Goodbye Appa

My father passed away at 1:35 a.m. on the 29th of October, 2007. He was only 63. The doctor's labelled the cause of death as multi-function failure.

I find it hard to believe that my father, the man who brought me to life, is now dead. I find it hard to believe that an important chapter in my life is now closed.

It saddens me that my future children will never get a chance to meet or know my father.

I feel scared when I think of my mother living on her own for the first time in her life, in a house full of memories. My mother is strong and brave and insists she will be fine on her own.

As the death ceremonies were being conducted according to Vedic rites, I kept thinking my father was going to wake up and say, "What the hell is going on?"

As I went through some of my father's closets, the day after his cremation, I found objects from my youth, preserved and taking up pride of place in my father's room. I found gifts I had given him a long time ago, still kept, unused.

I flipped through his address book and found names and numbers of everything from friends to funeral services to freezer boxes for the dead. It seems my father, a meticulous man, had planned ahead in case of his death.

Since we are Hindu Brahmin Iyers our death ceremonies will continue for 13 days. My mother leaves for Varanasi, the holiest of cities, on Sunday, to perform my father's 9th to 13th day ceremonies there.

According to Hindu philosophy the body is just the outer garment of the individual. The real self never dies, but is reborn in a different body in due course. I wish my father good health, happiness and all the love in the world, in his next birth.