My father was Poor …..Illusion, I believe

    

My father  used to take me on his bicycle to watch football matches. We had to share a mango among five of us, my two elder sisters, mummy, papa and me. We always travelled by public transport.

I never asked my father to buy me a magnetic pencil box because I knew  designer box was not meant for us. He used to take me to the tailoring shop to have a couple of outfits stitched only twice in a year i.e  before Durga puja and Bihu. Today I take my daughter for a movie in an air conditioned car. I buy her the dolls she likes, the dresses she wants. She thinks I am rich. I can even buy her an airplane, she thinks.

 

My father built a house which took years to complete. He never thought of buying a car. The only luxury we had was a black & white portable television, a HMV record player and a Philips radio. Today I have the latest television, I have a big car and I have a house. One more thing which I have in abundance today but my father never had is the long list of bank EMIs

And still, my daughter thinks I am rich while I thought   my father was poor. Illusion, I believe.

Again.

One of our neighbors who worked as director of a reputed company retired when I was in my early twenties. He had travelled and read widely. After retirement he took the initiative of empowering us about the threat of global warming. He used to show us an alarming documentary on global warming and enlighten us on its consequences

The CD with frightening visuals coupled with a high quality background score left a strong impact on the viewers. Our young minds were impressed with his initiative and so we talked about the CD to whosoever we met. The well-dressed, decent speaking gentleman was very concerned at the pace with which global warming was happening. So, he always carried the original CD to wherever he travelled. In his initial years after retirement, he must have spent a fortune on petrol to spread the cause.

One day, I brought the CD to show it to my father. From his body language I realized he was not much interested in the video. Perhaps he was not comfortable with the foreign accent used in the video and instead wished to watch an India-Sri Lanka cricket match. That day I felt  quite disappointed seeing  my father’s attitude.

He was least interested in a cause which, for us, was the most important issue at that point of time. I felt bad, however, I and my friends continued our efforts to popularize the cause.

Now, after almost a decade later when I was watching a footage of the recent Uttaranchal cloud blast, I felt a pinch on my spine. I tried recalling what I had done in the last one decade which could have contributed towards preserving our environment. I had been an empowered youth in my locality and an active member of the local environment initiative group.

I realized that, besides talking, reading and surfing Google, I had not contributed much towards the cause. I found a job, bought a scooter, bought a car, an air conditioner and availed whatever possible luxury my salary could afford.

The footage brought back memories of my father. I remembered being annoyed with him when he ignored the video which the world applauded.

The same day I also de-coded another old Illusion. The Illusion of believing that my father was indifferent towards the environment.

Every morning my father used to spend hours in the vegetable garden. He had  large  collection of flowers and plants. He was a consistent prize winner at the local flower show. He managed to domesticate bees, had his own pond, planted trees and rode his bicycle till the day he left us forever. He always travelled by public transport, never used an air-conditioner and wore a mechanical watch for most part of his life. We would certainly need a powerful microscope to calculate the carbon foot print my father had left behind.

And still, all these years, I kept thinking my father was indifferent towards environmental causes and we,  the group of empowered citizen are the real environment protectors

Illusion, I believe.

Abhijit Bhattacharya