Rage Against the Dying of the Light

Most people just go through life. They exist, and call it living.

My father lived. He squeezed every bit of living from Life, drank it bottoms up and asked for more.

At 19, he lost his father. With two brothers still in school and a homemaker mother, most people would have resigned themselves to a life of dreary responsibility, of making ends meet.

Not my father.

Yes, he took up a job to support his family. But he also continued pursuing his passion – playing tabla. No, that’s the wrong way to put it. He didn’t just pursue it – he chased it like a parched man in search of water. He accompanied some of the greatest singers and musicians in Maharashtra, indeed, became their favourite, the man they asked for in all their performances.

Most people would be content with all this. A good job, a loving family, a passion in life.

Not my father.

Baba, circa 1985, Germany

He doesn’t know what it is to be content. Or what having a single passion means. Why else would he go into theatre, while also juggling a day job and a promising tabla career? Then start an advertising production house? Then veer into producing audio cassettes? And this is the part that mystifies – how could he be good at all of it? Where did he find the time? The drive? The energy?

Any normal man with his hands full of all these pursuits would probably have little time for his family. And for some part, that’s true with Baba as well. I remember staying up late at night as a little girl, waiting for him to return from some show or tour, falling asleep only when he arrived. But he made up for his absence by planning the best holidays you could imagine having in the 80s and 90s. He took us to Delhi, Agra, Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttaranchal and countless places in Maharashtra. And when I say us, I mean our extended family. Aunts and uncles, cousins and their spouses, elderly grannies and their medicine kits, nobody was left behind. He planned it all and turned us into passenger princesses before the term was even invented.

And his travelling didn’t stop in India either. Music took him out of the country at a time when international travel was something that happened only to the rich and famous. And yet, there was my father in Germany, in England, in Israel and Qatar, posing for now-sepia photos with the greats. For he has been blessed with the company and friendship of some of India’s greatest talents in music, theatre, literature and academia. I don’t say this lightly – I have met some of them and been introduced as his daughter.

I speak of it as if all his achievements belong to some bygone era, but that’s not true. The man has a YouTube channel where he talks about music and it has over a 1000 subscribers. Not bad for a cancer-fighter who’s crossed 70, right? Most men would take pride in that.

Not my father.

Because he doesn’t think “not bad” is a compliment. He never has. As far as he’s concerned, it’s either excellent, or it doesn’t count. He has always demanded excellence. From us, from himself, from Life. And if Life refused to give him that, he fought with it till he got it anyway. He drank and he smoked and he chewed paan and tobacco and he married the woman he loved, society be damned. He learned to drive, bought a car and drove it the way he wanted to. Life just had to deal with it.

And when it couldn't, when it refused to give him what he wanted, despite all his struggles, he ranted at Life, waving his fists and spewing invective because how dare Life oppose a will like his?In that, he forever reminds me of Dylan Thomas’s words:

“Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

My father has lived. Every bit of Life. Despite life. For the past few years, almost to spite Life. And for most people, that would be enough.

But not for my father.