Crumbling Papers and Vanishing Memories

I am transcribing old articles of my father in Hindi for my website, Kalpana.it. Those articles written by papa, when he was alive, during 1960s and early 1970s. There also some articles written about him, after his death, by other writers and journalists.

Mummy, my mother, she collected all of those writings and made neat packages. Mankind articles here, Kalpana articles here, stories here... All his life's work collected into yellowing, crumbling papers. His and hers. He did it for living and she did it for him.

She is retired, let her do it, it will keep her busy, I'd thought.

Then she wanted them to be printed. Collected works of Om Prakash Deepak... all his essays on the students' movement of Bihar during the 1970s guided by Jai Prakash Narayan (JP), all his articles on the famines, on Gandhi, on socialism, and so on. She has made the photocopies of the files, sending them to this or that person.

An old friend of papa said, "Why don't you pay to get them printed? Two of you (I and my sister) are living abroad. All of you earn good money. What does a little money mean to you? Pay to get them printed, they will be useful."

Pay to get them printed? I felt a little offended. Print it because only you want it, no publisher wants it because it won't sell any way. It hurt me, because I thought it was true.

And my mother, her memory is becoming fleeting like the RAM memory of my computer, it gets erased quickly.

Give them to me, few at a time, I will transcribe them, I offered. And then I will put them up on the web at Kalpana, I thought. We went together to the old cupboard, that once used to hold the medicines in my clinic. It is full of rotting papers. Old files smelling of crumbling papers. She hardly remembers, what is there in which file, and gets worked up when I ask her. I can't forget watching her sitting there on our old sofa with old papers strewn all around her, the pain in her eyes.

And so, these days I sit here at my computer. Slowly learning how to type in Hindi, transcribing his articles in Hindi for internet. Writers, journalists, socialist leaders, friends and colleagues of papa, they are all there in these papers.

 

It was his world, that I knew about but I hardly stopped to look at. I was there, but I was too busy living my life. Now I read about them and fragments of memories come back slowly. Kishen Patnaik, Ashok Seksaria, George Fernandes, Jai Prakash Narayan... names and faces. His old papers are introducing my father back to me. I realise that he was gone too soon and I had no opportunity to know him as a person, I had only known him as my father.

 

In his papers, he is not my Papa, in his papers he is himself, Om Prakash Deepak, journalist, thinker and writer.

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Additional Note: There was a comment yesterday.

I treasure them since they are so rare. It is from someone called Arundhati. Could it be ... for a moment I thought of the fleeting meeting at Delhi airport, a few years ago. No, it is not. The name of her blog is almost an answer to my "Jo Na Keh Sake" - "Leave it unsaid".

 

It is another Arundhati, who writes about silences to answer declarations of love, and about becoming one, merging together with her loved one. She has written:

"Huh!

I prefer being myself and her being herself. That way it is more fun. I suddenly think of how little time we actually spend together, we are too busy in running all the time. Or in writing blogs (only me!).

She will wake up soon and come smiling for the first hug. And then she will bring me coffee. That is how we do it, I sit in front of the computer and she brings me coffee or prepares sandwich for taking to work. And the day starts.

And she doesn't like silences for answers. Nor do I, while I come to think of it."

 

I think that perhaps she is talking of her mother? Is her mother also losing her memory, I wonder, probably not!

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