My father: Pralhad Chendwankar

Pralhad Chendwankar

My father

That my dreams too

May sprout new leaves

The bright-green succulent money-creeper

Toddle into my house too

Like the tender rays of the sun,

My father spent his life

Carrying heavy sacks on his neck,

Turned from young to old.

Stroking my long lean body

My father used to say:

If you study a little

You’ll be a sahib, sit on a chair,

You’ll earn a little

Instead of chopping wood for Brahmins

Till you faint,

You will at least

Read your own letters.

My son,

The teacher we had

Was a bloody bastard

He’d make us sit

Outside the school,

Teach us not a thing,

Yet, beat us till we peed.

That’s what my father was like,

Telling me old stories,

And if I played truant

He’d beat me as he’d beat cattle.

Once when I was

In the fourth standard,

My father visited me at school.

He wore a somewhat soiled dhoti,

A close-necked longcloth shirt,

A wrestler’s pink silky turban.

The teacher’s tight-lipped face

Remained motionless

Like the neat letters on the blackboard.

Go on teaching, sir;

How is my son doing?

I’ve skipped a day’s work

To find out.

When my father said that,

The children in the class

Suffered an earthquake tremor,

And the teacher

Popped into his mouth

The chalk in his hand’

Crunching it like betel-nut.

The children nearly died laughing.

My father, giving

One packet of jalebis to the teacher

And one to me,

Escaped from the class.

All the children, including me,

And all of us, including the teacher

Fell on the jalebis.

That’s how, eating jalebis,

I studied each year,

As soon as I had matriculated,

My father

Sacrificed a goat to Nagamal.

The first male child in the family

Seemed OK in the head.

So, selling to the Marwari

The silver bangle

Won in wrestling,

My father

Pushed me through college.

At the same time,

Adding expense to expense,

He mortgaged the farm

And got me married.

In four years I just

Managed to scrap through B.Com.,

Became father of three

Plus a pair of twins,

That is, five children.

And again my father

Sacrificed a goat to Nagamal.

Education leads to money,

Money solves problems.

The dream-creeper

Bears flowers of reality.

So, my father, on retiring,

Entrusted Bombay to me

And returned to the village.

A spacious house and garden,

With an upper storey spick and span.

A new well, full of water

Streaming out, serpent- like

In all directions.

Cattle, goats, sheep,

Bullock-cart with bells tinkling,

Sugar-cane and turmeric in the fields

To dazzle the eyes of Nagewadi.

That’s how my father lived,

A new bloom was in his eyes.

‘my son is highly educated,’

he kept saying to one and all.

The fields swayed,

Keeping my father company,

Growing bright green

According to my father’s wishes.

My father got tired

Of waiting for money orders,

Gazing at the wretched fields

He had grown thin as a stick.

Letters from the village

Kept coming to me, the naivety of their words

Made my heart bleed.

The Bombay season

Was no longer for jalebis.

Even sacrificing a goat

Was impossible on a clerk’s pay.

My father left the village,

Returning to Bombay.

Seeing the city maddened

By rising prices,

He was baffled.

He dashed his broad wrist

Repeatedly against the wall.

When he saw its strength was gone

He collapsed on the spot.

On the hospital bed he squirmed and twisted:

‘I’ll work in the new godown,’

he blabbered in delirium.

With the help of oxygen- tube

He digested his sorrows,

Allowing his dreams

To spill from his eyes,

And then at last,

Came such a hiccup,

He stared at me, his eyes wide open,

Split the sky and disappeared.

Soiled dhoti,

Close-necked long-cloth shirt,

A wrestler’s pink silky turban.

From the village now

He sends me no letters,

The fields do not laugh

And sway to my father’s wishes.

Translated by Shanta Gokhale and Nissim Ezekiel