Mere Chehre Mein Chhupa Hai...

I was quite at my wits' end, trying to control my temper to avoid creating a scene at the office of the mobile phone company that had been working like a goddamn government office. This was my third visit there for as petty a work as getting one of my two connections cancelled. But now at last they seemed to have decided to listen to my requests and give up their untiring efforts to convince me to carry on with both the numbers.

Sitting with a deadpan expression, not looking at the boy processing my request, and in fact not even caring what he was doing, I remembered how irritated my father used to get at the manner in which these "trained" boys and girls worked, pressing various keys on a machine called computer, they hardly ever exerted their own brain for a bit of intelligence or innovation.
My father had always kept pace with time, but this present work culture used to often annoy him because he thought it was just too robotic and killed all of one's own thinking power

Taking a turn from the memory lane and coming on to the road I was treading at present, I realized to my great relief that my work had been done. So I got up taking a deep breath and exhaling out hard, more a tokenism, to throw out the negative vibes from my system.

And then I heard someone say,
"Excuse me Madam!"

I looked at the man. He was a sober-looking well dressed man sporting a neat beard. For a second I thought he's going to give me some more "advice" on the mobile service and how keeping at least two connections is beneficial.
So I braced myself up for a counter-offensive!!!

But his was a simple question:
"Are you Mr. Rahman's daughter?"
His voice full of earnestness and devotion, and his eyes looking at me respectfully .
As I tried to smile a little, still puzzled at the situation, he told me it was way back , more than about twenty five years, when he was working in the same division of the company where my father was the Superintendent.
And now, after about a quarter century later, looking at me, he was sure I had to be Mr. Rahman's daughter!

I was not surprised at the respect for my father in his voice.
Almost anyone ... family, friends, colleagues ... there would be hardly anyone who would speak of my father otherwise.
But I was surprised that he recognized me as my "father's daughter".

Out of the air conditioned office, under the open cloudy sky, with the gentle breeze kissing me on the cheeks, I forgot all about my displeasure with the mobile phone company. There was not much traffic on the black smooth coal tar road. As I crossed the road my dupatta flying with the breeze seemed to envelope in its expanse some pictures, some faces, some events from the past ... and so I let it fly... and I let loose the flight of nostalgia too ...

It was a long flight at the end of which I understood why that man could instantly connect me with my father. And I was very happy that while for me my father is always around, in the memories that he has left behind, for others too he has not faded away.
He lives on not just through his memories and good deeds, but in images too ...
My father lives on in this world through me ... what a wonderful thought that was!!!

But it was not all.
What happened next was an unexpected awakening.
A realization.

I felt an intense sense of responsibility to live up to his values and principles. The qualities which endeared him and immortalized him in the memories of so many people should not die with him.
He had gone away.
But his goodness that had touched so many hearts was thriving and alive.
I must live up to those values.
That is the only real tribute and homage I can pay to a man who, who was my father, but not only for me, for a lot many others, he can never be a "dead-and-gone" case.