A knock on the door caught the attention of Asha.
“Manav, could you please see who’s on the door?”
As if she knew what’s going to happen, she darted across to the dining hall, stood akimbo with both her hands spoilt with dough and gazing blankly at Manav yelled –“Manav! Could you please leave that play station for a moment and check who’s on the door?”
Manav, for a moment squeaked in his couch, and without any further delay ran across to the main door. Even he knew that sometimes his behavior, although at home, were quite unbecoming for the stature of a married man who is a senior VP in a reputed firm.
“Yes, what’s the matter?”
“Sir, there is a courier for you! Please sign here.”
“Ok! Thanks.”
Manav closed the door and started to have a look at the envelope. What he saw written on the envelope, left him dumbstruck. The cover of the envelope :
To,
Dear Manav
From,
Your loving Father
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Ramesh seemed to be a man of few words. But, that’s a façade most people wish to put up when faced with an excruciating personal loss. As if losing his beloved wife recently was not enough, he had to start pondering over his 5 year old son Manav’s future. Manav was inquisitive from the word go, and that reminded Ramesh of the need to take special attention of his son’s demands and channelize his son’s resources in the right direction. But losing your life partner so early in life could be burdensome, more so when you have a budding flower to protect. Ramesh felt too weak, everyday and every night. Not to let his son see the effect of his debilitating experience at the hands of crude fate, he used to lock him up inside a room at nights, away from his son’s peering eyes. As is the wont, given the propensity to speculate, Manav could not stop himself from asking his father what he did inside the room, all locked up. Ramesh didn’t know how to answer his son, a man of few words that he was after the loss, told him that he was working on building a Time machine which he can use to be a part of future and past living in the present. It took him close to a day to convince and explain Manav what he was supposed to be doing in that room.
At the same time, Ramesh asked his tender son, all of 5, to promise him that he won’t disturb him whenever he decided to retire for his room.
Only Ramesh knew what he did in that dark room! Who cares, anyways that room was always dark.
**********************************************************************************
Manav’s hands trembled as he took out the letter from the envelope. It was a white paper, awaiting to let Manav know what his father had in store for him. He held the paper in his hands, nervous at the prospect of being challenged with something alien, and concentrated on the blue font, which he thought adorned the whole page beautifully. Manav always marveled at what his father was capable of inking on the paper with his old blue pen and always wondered if he could write that well. Today, in the lap of success, a major part of his thirst for perfection would have been quenched, but he only knew what he was still waiting for. He had a lump in his throat, as he started to read out the letter. By this time he was already in his study room, far away from an oblivious Asha, only to feel lonelier than ever before.
**********************************************************************************
Dear Manav,
If you are reading this letter, I am the most proud father today. Our times were not that great. I don’t know how much of it you still remember, but I have vivid memories of what we went through in that stage. Ruthless fate took away your Mom from us and we were left pondering at what could have possibly gone wrong. Being a child could have been easy, but to play a child is never easy. I was a young father, left listless by solitude, burdened by responsibilities and practically deranged by situations. But being in love with the only thing you have in a catastrophe is the best thing that could happen to anyone. It serves two purposes. One that it helps you cope up with the malevolent situations, and the other that it gives you a chance to rediscover life - A chance to fall in love with life once again. But it always puts a premium on the effort which goes into identifying the tools to achieve the second purpose. It isn’t an easy job my son, and for most part of the period of going through that ordeal, I seemed quite inept at fishing out the right objective amongst a horde of options available before my eyes. As they say - to err is human, and I believed in this adage blindly till the time I was undecided about what to do about our future – a fledgling under the aegis of a confused man, whose war within was generous enough to oblige and devour a future which only almighty knows about! I was running out of time and had to take a decision quickly. And I took it. Magnanimous as it may seem, the same cruel fate had something else in its mind this time. After losing the war with myself, I decide to marry once again. And it was only for you. And out of nowhere, this story started doing the rounds that I had been seen to be behaving like a crazy man, often the vibes from a man who has just lost his young wife and has to take care of a sapling. I don’t know who engaged in this rumor mongering, but as I sit back to reflect on what could have been, and what I could see now, I want to thank that person and wish for his well being. Thank you Mr. XYZ.
I never married thereafter, which I can proudly say was a blessing in disguise. What I hear of the woman today, with whom I was about to get married, is nothing great to talk about. Her 3 sons are known to be roadside scoundrels and her daughter quite demeaning in her own way. Gosh, I would have died watching my son taking those paths. I don’t know how much is she responsible in shaping up the current characters of her children, but man is by nature a risk averse person, and it is with the conviction of that trait, I can proudly say that you are my son - a mirror to my ideologies, a man your father would have wanted to be. Yes, some of the traits you carry now are an amalgam of my dreams and your mother’s wishes. I, as a young man, wanted to be an entrepreneur in my own right. But a man’s nature is always going to be a hassle in what he really wants. Being risk averse was never going to help me take those rungs to success in this field. Your mother was a pillar of strength for me. She always stood by my side, be it good or bad times and I believe she believed more in my abilities than what I could ever do in mine. She gave me the impetus to work hard, always be tenacious in adverse situations and what not. But, few things don’t turn up the way you want them to. I lost my strength and with that whatever she had always stood for. And hence the confusion after she was taken away from our lives. But, loved ones and their influences always linger in your life, no matter what you choose to do. She was still there. It took me sometime to identify her, but that’s when I rediscovered life. A new meaning was attached to my existence and with that started a journey you must cherish for your lifetime. What you are today is what your mother has made you. You must know that you are the only thing I had in this life and I love you a lot. But during your upbringing, there were few things which I hid from you, and now feel obliged to answer. And this is something which is very close to you.
If you could remember, as a child I never allowed you to enter in that dark room. You must have wondered all these years, even after my flimsy description of what I did there, what all could be there in that room.
Now I intend to answer all your queries. But for that, you need to go into that room for the first and the last time. That’s an earnest request from your ageing, doting father.
Your loving father,
Ramesh
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Manav could not believe what he was reading. His ambivalent state was perturbing him to the core. But he wanted to do this for his father. He bulleted across the study room, took his jacket and keys to his car. Of course he had to travel to the place where he had seen his mother for the last time.
“Manav, where are you going? The lunch is ready!”
“Asha, I will be back in sometime. You take your lunch and don’t wait for me.”
“But at least you can tell me where are you going”
“To see my Time Machine!”
Asha had a weird look on her face watching her husband utter these nonsensical words.
“Maybe it could be the name of a new play station”, she muttered to herself.
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The door to the dark room creaked when Manav tried to enter the dark room. After all, years of rust and excitement are sure to pop up when ignited with a push. Stepping aside the cobwebs, both in the dark room and his mind, he entered into the room to a strange revelation. There was a thin ray of sunlight peeping inside the room, majestically leaving a trail of glow and resting purposefully on the almirah, the only remains of that sun lit room. Manav was getting anxious by the moment as he moved towards the almirah to open its door. The wooden door of the almirah was covered with a layer of dust, manifesting the time which had passed by as Manav had waited for his father to answer that elusive question. The door creaked again to mark the inertness of that room, which had been its companion for so long. The upper shelf had a small wooden box, sitting nice and pristine as if waiting for its master’s hands to come and grab them. Manav was already there and he was all too ready to oblige. This was not a time to foment ideas, but to act as per his father’s wishes. Manav broke open the seal of the box to find a letter nicely tucked inside it.
Dear Manav,
This is your time machine - a machine able to carry you into the life of your father when you were oblivious of things going inside my mind. I so hopelessly wanted you to understand how I felt at that juncture in life. More than you, it was a void which was ready to engulf our futures. Potentially, a father who couldn’t care any less and a child who couldn’t know any more. I never wanted you to see what I could see. Nothing which could scare you and not let you be the man you are today. This machine will always remind you of what we had gone through and how we came out of it. You are back into your past, still standing in present holding this letter, when you are able to discern things in the best possible way. Now, you can understand the agony of not having something which you had always wished for. It will make you cherish your present even more, for what you are today, the values you stand for, and the life you have chosen to live. This machine will carry you into the future with a sense of humility, that what you could make out of your life is your own doing. Never feel that your father had to suffer anytime. It was you who carried me along in tough times. You were the passion which drove me to any lengths – a new meaning of life, which is not living for yourself, but striving to make someone else’s life better, which ultimately will guarantee the quality of life you have lived. This machine will carry you into the future, with everything I would love watching you do. You have made your present and this machine will give you a chance to reflect on what you have gone through, how important it was for you to carry on and with what ideologies you step into your future.
This is all I could make for you and hope that you would like it, because through its mirror I can see the excitement in my 5 year old son of wanting to know what I used to do in this dark room, the relief in the eyes of my child of getting his most awaited gift and the aspirations of an entrepreneur wanting to make it big in life. Finally, I could see myself in that mirror!
Your loving father
Ramesh
The room had always been dark but never moist. The silence of the room reverberated with nostalgia and pride. Manav left his footprints behind in that room, possibly for the first and the last time. The time machine finally met its owner and others would know that Manav was here. Engine of his car started in the background as the dark room bid him good bye, possibly for the last time.
