Hues

 

          For years, his father has been an enigma to him.

          He can still recall, in the form of a few vague, obscure flashes, the day when out of nowhere their relatives and his father’s friends had helped him into the room. The person who had hitherto been the epitome of resilience, unfazed by any blow of any kind, even the one presently testing his emotional grit to the fullest, was now sitting on the sofa with his eyes looking down, as if enfeebled by some sudden shock. Indeed, it was sudden. A few minutes later, as two of his aunts took him to another room, evidently to steer his thoughts ways from the apparently baffling state his father was in, he tried to know the reason behind it. He knew all too well that his mother had been in the hospital for the last two weeks- but was it a cause for concern? He didn’t know back then the exact significance of the word ‘stable’ being uttered by his father over the phone on returning home, but deep down, he knew that she would pull through.  

‘Father says every day…….. that she will come home soon’, he murmured to his aunts with a hopeful look.

One of them looked uncomfortably at the other, paused for a few seconds, and finally sighed, ‘No, she won’t come back.’

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           As deep he can delve into the past, he can feel that he has always been treated as a sort of exception. So has been his father. When he takes him down to the park to play with his fellow friends, he senses their excessive eagerness to ensure that he is happy. It sometimes almost borders on discomfort, as a palpable reception of he-must-never-be-sad wraps him. To stay content, all he wants is to be treated just like the young children akin to him who have, in a pleasant fashion over time, gradually erased the void within to enliven the entirety of his existence. He sees their mothers gossiping at a corner, even as his father sits alone on a bench, handling the phone with a nonchalant face or staring blankly ahead.  If he stumbles down and inevitably starts crying, he can see, with eyes teary and helpless, dad rushing towards him with his face seething with anger, only to dramatically swing state of mind and wipe his cheeks with fingers which then seem the most soothing. As they return home, with the street lamps flickering into life, he tries to find an explanation to the sudden shifts of mood and behaviour intrinsic to dad’s character, but finally comes to the conclusion that like many other facets of him, it is something beyond his understanding, and hence best purged from his mind.

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           At home, few words are exchanged between them. On returning from office, he inquires about his day in school, his studies, and if he needs anything. The last question often confounds the young boy himself. With friends who he can’t live without, a school which has become the alpha and omega of his daily life and most importantly, a father who, in spite of the ache within, has learnt to create a cocoon of comfort around him, he truly cannot conceive of any need, even if he tries to. Yet, he needs something. He had read somewhere that the absence of someone is much more unbearable if you have received his/her affection before the person’s departure. Rarely, he asks about his mother. And then, the man who never fails to offer a ready answer to almost all of his diverse questions casts a vacant gaze. He has often tried to fathom if the look signifies anger, agony, or some deep despair. It’s perhaps none of them, yet, as he has come to gauge with time, it’s a medley of all of them. Only once had he got a response. His father had cuddled him into a close embrace and said, ‘It is a long journey which you have to travel in life. Some phases, some experiences will be good, some will be bad- but all of them will teach you something.’ Though he was flummoxed to hear such an answer regarding his mother, the words somehow meant a lot, as if calming a convolution of thoughts pricking him.

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           The lady who teaches him to draw has always been one of his favourites. Initially, as she failed to elicit much interest from him, she once said, ‘Use as many colours as you want. Each one of has its own meaning. In the end, all of them will make a perfect picture.’  Besides bolstering his liking for the subject, the words recurrently swirl around in his mind, uncannily resembling his father’s words, his life, their lives. A father with a now familiar, yet ever-morphing mind, a childhood marked by phases of contentment peppered with bouts of emptiness- perhaps all of them were the hues of his life-palette, none of which can he deny or discard. Taking out a box of colours, he set down to paint his ‘perfect picture’.

           Hours later, as a concerned father entered the room to ask the child to go to bed, the latter was already sleeping, with his head resting sideways on what appeared to be a newly-made drawing. Gently pulling it out, he saw a haphazard jumble of colours which in sum meant little. However, beneath the myriad shades, he could soon discern the outlines of three figures. A man and woman were standing, with a boy standing in between. Just below, three words were scribbled in pencil- mom dad and I.