In Memory of a Legend...

Death has a strange finality about it. It's extra-ordinary. You die and you just cease to exist. You may leave behind a few people to mourn for you if you're lucky. But soon, even they will move on with their lives. You'll just stay behind as a fond memory and a bunch of old pictures. My father died on the 8th of March, 2000. Before his death, he was the only parent I had had for over seven years. But life moved on.

I was 10 when my father breathed for the last time. But I couldn't shed a tear. There was just too much crying around me. Amidst all the mourning, I was trying to cope with the fact that my hero was dead. He had literally been the strongest person I knew, both physically and mentally. And he just succumbed to an illness and nobody could do anything about it.

Fifteen years later, I don't know whether any of his friends still think about him. I am not even sure whether anyone really knew him during his lifetime. But I did. And today, I'm going to write about my father. I've often started writing this story and stopped. I never felt worthy enough to finish it. But today, I think I can. Because today, I am finally crying for my father.

Ashok Kumar Panda had a difficult childhood. Born with dark skin in a society that's obsessed with fair complexion, he was subjected to under-estimation and mistreatment right form his childhood. The insecurity caused by these atrocities gave birth to a defiant young man. My grandfather was too busy building his own life at that point of time to actually notice and understand what was going on until it was too late. My father was a rebellious teenager and my grandfather wrote him off as the bad apple of the family.

He used to get into a lot of fights while growing up. People used to come and complain about him to my grandfather all the time. This invited a lot of beatings as my grandfather used to be a hothead at that time, a part of him that I never got to know. Being of an extremely resilient spirit, the more beatings he got, the more rebellious he became. By the age of 17, my father and grandfather had an extremely strained relationship.

But my father was amazing at redeeming himself. He got employed in the Armed Forces at 17 and never looked back. He matured all of a sudden. The military suited him. For a rebellious youngster, he settled into the discipline rather smoothly. He was absolutely devoted to my grandparents and came through during hard times. He was a very social person and loved to stay in touch with all our relatives and family friends. 

But happiness didn't stay with him for long. He married my mother, who turned out to be a tortured soul and never really got along with him. He tried to understand her and keep her happy but failed. A couple of years after I was born, my mother abandoned us. My father was not a person to shrink away from a challenge. And this was a challenge of epic proportions. He had to raise a little motherless child. 

He pulled up his socks, internalized his sorrows and just dedicated himself to the task. He was an extremely dexterous person, he was good at any task he put his hands on. He cooked well, he had a knack for keeping things clean and tidy and he was just very good at being a father. But the rejection of being abandoned was too much and he could never really shake it off.

So when he was diagnosed with renal failure, he just didn't have the zeal for life to recover. As fate would have it, my uncle was diagnosed with a brain tumor at the same time. My father dedicated all his time to saving my uncle and just neglected his ailment. My uncle recovered but my father didn't. For the last 8 days, he was in a coma. But minutes before his death, he regained consciousness and he smiled.

I still remember how peaceful he looked. And at that moment, it dawned on all of us. Even at 40, he had led a full life. And he was leaving with a smile on his face. He left with people crying for him. He had won friends with his clean heart. He had taken care of my grandma during her illness, he had saved my uncle's life and he had given me the life I was living. Even in death, he shaped the rest of my life. That was the man he was. 

There are so many other stories, colorful stories about my father. Stories that I will eventually write. I am a party of his legacy, a part of the person he was, the hero, the legend, my father.