Locomotoring

This photo isn’t my memory. It is my mom’s memory. I was too young to remember. I have memories of seeing this photo in my mom’s album. I do remember dad’s watch. He wore it for many years. It was a little loose on his wrist and would invariable climb up or down and swing about. I remember his glasses. Again, he wore them for many many years. They went out of fashion and came back into fashion during his lifetime. I remember his thick curly black hair. In my childhood photos, my hair is curly like his. I remember his broad shoulders and his chest press machine. He had a resting unhappy face but he would laugh very easily. I am like that too. I have inherited his hands and feet as well, narrow and small.

After he passed away last year, I read tributes of his colleagues. Many remembered him very fondly. One story touched my heart especially. This was someone who was newly posted to his office, the National Institute of Communicable Disease (NICD), India’s equivalent of CDC. In those days, job postings of civil servants was decided by government committees. It was his first day and he was nervously waiting to speak to my dad whom he only knew by reputation. Dad had kept him waiting for a bit. And then when they met, dad bombarded him with many technical questions. This colleague had felt that my dad’s interview was a lot harder than what he had gone through in the government’s bureaucratic process. At the end of the interview, he was assigned his first job by my dad and that job was to present the office at a prestigious conference the very next day. He was scared at first to speak at the conference, but as he participated, he felt more and more confident, eventually coming out feeling victorious. He went on to work with my dad for many years and referred to my dad as a great mentor of his.

As I had read that tribute, I could see it unfold in front of my eyes. As a kid, I had visited his office several times. All Indian government offices, back in the days, looked similar and had shared similar design patterns. These were old colonial buildings with crumbling walls and heavy wooden furniture. He would be surrounded by technical binders in a large and poorly lit office. The large windows would look out to grand corridors and gardens but wouldn’t let in much sunlight. The entirety of light would come from bright white tube lights, they were rarely put in with a level, and would cause my OCD to kick in. A large black fan, which I adored, would hang from a downrod from the high ceiling moving the air indolently and creating a hypnotizing motion with the downrod and blades. A newer pedestal fan would rotate about causing the much needed movement of air in the room. The room would be naturally cool due to the old stone building complexes and mature trees providing shade. He would have a large chair he would sink into and a large desk piled high with bundles of paperwork. The visitor would often get these cane chairs that I now associate with Marcel Breuer’s Cesca chair. There was always a peon at the beck and call, who would come by with water, tea and biscuits for visitor and my dad. A heavy duty phone or two would take up a significant amount of space on the desk. Dad would look small from across the desk until his loud voice and laughter reverberated the room.

I immediately realized what my dad had done to this gentleman. As soon as he had convinced himself that the person was competent, he was sent to the deep end of the pool. A habit I had inherited and it had taken me nearly a lifetime to let go.