To the Moon and Back
I heard the distant sound of a scooter, and turned towards the gate again – there they were! My dad at the helm of the Vespa – his twinkling eyes visible from inside the helmet, and my mum, behind him, holding on to dad and her bag. I ran, my small and chubby legs racing with each other to get to the gate as fast as they could. I opened the gate, waited for them to get in – my dad parked the Vespa while my mother got off. Then my dad got off, and opened his helmet. I ran to him and launched myself at his arms. He scooped me up, and swung me high up in the air, and I cried, breathlessly – “Daddy, how much do you love me???”, and he replied, with a grin – “To the moon and the stars, and back, a million times over, and forever!”
This narrative, with a few digressions here and there, unfolded every single day through my entire childhood, right up to when I was about 10 years old. My dad was my hero – my knight in shining armor. He’d knead flour and bake cakes for my birthdays, he’s lull me to sleep every night when I got restless, he’d drop me to the school bus stop every morning without fail, he’d listen to my stories without blinking an eye. I was the apple of his eye.
A couple of years after my younger sister was born, things began to change. Dad was promoted. He started coming home later than usual. One evening, he came in at about ten. We had had dinner – my mum had waited up for him. He came in through the door, and he struggled to keep his balance. His eyes were glazed over – and, for the first time, it seemed as if he saw through me. I thought perhaps he was ill, and I went up to him, reached out my hand, and touched his forehead to see if it was hot, if he had fever or something.
I saw something shift in his eyes, and he flung my hand away. He shouted at me, and at my mum, and went straight to bed, work clothes and shoes on. Next morning, everything was back to normal. He polished my shoes, ironed my school uniform, and dropped me to the bus-stop. I thought he must have been angry about something the night before. However, I had something else coming. That evening he came home even later. And again, he struggled on his feet. He stumbled a couple of times. His eyes were bloodshot, and he smelled of alcohol. Until that time, I had had a very limited exposure to alcohol – it was limited to television adverts, and something that people sipped in glasses, in parties and over dinner time conversations. I had seen some ads on TV that mentioned that drinking and driving were not good. I had sometimes witnessed the man next door coming home drunk, and beat up his wife and children. I felt cold fear creep up and down my spine – I hoped it wasn’t the influence of alcohol that made my dad seem like a complete stranger. I wasn’t given to praying, but I prayed fervently in those moments.
Days turned to weeks, weeks turned into months, months became years – and my dad’s dependency on alcohol worsened. He’d not come home before 1 or 2 AM. Some nights he did not even come back – he’d be lying in some bar, unconscious. Once, he had an accident and his car overturned – he managed to scrape through with mere flesh wounds. We feared that someday he’d die in some street corner, and we would not even know. He’d shout at my mum and at us. He’d lash out at us for no reason at all. I dreaded going to school each day as I feared that the kids and the teachers would find out, and they would not like me anymore. Every morning, I’d make him promise that he would not drink, and every evening, he’d break his promise when he came home drunk. I could hear our neighbors whisper behind our backs. My extended family and relatives started to distance themselves. People looked at my sister and me with abject pity in their eyes – and, I hated them. Most nights, I’d have fallen asleep before he returned home. I hardly got to see him. We’d become strangers.
15
"Daddy, how much do you love me???”, and he replied, with a grin – “To the moon and the stars, and back, a million times over, and forever!"