Readers Write In #849: The Ghosts of My Father

By Venky Ramachandran

When I sift through the fondest memories of my father, I recall the day he accompanied me for a night show to Alaipayuthey. I remember driving that night in a TVS Astra with him, quickly grabbing a,..well.. I still can’t believe it, black-ticket outside the Devi Paradise theater before we rushed to see the movie.

For the record, we are talking about a frugal stentorian who hated night shows and never failed to express his disapproval when I left the house furtively. It’s funny how I still remember one surprising feeling about that night.

Unknowingly enchanted by the puritan ideals of my father, I remember the disapproval I felt when Sakthi eloped from her home to marry Karthik. I was 15. My dad was 57. It would take a few years to change my relationship with the movie and few more to cut the umbilical cord I had around him that narrowly tethered my identity based on how he perceived me.

I also remember this about that night.

We enjoyed the movie together, despite neither of us being willing to acknowledge it. Probably you are thinking what I am thinking.

Much like Kamal, I was a product of a late marriage. Could this be the reason why I have 40% man-child genes still left inside me?

When you spend your childhood wondering how come your father has more grey hair than others, when you are used to your college friends telling you that you tend to speak older than your age, you discover a strange benjamin button paradox in the inventory of your self discovery. You are growing up and down at the same time. Could it be due to the waking eternal awareness of mortality of your parents?

If most parents’ relationship could be summed up in a collage of memories, yours was accompanied with a frame. A frame shaped by the vast chasm of age. This frame sterilized many of the messiness the relationship held within. And therefore to cut the umbilical cord that was ensconced within the frame was a deeply liberating act. Could it be the reason why Mehta and Boys felt incomplete with the son unwilling to cut this umbilical cord with his father until the end?

Now that I am a father to a seven year old, I see this dynamic more clearly. Parenting is a funny recursive loop. You discover what you are doing to your son at a time when you discover what your father did to you.

When I sift through the ghastliest memories of my father, I recall the heady days when I showed up in my living room with my head tonsured. The year wasn’t too far from the time Alaipayuthey was released. Alavandhan was the talk of the town. Kadavul Paathi was running in my veins.

With my teenage hormones peaking, I wanted to unleash my beast within. I stepped into the neighbourhood Mani saloon and asked him to cleanly shave my head, instead of the usual Military cut.

As I entered the living room, I didn’t expect him to unleash his raging beast within. He was doing his ancestor rites at home and for a traditional man like him, it was a stab on the chest. All I remember about what happened next was a tornado of rage unleashed. Today, I can write about it with the coldness of a Lokesh screenplay. For I had processed this trauma during one unexpected therapy session with a dear friend of mine.

Beneath the raging exterior, he had the innocent child interior who was blessed by divine benedictions to not create a schism between what he processed inside and what he expressed outside. Now that I start to resemble him in ways I had hitherto expected, I can confidently state that it is a blessing and a curse.

Death rituals are a powerful cleansing reagent. Through a powerful Jungian psychodrama that is enacted by ancient chants and transgenerational healing rituals that break the distinction between your father and your ancestors, you undertake a powerful healing journey that reminds you of the interconnectedness of life and the ghosts of your father you carry within. Living doesn’t need to create a chasm between life and death. And lest we forget that, we have deaths to remind us.