Tiku Mama

Tiku mama with Arjun...

As soon as I reach Ambari, I walk into the TV room. He is inevitably there, watching TV, with his legs folded and his fingers curled around a cigarette. I can see him in his lungi, and the vest, his hair a shade between flaming orange and dirty grey, smiling at me. I do not want to remember that he had lost his hair, and the last time I met him his head was covered with a gamucha to cover up the effects of chemotherapy. A gamucha, not a cap—that was Tiku mama. It was 1982 when Arun, my father, passed away and we came to stay at Ambari. Dhriti and I grew up with Riku and Miku as one family. If my mother baked a cake, they would be there downstairs to share. If mami made rotis, we had it with honey upstairs. In the middle of everything there was always Tiku mama. Everytime someone felt ill, we would troop to him and he would hand out small homeopathy sugar pills. We mostly faked illness for that. There was a version of scrabble called ‘Word making and taking’ that we used to play. Come exam time and Tiku mama would make us his special timetables with a time for everything from watching TV to eating to Maths. I already loved books and he loved to discuss different books with me. He taught us the importance of having a well maintained library and both Miku and I had notebooks where we catalogued all our books. We had hearty discussions on any topic from Perry Mason to Sangam to Global warming to Pakistan-India with him. Tiku mama loved Raj Kapoor. Cricket was his life. He was however an enthusiast on all other sports, especially tennis. I remember watching the 1985 Wimbledon matches with him. Ma was away and both of us sat late watching each and every match we could. As we grew older, we moved away but Ambari was always Ambari. He was always there when I came for a visit and if he wasn’t the house was empty. In times when he was worried about something, he would pace up and down, smoking his cigarette, in his quintessential old white lungi. He did so many things and knew everything and if you had any problem on anything he had the answer. Anything from cattle rearing to ship building to security software to baking cakes to knitting to car mechanics. Everything. You go ahead and think of something, ask Tiku mama a question and he will give you the most sensible answer there is. I got married from Ambari and he made the Doi-Mas at my athmongola. It was, everyone said, the yummiest. Ma and I spoke to him over the phone just as he was to go in for his first operation. I asked him if he was scared. He said “No, it’s ai paar or sai paar so I am not scared”. Ma and I was crying after we spoke to him but he was smiling. It was not ‘sai paar’ yet for him and he also met Arjun, my son. Miku’s wedding went off very well, and hundreds of people visited the house in the days prior to the event and attended the wedding, everyone had a chance to talk to him. He joked about his illness and was always smiling when I met him. In fact, because of that the news came as a shock. I thought he would always be there, despite his illness, despite everything. He must be smiling now, wherever he is. He must be missing his lungi, cigarette and cricket matches though. I miss you Tiku mama and so does Dhriti and Miku and Riku.