In Memoriam

It is hard to tell where the truth ends and legend begins. This metaphor, my father had scribbled in my personal diary when I was just fourteen. Years later, escaping from the scorching summers of Delhi, I returned to the usual quiet sanctuary of home. Amidst the forgotten relics of childhood, I stumbled upon that diary- a fragile archive of simpler times. The ink of his words had not faded, nor had their mystery withered with age.

When I asked him about it, truth and legend, he said, often dance together, their boundaries shift like sand dunes under a restless wind. The space between truth and legend is unyielding and unclouded and to stray or undermine this space, he warned, was to build a castle on mist and society on fragile myths. It is better to evolve with clarity rather than illusion. To buttress the point, he cited an important event from Islamic history.

He painstakingly emphasized the deep divisions in the community since the event and how we have created self-serving legends out of shared history and identity, which informs our social and intellectual milieu. The explanation seemed relatable and quite contemporary, so to speak.

A mathematics teacher by profession and a history buff with a penchant for calligraphy, his lessons didn’t end in the classroom. Most evenings, he came home with his bag weighed down- not with our gifts, as we once believed, but with notebooks and playing card decks to improve guesstimation, for his students who couldn’t afford them. His privilege afforded him to offer a sacrificial lamb on Eid but he did not sacrifice despite sometimes being nudged by friends or relatives. Never! Yet he was acutely aware and invested in bridging the gap between privilege and need.

At home, he was a storm! After a long day of school, I dreaded the evenings that followed. Dinner wasn’t exactly a right; it was more like a reward that came only after midnight, after hours of relentless drilling in maths and history, and occasionally in the grip of correction, a pencil squeezed between my fingers. What came between his unyielding stoicism and my struggle against sleep’s siren call, were his expectations sharp as the edge of a blade. “There’s too much time to waste in a day to waste,” he would say. It was his old-school grind- a test of endurance that pushed children to find infinite within limited hours of the day, just to exact a larger change by giving beyond means.

Despite a quick temper, brittle patience, decisions often delayed until necessity forced his hands, he was an easy father to love. He would deliberately feign the emotionally distant look, a man who prepared his children and students alike for victories in life that would come through hardships, not affection. Yet, beneath his rough exterior was a caring human being, not just for his own children but for his students. Its true extant was only revealed to me when I received condolence phone calls from unknown Kashmiri professors teaching in different countries. Few had last time met my father some twenty years ago but the only remembrance they have of him is of a teacher, stern yet nurturing, distant yet giving; who brought them notebooks to school, who demanded more from himself than from others.

His imperfections reflect the struggles of those who patronize a larger purpose- building stronger individuals and communities- even at the expense of personal preferences, despite having the chance and the means. It is better to evolve with clarity rather than illusion, he would say. And to this end, he treated education as a great equalizer. This memoriam is a reminder that greatness often comes wrapped in imperfection.

In his passing last year, the legend of him grows but the truth of him endures. As for the metaphor, well, spectacular as it is, mocks my gloom but I take solace in having inherited the method to purposeful madness.