My Father and I: Writers on books and bonding

Indian Express

5 days ago

'Some of my most cherished memories are of the family trips we took together to Nainital, Nepal, Mussoorie, Pachmarhi, Jabalpur and other places.' These were not just holidays, but deeply anchoring experiences: 'Travelling with him and my mother, discovering new places, and just being together as a family gave me a deep sense of security and joy.' That sense lingers still: 'Even now, those memories evoke a warm nostalgia and a quiet smile.'
Former diplomat and author Vikas Swarup with his father Vinod Swarup. (Source: Express Photo)
As years pass, so too does the curiosity deepen about who our parents were before they became our parents. 'I often wonder what he was like as a young man, before life happened. We never really had that kind of conversation, and I wish we had.' But timing, always elusive: 'He turns 90 this year, but I doubt he would want to have that kind of conversation now!'
He suggests two that resonate. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini — 'which captures the silences and complexities in father-son relationships.' And The Road by Cormac McCarthy — 'though bleak in tone, is a haunting meditation on the bond between a father and son.'
(Vikas Swarup, former diplomat; author of Slumdog Millionaire, The Accidental Apprentice, Six Suspects; host of the podcast Diplomatic Dispatch)
On a favorite memory:
'Let me show you some photographs, each one encrypted with voices and stories,' she writes. 'Old black and white photographs of my parents and me, held in place by neat cardboard corners in the stiff black pages of a vintage family album. My father, mother and me. In the active periphery of my childhood there were aunts and uncles and grandmother, each one a strong presence. But the nucleus of my world was the three of us.'
She remembers a summer evening when she was three and a half, and seized by a sudden desire to become a 'Sahib'. 'Not a memsahib but a Sahib. Maybe inspired by a picture in some book my father read out to me… In the absence of a tail-coat I demanded my green winter frock-coat and in default of the fitted breeches I shrieked for my green woollen dungarees with the red embroidered squirrel on its chest-flap.'
The trouble was — it was June. 'These were winter clothes, packed away with dried neem leaves and camphor balls in the heavy metal trunk, and the timing of my impassioned fantasy had fallen on a hot June evening!' Her mother tried to resist. 'My mother threatened me with a slap, several slaps and imminent hammering but I gritted my teeth and persisted.'
Then came her father: 'That long-suffering man of imagination, came to my rescue and reasoned: 'The child is deeply involved in some creative make-believe. We must not shatter it. Take out the woollen clothes and dress her.''
'So, hatted and booted, in thick woollen clothes, swaying a stick, a child walked down the Colonelgunj road… and into the triangular park! My Dad walked with me with a very straight face, fully co-operating with my inner life. We must have made a curious spectacle that hot June evening… I remember taking a turn or two round the park before the heat and oppression of my heavy woollen clothes put my fantasy to flight.'
'How can I ever retrieve my father in words? A lot of people who knew him used the word 'genius'… Musician, mathematician, physicist, linguist, philosopher, educationist. He was all these things… I am in no position to measure him. He was my father, playmate, refuge, counselor.'
She remembers how he let her scrawl on walls, pile toys on his bed, sketch elephants, and hold captured flies in his palm before gently releasing them. 'His very first sentence, on seeing me a few minutes after I was born, was: 'This daughter is more to me than seven sons can be to their fathers. And I shall teach her seven languages.''
She reflects now: 'The one thing I wish I could tell my father (who passed away in 1990) is: Dad, it hasn't been an easy life for me but I discovered that I had hidden reserves of strength in me, thanks to the depth of security you provided me as a child.'
'Off-hand I can recall To Kill A Mockingbird.'
(Neelum Saran Gour, author of 'Sikandar Chowk Park', 'Virtual Realities', and 'Messrs Dickens, Doyle and Wodehouse Pvt. Ltd.')
'As a child, I had a deep fascination for trains. I must have been three or four years old at the time. My father would take me to the Ghatsila railway station just to look at trains and listen to their piercing whistles. We used to go up on the foot overbridge and see trains passing beneath. When an engine honked loudly, I used to be so frightened I would grab my father's hand and hold it tightly.' The railway station then was still cloaked in colonial-era architecture — 'that sturdy structure of bricks and lime' — but to the young Sowvendra, 'this just added to my sense of wonder and awe, and my father was my companion in this adventure.'
'I come from a space where fathers are still figures of authority. Everything that fathers say are correct. We don't usually oppose them. So to think that I would have something to say to my father is quite unlikely.' And yet, he offers: 'Perhaps, only an apology for the disappointments I may have caused him and to tell him how much having him as my father has meant to me.'
The Small-Town Sea by Anees Salim. 'This is a favourite of mine. I will recommend it to everyone but my father though.'
(Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar, author of The Mysterious Ailment of Rupi Baskey, The Adivasi Will Not Dance, and Jwala Kumar and the Gift of Fire)
'My father and I have always loved furniture-gazing in vintage shops.' It began in childhood in Calcutta — 'in the auction houses in Park Street or Russell Street or in the dingy but incredible shops of Gopalnagar near New Alipore.'
Their shared passion was less about purchasing and more about the romance of discovering: 'Our budgets seldom matched our vision. (Of course, for my father, the true joy was uncovering a jewel from a dump. A set of nested tables that turned out to be rosewood: the shopkeeper did not change the original price he'd quoted as a salaam to my father.)'
Later, in Delhi, this father-daughter ritual continued. 'He and I have worn out the soles of our shoes in and around MG Road and Amar Colony. There was one memorable trip to the land of Punjabi Baroque, Keerti Nagar, though we didn't buy.'
Their ultimate favourite? 'Sharma Farms in Chhatarpur.' But even when purchases were made, they weren't necessarily practical: 'Our desires have always exceeded the sizes of the homes we have to furnish at any given moment. And sometimes our purchases end up giving off a whiff of grandiosity which is perhaps a little comic.'
Still, the act is rich with meaning. 'Baba and I have filled mansions without owning them — and had robust disagreements about the placement of pieces in said mansions (for instance, where would one place the gorgeous corner piece with the four giant flying cherubs, in the most fine-grained of mahogany?).'
'It is glorious. It is mad. It is a regular weekday afternoon jaunt. We are pros after all; we won't go to any of these places on the weekend, when people who want to buy furniture (not dreams) come.'
'My husband hopes that our daughter will do the same with him in Defence Expo one
(Devapriya Roy, author of Indira; The Vague Woman's Handbook; Friends from College, and The Heat and Dust Project)
'My father, Pran Chopra — eminent journalist, super intelligent mind.' For much of her life, he remained emotionally reserved, and their relationship, tinged with distance. 'He was always reserved about his emotions and I was a bit formal with him.'
But in the twilight of his life, a profound reversal occurred, not just in memory, but in relationship. 'Towards his last days, as that intellect wore away with age related dementia, he began to think of me as his mother and talked of his childhood, his love of me, the comfort I gave him.'
In that final unraveling of mind, there was a gift of connection. 'He passed away in my arms, his head in my lap.'
'Oh dad, I loved you so. I hope you knew the comfort that you gave me.'
(Paro Anand, author of Like Smoke, Nomad's Land, Being Gandhi, and I'm Not Butter Chicken; recipient of the Sahitya Akademi Bal Sahitya Puruskar)
'My father passed, unexpectedly, when I was barely ten.' What remained was the ache of absence, softened only by fragments of memory: 'He was a very good humored man and my parents were very much in love. So his death tore us up. I can still feel the void.'
The grief was early and searing, leaving her trying to hold on to something real. 'I remember trying to keep my eyes fixed on his feet throughout the time his body was kept in our house before the cremation, hoping that the sight would be etched in my mind forever that way.'
In the years that followed, her longing became layered with speculation, of what might have been. 'It is hard to grow up without a father. I know that I probably would have disagreed with him when I grew up on many important things but I wish I had both my parents.'
She offers a metaphor for the kind of nurture lost: 'Growing up with loving adults caring for you — and in our context those are mostly your biological parents — is like a sapling sprouting. By the time the sprout is ready to grow, the skin has to soften. Maybe my father would have softened by the time I was ready to leave.'
(J Devika, historian, feminist, translator; author of Engendering Individuals and Kulasthreeyum Chanthappennum Undaayathengine?)
Aishwarya Khosla is a journalist currently serving as Deputy Copy Editor at The Indian Express. Her writings examine the interplay of culture, identity, and politics.
She began her career at the Hindustan Times, where she covered books, theatre, culture, and the Punjabi diaspora. Her editorial expertise spans the Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, Punjab and Online desks.
She was the recipient of the The Nehru Fellowship in Politics and Elections, where she studied political campaigns, policy research, political strategy and communications for a year.
She pens The Indian Express newsletter, Meanwhile, Back Home.
Write to her at [e-mail] or [e-mail]. You can follow her on Instagram: @ink_and_ideology, and X: @KhoslaAishwarya. ... Read More