

And suddenly, that day shook the foundation of my belief's.

The name 'Pawar' carried a lot of 'Power', it soon dawned on me soon.

They were in fact synonymous.

Baap had created an empire in Kolhapur. 

From sugarcane mills to political lobbies. 

From schools to colleges and universities.

From hospitals to hotels. 

Not a single business leaf turned a corner without Baap's blessing.

He was respected, revered and sometimes even feared.

His dominating presence was felt inside each and every room of the 'Chayaa', bungalow and its surrounding 2 acres of lawn and  gardens.

'Chayaa' was in truth 'Matruchaayaa'. The moment i crossed across the doorframe of the entrance,  Aai embraced me as her own. 

There was so much of love in those eyes,  so much of warmth on her face, the way those two hands cupped my face and kissed my forehead. 

I melted at once. She and the 2 other children in the Pawar household took me as their own.

Suddenly,

I had a mother, an elder brother and a younger sister. 

My own bedroom which faced the lakeside.

My own bicycle.

My own ipad pro.

My own a Sony play station with the latest games.

Yet,  the tongue hesitated to refer him anything else apart from 'Baap'.

All the worldly niceties, couldn't brush aside the burning question within me. 

Why had he foresaken me at birth?

Why did he wish to own me now?

It was very clear that in his youth,  he must have crossed some boundaries and defied the norms and rules of the then society. 

It must have been easy for him to disown me.

But what about my mother,  who must have been ostracised by the society? Where was she? 

How did she face the hardships?

She must have weathered the storm on her own.

Baap's wife had accepted me.

Had accepted Baap's travesties from his youth days.

A child out of wedlock may not be frowned upon now,  but back then it was a social  taboo.

Did my mother find someone who would accept her along with her fallacies?

The more I thought,  the more I burnt. The more my hatted towards Baap grew.

I felt like Vijay from Trishul. 

I festered the same revolt in my heart, 

That Amithabh had against Sanjeev Kumar and his R K Gupta industries in that movie.

I never liked anyone smoking near me.

But,  only to irk Baap, I started carrying a packet of Malboro and puffed around him. I would disobey his little wishes and ignore his presence. 

After university,  I left home and settled in Nasik. Baap bought me a terrace flat by riverside close to my office.

And last week the storm had quietened. 

The upheaval that he had caused in my life  had plateaued, the poison that he had mixed  within me suddenly was no more. 

Baap had died in his bed.

" Can we meet sometime tomorrow.

I am in Nasik and can meet anytime after 3?"  Prithvi,  the 'P' of J P Legal associates was on the other line.

We met in a restaurant, Aatma, at the banks of Godavari near the foothills of Trambakeshvar.

He was the executor of Baap's will.

A copy of which, I think, still laid unopened on the coffee table in my living room.

"Your views on Mr Janardhan Pawar are well known. I can understand and sympathise with you.

But, we have some formalities to complete.

During the probate,  the beneficiaries were named.

And I am now acting as the executor of those wishes" 

Even in his death, Baap wouldn't leave me alone.

Prithvi dug out a kalash from his bag and handed it to me.

"Your father wished you to immerse them in Godavari".

I looked at the brown black kalash.

The Ashes.

Over the past week, I had met Prithvi on 3 different  occasions.  He disposed off my stereotypic idea of a solicitor and i felt the human side of the law.

 My previous dealings with law were only during Hollywood or Bollywood movies. Their rants in the courtroom and their shady dealings. 

He , however, was totally different.

He must have sensed my hesitation in picking up the kalash.

"These ashes are mere dust. They may seem superfluous and remind you of your father. But, he has to go back to universe. 

You know,  nothing in universe is new.

The carbon in our chromosomes, 

The calcium in our bones, 

The manganese in the metal of these chairs, 

The iron in our haemoglobin,

The nitrogen in this paneer.

They are all reprocessed. 

Ever since universe began,

the stars and its contents have remained the same .

We are all made and remade from these stars. 

We are made of starstuff.

We are stardust."

I picked up the kalash and held it in my hands. It felt cold 

As he sliced through the paneer with his knife, he went on.

"Every one of us is precious. In this cosmos, if you dont see eye to eye with someone , let them be. 

Amongst these  hundred billion galaxies, with trillion stars, and many more galaxies, 

you will not find another person  like them. 

Those with whom you disagree are like you, unique.

Though the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and all elements of the periodic table lie within us, our beauty is not in the molecules that form them , but the way we hold these  molecules together.

In the end, these atoms and molecules will again be stardust".

"I don't think I will be able to forgive him. I can forgive him for destroying my childhood. But i can't forgive him for what must have happened to my mother, when he must have disowned her",  from space i was bringing him back to planet earth and the pain we endured. 

"Your hurt is very relative. 

They say truth is absolute.

But, that absolute truth is also relative.

Truth is often, how you perceive it".

He was looking at me through the bottom of the glass that he had gulped water from.

" Baap used my mother and cast her aside when his lust was satisfied. 

And now , he claims to repent and glorify his deeds. What's relative about this truth? " I was unwilling to back off. 

"If i were to ask you,  do you see any dinosaurs on earth? , 

You would say, No. Correct? " 

"Yep!" I replied. 

"Imagine a galaxy of stars with life trillions of light years away.

Light from our earth would take trillions of earth years to reach them.

If an inhabitant of that planet were to have a telescope strong enough to gaze upon earth,  they would be seeing the image of objects.

That image would be of earth as it was  millions of years ago.

Hence, they would be seeing dinosaurs now. Or rather the light carrying the  images of dinosaurs which left earth millions of year ago.

Both you and that alien would he right. 

You declining the presence of dinosaurs and them claiming their presence.

Absence of evidence, 

As they say

Is not evidence of absence"

My head had started spinning by these astronomical talks from a legal representative .

I excused myself feigning a headache. 

Back in my terrace flat, I wandered out onto the terrace. It was close to midnight the skies were clear,  not a cloud in sight.

I gazed up at the starry lit canvass above me. Half trying to understand what Prithvi was rambling on about.

Stardust..

Relativity..

Evidence..

Truth..

I went back inside. 

The manila folder on the table looked back at me.

With the folder in one hand and coffee in another I went back to the terrace 

There was only 1 letter inside.

"My dear son Govind. ." It began.

There were only 10 sentences on that page.

He had signed it off as,

"With lots of love,  

Baap".

In between, he relayed to me his helplessness.

His wife had been my biological mother. 

She had fallen on ill habits and wrong company. She bore me.

But she couldn't face the wrath of the society and disowned me after birth.

She couldn't live with her conscience and divulged my presence to her husdband, my Baap.

He had accepted her . 

He was willing to accept me.

She passed away when I was 17.

And Baap looked after me as his own.

Suddenly,

Stardust..

Relativity..

Evidence..

Truth..,

All came crashing to reality.

.

They say

If you lose your father,  it' feels like the sky has  fallen down upon you. 

I held the kalash of my Papa's ashes a little tighter to my chest. ...

Baap was a truly, 

'Mera Baap'.