Dear Baba...

Dear Baba,

After all these days, today I am taking a conscious effort to write an open letter to you on your birthday. When I say "conscious effort", I mean, I am well aware of the fact that, even though I send this entire conversation to your email, I would be waiting forever for your reply.

There have been many ups and downs in my life since the day you left your physical body. The have been so much changes within such a short span of time that, it feels like yesterday when I celebrated your birthday with a covert cake cutting ceremony, especially when the calendar says that exactly two years has elapsed since that particular event. Today when I am writing this post, I am satisfied that we, as your family, created beautiful memories that were never there. As I write this post, I feel, we made the most out of the huge, yet finite number of precious breaths you shared with us. In my case, my relationship with you evolved from being typical father-son relationship to the best of friends to that of a mentor-protegee. Though there were many things that I learnt from you, yet there remain infinitely more things that I could have learnt from you. There have been moments where I have felt that a big chunk of knowledge was lost with your physical body, and, I have to reinvent the wheel to get back on track again. But, every time I go through this phase of hopelessness, the very next moment, I imagine you standing beside me, and guiding the way to rediscover the knowledge, that I thought I had lost along with you.

Perhaps, it was not in our individual destinies to have a father-son open-ended conversations with me learning the responsibilities, challenges and adventures of a married life. Perhaps, I never had the privilege to ask you about evolving & taking responsibility of being the boss of the house, that you were. In this context, I vividly remember how you were holding my bicycle and running alongside me to provide that critical balance when I was learning to ride a bicycle. But one fine day, you let off your hands and allowed me to move on. I kept on pedaling away, with a faith that your hand was still providing me that balance. Only when I looked back to see you standing and smiling, I fell down. My physical pain of falling down vanished the very moment when I saw that satisfied smile on your face; that I have learnt to ride the bicycle without your support. Today, I am again getting that same feeling, only with a hope that, somewhere up in the heavens you might be smiling seeing your kid learning to balance the bicycle of life.

With Tons of Love,
Your 'Thomas Edison'