AND MY FATHER LIVES ON..............................

As a teenager I had closed views about death। I thought end of a life implied end of a relationship . As they took my father away on his last journey, I felt a part of me giving away. It was an agonising pain that numbed my existence. I wailed, I cried, I wept and then all my tears were enveloped into a hollow in my heart which is a void that none can fill.Not that I have not met people over the years who have been close to me but because I did not wish to place anyone on the pedestal my father earned out in his life from me that the void is always there. Sometimes I wonder I have never gifted him anything, not even a birthday card. I was too young to be having the much condemned thing those days...POCKET MONEY;Yet today, I dont really feel I have not given him anyhting. I have replicated his love, his values in my course of life and everyday as I walk close onto the heels of my father's footsteps I feel I am almost living his life.He lives on when I hear out from my mother that I have a tall heart like my father.When I am cherubic and warm with strangers my mother pompously announces "SHE IS JUST LIKE HER FATHER". Deep in my heart i feel a sensation, an anticipating thrill of looking at the mirror to see whether I can see his image; But then my mature self knocks and shakes me out of the reverie.And eventually sense prevails as i dwell within to see my dearest father. What I am today, the way I garner love from others and the way my soul aches for the needy is all about a portrait of this man....my father. Today even when I am in a pensive mood, my heart skips a beat to know that I am compared to my father. If I am proud about anything it is this feeling of contentment that i have taken after my father. I sense a palpable pride when people reitterate "She isnt one shade different from him". A man who was immaculate in his professional life, loyal to his family and especially someone who belonged to everyone outside home .

My father lives on as I pave my life in the lines of his dreams, as i streamline my existence feeling an unbound love for all. Today I feel death isnt powerful at all. It cant take anyone away.It did not have the acumen to rob me of my father and death lies defeated in my hands when I carry on my life fashioned in the framework of my father.Dear father you live on and I can feel your presence in the bountiful love i get from people.Its from you that i have emulated compassion, dynamism, charm and love for all. "Thank you PAPPA as i endearingly called you.....I will never let you die and thats the promise of a daughter." Even in his silence he is connected to me.I have warned death never to challenge me about us as we are connected beyond the boundaries of connection. I have accepted the spaces in our togetherness as it is wrapped in the splendour of my memories with him."Thank you father for bestowing me with a lineage i wouldn't like to part with." Just one wish...."May I meet you my beloved father once again in flesh and blood in all my lives to come??????