Dada (Hindi for Grandad)

Disciplined, a minimalist, extremely supportive, ever loving, the most reliable person ever, flexible and yet a maverick, a stubborn resilient fighter…all of these terms can only help in painting a snippet of what my grandad, dada, meant to me. However, the term I would choose over all these is companion. In fact, I would even argue that he was my companion more than anyone else’s towards the last few years of his life. However, this wasn’t your simple plain carefree chill companionship. Our companionship was embedded in caretaking (and I will take the liberty of saying this from both Shivansh’s and my side). From him acting as our primary alarm clock and waking us up from our afternoon slumber to us checking up on him while he slept in the night to make sure nothing untoward had happened. From him helping us be carefree by making sure that we had the right blue gel pen ready for our exams to us making sure he had the right medicines to recover from Covid. From him constantly asking us about our alternate beatboxing life, even when none of us were actively pursuing it, to us engaging with him in his wild stories about his imaginative characters. From us helping indulge him by getting him that secretive not so allowed McAloo tikki to him indulging us by sharing that odd glass of beer with us. From him always asking us if we wanted to join him for a cup of tea to us getting fruit barfis for him from Kasuali. From him making sure we were never late for school to us making sure he never reached the hospital later than he should have. Dada was playful, naughty, secretive, talkative, and at the end, a good friend. He was a fighter and a companion and extremely open in his thoughts. He was also intolerant, impatient, and rigid. I see a lot of him in me and papa and thats how the circle of life goes. You learn, you carry bits and pieces of someone you thought you knew, and you learn to live on while they too live on.

If only my memory was as strong as his, I would have made this longer and more of a tear jerker. But as all things must come to an end, nothing could have summed this “pyaar ka naghma” better than Dada himself. Very poetically, Dada ended up following his saying a little too literally: Dekho, Jahaan daana paani ho.