Fathers, the quiet caregivers who struggle with affection

Affection, like other cousins of love, has its own private language. Unlike the linguistic specificity of love, whose mere admission serves as manifestation, sometimes, affection eludes such succinct expression. On afternoons when Ma feels affectionate, she whimsically rolls my nickname in her tongue, repeating it in a sing-song way, using it as a refrain. Didi, being more effusive, does not hesitate from tugging at my or Ma’s hands as and when she pleases. If I am to train my lens on the preceding 26 years of my life, I would be hard-pressed to think of a single instance when Baba had resorted to either of these gestures. In fact, merely imagining the restrained man doing anything similar seems so ludicrous that I inadvertently end up checking myself with a chortle.

Having grown up in a joint family, I was almost always surrounded with jyethu(s) and kaku(s) (my father’s older and younger brothers), each having kids of their own, each responding to different squeals of “baba” floating in our house, each embodying various shades of the noun. Being privy to the way they behave—by assimilating their differences and similarities — ‘Baba’, has almost become an adjective for me: entailing a particular set of characteristics, encapsulating a specific essence. Running the risk of sounding presumptuous (I am certain, I will not be the first Bengali who would be accused of this), in my mind, the word ‘baba’ conjures up an image of a frail Bengali man, wrapped in fragility and stationed in a world that demands unadulterated machismo. A loner, in his own way, fighting against the world to not be deemed as a loser, perhaps.

He can be delightfully paradoxical, charmingly obedient, and infuriatingly stubborn at the same time. He can also be extremely affectionate, especially when it comes to his daughters, and equally incapable of expressing it.  

It has never been a feat for Didi and me to discern when Baba was upset. His voice, deliberately raised a decibel higher than what our ears were used to, or referring to didi or me as “tumi” instead of “tui“ (a telling pronoun gradation, suggestive of familiarity, withholding romantic connotations even and undoubtedly more versatile and dense than its Hindi counterpart of “tu” and “tum“)  in the middle of a conversation, would immediately inform us that we needed to stay quiet for a bit. For the longest time, none of these unambiguous parameters were available to gauge when he would be feeling affectionate.

It has always been easier with Ma. Her emotions, perpetually positioned on the precipice, generally need a gentle tug to make their presence felt. I remember the day I was due to leave Calcutta for Delhi, Ma, sitting next to me all afternoon, was running her fingers through my hair. Holding my hand in hers, she had asked me to stay good and entreated all the gods she knew to look after me as she wiped her tears. Baba was pacing outside the room, without a word. If there was a tear, it had been wiped by the time he entered the room. Looking at me with eyes that had turned a shade of crimson, he had asked, “Shob niyecho?” (Have you taken everything?) Later, moments before entering the airport, while checking if I was carrying everything I was supposed to, it was discovered that I had forgotten to carry my comb. Before Ma could launch into a tirade chastising me for my carelessness in public, I remember Baba taking out the small comb he carries in his wallet. Handing it to me urgently, he had asked. “Eta te hobey na?” (Won’t this do?) 

If I was slightly upset with him for fretting over the luggage at home and not exchanging a word with me in private, like Ma had, the incident at the airport filled me with with shame for being so hastily unkind. It was not that Baba did not care, or was not affectionate, but it was me who was scouring for them at the wrong places. It was not his shortcoming, it was mine. With all his eloquence, Baba has always struggled, sometimes tangibly, often endearingly, articulating words that needed to be whispered rather than screamed. That day was no different. It was not supposed to be.

This struggle, that I have grown up witnessing in close quarters, came back to me years later when I watched Shoojit Sircar’s Piku. The cantankerous Bhaskor Banerjee (Amitabh Bachchan), who is equally possessive of the letter O in his name as he is of his daughter Piku (Deepika Padukone), seemed a fitting representation of my old man back home. It is not so much of Banerjee’s desire to be taken care of, but his propensity to holler words of affection to his daughter in a tone akin to scolding — Banerjee would rather express his concern with an exasperated Ki je koro tumi, Piku! (What have you done, Piku!) instead of a milder, Eta ki korley, Piku? (What did you do, Piku?) — that reminded me so intimately of Baba.

Sircar, in his film, does what very few filmmakers did before him. He refrains from hiding Banerjee’s struggle. He also chooses not to embellish it to to make it palatable. He lets a father’s struggle show, in all its incoherence and resistance to be articulated. In a charming scene in the film, Banerjee, after criticising his late wife on her birth anniversary for having sacrificed her life for him, is reminded by a relative that she loved him. The irascible old man does not change his tone. “I also loved her and still do,” he snaps back, and then, looking through his fuzzy glasses, points to the kurta he is wearing. ”This [kurta] was gifted on my birthday by her. I am wearing it for her today.” It is Piku who smiles at this. It is she who knows. Like I know too: Baba(s), not being good with words, often take refuge in gestures to express that they care.

One of my most enduring childhood memories is of a day when my grandparents had come to take me with them. Egged on by my cousins, I had made plans to spend my summer vacations with them. Ma had given her approval but Baba was not informed. In a sepia haze, I remember standing on the threshold, ready to go with Dadu and Dida when Baba, looking at them (and avoiding my gaze) had said, “She cannot sleep at night without listening to my stories”. It was not far from the truth. I did indeed look forward to Baba’s stories at night, but in the excitement of meeting my cousins, I had forgotten about it. Before that day, it had not struck me that Baba, like me, looked forward to our nocturnal practice with similar if not same, fervour. That night my grandparents had left, while the bag and I remained at our door.

As I watched Piku, a similar scenario seemed totally plausible at their household: Banerjee could just as well say something similar and expect Piku to get the hint. I am fairly certain that Piku, much like me, would stay back too.

Daughters, I feel, not only see through their fathers’ struggle but comfort them by not fighting it. They know, just like Didi and I do, perhaps like even Piku does, that Baba’s affection, not conveyed in ways we are acquainted with, is often hidden behind stray sentences or embedded under scattered mute gestures. We just need to look for it and, when we find it, keep it to ourselves.

Didi might still complain but Baba never really says why he does not buy prawns when I am not at home. I too don’t reveal why I keep a lookout for fish fry at the food counters at weddings and then, diligent of not being seen by Ma, find my way to Baba. The language of affection is, after all, private.