The evergreen friend

I have heard many women asserting that their fathers were their superheroes. But, it was a different case with me. I just couldn't match my father with a superhero. How could he be? He had no biceps, triceps, six packs. He did not sport a cape. He, in fact, did nothing which could be called "super-heroic". He was a contented man, happy with the piles of books on his table and his "lungi-clad" avatar. When we were just kids and had the visions of a modern, colourful, fashionable world in our dreamy eyes, we used to get very angry with this avatar of Baba (as we called my father). We even compelled him to wear more modern relaxing outfits at home, but he was never comfortable. He used to tell us that he belonged from a village and he wanted to remember about his humble beginnings.

As a matter of fact, though his appearances looked deceptive, he was extremely modern and open minded in his thoughts. Many of his colleagues or contemporaries were unable to match his outlook towards life. He staunchly believed in "simple living, high thinking". Baba never stopped us from experimenting with the new things or new ideas. He was our confidante. Baba's presence was enough for us to stay motivated in our lives. He was that friend around the corner whom you can run into every time and catch up a chat on any topic of your choice. His immense knowledge in multiple things would make you enlightened every time.

He had another passion worth mentioning. It was his passion for cooking or more correctly weird innovations in cooking. Whenever my Maa used to come alone to Kolkata to meet her parents or for any other work, my Baba would take the charge of cooking onto him. He would cook up breakfasts like papaya-chowmein, papaya-pulao or any other dish with papaya as the common ingredient. Our revolts and protests against this papaya-love would go unheard for obvious reasons. He would make up an instant sermon on the benefits of eating a papaya everyday. He was a local, amateur tea-taster who was blindly trusted by the tea-leaf selling shops in our local market back in Durgapur. He would sit for hours together and patiently test the blending ratios of the Darjeeling and Assam tea leaves and advice the packaging accordingly. I have heard once that Baba made the English style of making tea quite famous in our neighbourhood. Some of the enthusiasts who were deeply inspired by Baba’s tea-knowledge even bought tea-kettles and tea-cosies in those days.
The day we lost him, I had a feeling of losing a bosom friend. He never had to preach anything, he lead a life providing full of examples to pick up from. He never ranted any ideology or philosophy but he chose to live a life with the ideology he believed in. He believed in equality of all classes, castes, genders and religions and he practiced his beliefs throughout in his life span of seventy-three years.