At A Dinner Table Conversation With My Father

At a dinner table conversation with my father, he tells me how he’s recently started feeding a lot of birds back home. Half listening to him go on about how the Hadeeth mentions that birds can earn you a lot of grace, bless their helpless little hearts, I think of how poetic it is that his love for animals finds religious sanction so he can now serve them joyfully, without it being a necessity of his profession (he's a vet), or an attack on his masculinity. I catch myself with some difficulty, try to come back to what he’s saying, and am irked at the speed of the zillion impish thoughts in my head. One would sometimes only like to listen without thinking simultaneously; thank you very much. I do not get lost in it, thankfully, and can pay enough attention to my father’s mellow face (I’m sure I’ve used this word more times than one, for how he’s starting to look more recently, now that he’s begun to age), talking about all the different birds who have become regulars at his bed of broken rice and water bowls in our garden. The only bird I manage to recognise is the tiny sparrow, whose actual size I can never infer, except that I believe it to be the size of a human fist. Which is also the size of a human heart. I’d beg pardon all doctors and people remotely interested in biology (the latter of which I once was) if that isn’t true. But the idea is, again, poetic. The size of your bloodied heart, being the size of your bloodied palm that holds it, being the size of the most delicate bird known to us. That last thing definitely isn’t true; I’m sure we’ve progressed enough scientifically to have discovered birds smaller than the humble sparrow, but we do not see exotic birds every day, everywhere. Sparrows are rare, too, but I’ll let them have this distinction. Let’s say it’s a favour.

I think of my father now like a bird. Not one of those predatory, claw-taloned majestic ones, but something like a sparrow. Perhaps a pigeon. I held an inordinate dislike towards pigeons for the longest time. But some time ago, when I was home for a couple of years (against all my intentions), a pair of pigeons would build their nest at the little circular hole above our kitchen window, facing the balcony. I do not know if the same pair of pigeons built their nest there more than once, but I have come to believe it was. They lay eggs, but it was only once when the eggs hatched, and we saw little pigeon children, causing quite a clamour for food.

Most times, we’d see the eggs smashed to death on the floor of our balcony, their delicate lives slowly seeping out through the broken shells. My father would be the most upset person in our house whenever that happened. Usually, he’d also be the one to spot the broken eggs with the dawn of morning. A pigeon is not able to clean up the dead remains of its children. And neither is my father. The mother would remain fixed to her nest as if still incubating those eggs, her eyes showing none of that liveliness that pigeons are cruelly hated for. She would not move. Perhaps a day or two later, my mother would carefully clean the area of that residue. This is how my father is too, now that I have seen him at a funeral. He doesn’t move; instead, I'd find him lingering in certain corners of the house throughout the day. In a funeral house filled with people, it is easy to lose track of one person. But whenever I caught a peek into his eyes, I saw a pigeon. I do not know if there has been enough inquiry into bird physiology to know if pigeons cry. But I could swear that they did.

If I think of myself as a bird, I’d probably be a crow. A master of trinkets, as I pick up a handful of red sandalwood seeds outside our funeral home. My mother walks ahead, while my father stays back for the few minutes it takes me to do so. He does not ask me any questions, perhaps complicit in his reluctance to walk into the house again to face the family, face the gentle stank of death and its accompaniment, sorrow. But my grandmother used to do the same, nesting with a multitude of little things strewn around her bed and the house. I wasn’t there when my own grandmother passed, and the residual grief felt like it carried over here for my grandaunt’s death. I suppose it is a strange thing to be glad to be present at a funeral, but I think my father was too. I heard somewhere that everyone attending a funeral has the thought crossing their minds at least once— if they were to be on the other side of life. I also heard that crows can remember faces, and I pay special attention to all the faces there, prolonging a look into their eyes, so I have something to go back to during their funerals and if I’m not there again. Death looks strange on people. And I do not want their lifeless image to be the last one I remember until my own passing.

It is here that I see my father cry for the first time. I know he cries a lot; he is a much more sentimental person than one would think, but somehow, in all these years and all these funerals, never has he once cried for my eyes to catch. It happens suddenly and catches me off-guard. Everyone in the house sat around the living room, recounting joyous moments with my grandaunt. She was already buried. When it is my father’s turn to speak, he hardly gets a few words in and breaks down into sobs. I almost laugh at the absurdity of the moment. He isn’t looking at me, nor anyone else. I suppose for someone his age it might be equal parts embarrassing and relieving to be able to cry in front of his family. But he perhaps felt orphaned, yet again, at having lost a parent figure. His parents have long since passed, and my father isn't close to his other siblings except for my aunt. He was one of the younger ones in our family and had a complicated relationship with his mother. He always seemed to me, wanting familial affection, and not receiving it. He came to the city to attend veterinary college; my grandaunt was the only close family who lived here. They were like mother and child– her being a younger, closer mother to him than his own. It also helped that she was a school teacher and perhaps understood emotions a little better.

Children cannot bring you the same comfort. I wished somebody to hug him at that moment. But ours is a society that does not approve of touch as a love language. And I was sitting too far from him to do so. It’d also probably be too dramatic if I were to go up to him right then. He could only say, “xeibur kotha monot pore”. I cannot find an English equivalent for the phrase. It'd perhaps mean recollection of memories. In English, all memory is active. Reminiscing is active. You, digging into that bag of expired images. But in Assamese, memory comes to you, like a train arriving at a defunct station. Memory is living; you are a passive afterthought.

I think of sparrows and pigeons and crows again. That night, when my father is going to bed, I hold a hand over his forehead and tell him to cry if he feels like it. I tuck him into bed like a child, awkwardly pulling the sheets up to his chest. I return to my room, letting him nest. For a while, he can be the hatchling, learning to build a nest again.