Half-life

I am an emotional chap. And especially when it comes to numbers. The tangibles of mathematics are enough to exude irrational feelings. It remains my fall back option on very important anniversaries. Today, my dad starts his last birth year in his sixties and as I write this in my mid-thirties.

This is what life does when you aren’t paying attention. You suddenly creep up to half your dad’s age. I can’t get my head around that fact considering he was 35 times as old as I was, when I was born.

It has become very evident to me that as I grow older, my dad’s personality is coming through in nooks and corners. As I peruse my recent pictures I find the physical resemblance to him remarkable. I have his nose, his smile and the energy in his eyes. I too can be inappropriate, not self-conscious and want to please large crowds. His penchant for sparkling polished shoes out pours each time I pick up a brush to clean my leather loafers. His documents are ordered, his handwriting is like script. Yet, he matches my habit of letting our clothes lay about in places where they shouldn’t be.

There is strength in our voices and loyalty to our friends regardless of how they treat us back. We both adore food and are willing to make that the singular highlight of any trip (Kolhapur, anyone?). Our faith might find manifestation in different ways but we are bound by our stubborn reasoning. He tries everything and is wonderfully brave. That started with him coming up with my name! We are both very suddenly interested in our histories. He sports a mustache and I am constantly and secretly craving to grow a really large beard. I am vain but inherently middle class. He loves exploration and I can’t sit still if my life depended on it. As I wander through forests I know that this where he would want to be.

Our differences aren’t trivial. But on a day like today the realization that I am turning like my dad is a joyous one. My dad has always been our hero. I cannot remember a single day in my life when I felt hungry or deprived of any basic necessities. Sure I wished we were richer at times but that was purely because I had rich friends. And  there were days when I would pull the car over to the side and storm out of the driver’s seat when he constantly corrected me as I drove his car. But these occasions seem so trivial compared to my bag of memories that are full of sunshine, sitting in the back seat of our car as our dad drove us through mountains of joy (Igatpuri) and through valleys of doubt (Towards Daman). My fetish for cars can easily be attributed to him and his repainted green Fiat. And that perhaps alone defines me as the person I am today and what I aspire to be.

I might be now almost half his age but I am nowhere close to being half the man he is. And while this ratio is mathematically certain to reduce as we grow older, my ability to be like him would never intersect with the line he is drawing ahead of me.

On this day, that is a fact to be celebrated. Happy Birthday, Baba.