The day before yesterday when I was about to finish a quiet dinner with a friend of mine at a corner table in a not-so-crowded restaurant, a new-age reporter with a camera in one hand and a Rode wireless microphone in another rattled me by asking this question. They were creating content for the hotel which is organising an event for Friendship Day.

I was unprepared.

Not because I didn`t know what it was to me, but because I was at a loss how to capture this enormous multi-dimensional variegated feeling that we all have been living with since our adolescent days in a few casual sentences. I chose to dodge.

By the beginning of June after enduring the harshness of the hot and humid Indian summer season from March, the nation starts looking skyward for the rain clouds to appear. The parched earth and roasted humans in utter despair go to their Gods, weathermen, and astrologers to hear the good news of the arrival of monsoon.

Their huge errors in predictions in the past don’t stop the hapless populace from dabbling with the discussion over rains even if it’s just in the discussion. The pain and hope behind this trepidation are like the hopes of one of the lovers in a broken relationship for the other to return.

The arrival of the monsoon on the Kerala coast is the most awaited event in the month of June.

If I was instrumental in bringing you into the world, certain things came along the deal which I`m responsible for; you better know about the roles I`m going to play in your life.

As the Protector:

My primary role as a father is to give you physical, emotional, social, and financial protection to the best of my ability till you become an adult. It`s also my role to provide you with exactly that much protection which will prepare you to be independent and autonomous and not make you dependent on me for life. Don`t expect me to protect you when you are wrong; I`m not your private bouncer. But when you fall, betrayed by your love and the world, I will be there to provide the safety net and a launch pad to swing you back into life.

They were stowed away and forgotten for close to 15 years till we discovered them while clearing the cupboards yesterday. But as I look closely at each one of them, flashes of memories come rushing back.

From the day they came into our house - either bought or gifted, how my kids played with each of them, how many kilometers they traveled with us, what all are the places they visited with us, and how many times they suffered being smeared in Cerelac and how many times they had to suffer the washing machine and the tumble dryer to the mountains of joy they brought into our kids’ lives. They were living beings with individual personalities and identities in the chaotic circus we called home.

In another few hours, the deadliest train accident of our living memories will be 52 hrs old. Hours will be days, days will become weeks, and weeks will become months.

Life will go on but those gory images of dismembered bodies, strewn body parts, and the sound in our minds of a huge mass of metal hitting another at great speed, wailing of people crushed under the metal carriages crying for help will keep playing in a loop and haunt us a lifetime. As many times its memory would visit us, that many times our hands will rise in prayer for this not to happen again. If the macro picture of this tragedy was unsettling, micro tales of personal tragedies which will roll out one after the other will leave us devastated emotionally in the months to come. 

Being an Odia in Odisha whose fate is tied and tightly coupled with the whims and fancies of another Odia would speak of another Odisha which it never was or should be.

For centuries we have proved that we make very good servants, sincere, loyal, and honest; efficiency was not expected from the one who just has to guard the post to protect his master`s interest. From being the Balasore Bearers to a Babu in the highest office and now as waiters and security guards in metros we have done every role because the lure of risk-free, easy, and secure life is hard to resist. It`s time we resurrected that dormant gene that made some of us kings and emperors.

Vividly remember that Sunday afternoon in the summer of 1974 when Baba drove us to a plot he had recently acquired.
After crossing the last human habitation with some rickety unimpressive houses at Acharya Vihar, we were on the highway towards Khurda. After about a kilometre plus he turned right to a barren geography with no shrub in sight. New roads were being demarcated with mounds of aggregates dotting the sides of stormwater drains. Our Jeep rattled on it and stopped at a point where the road ended and overlooked a valley. We were asked to get down and Baba proudly showed us his first material acquisition after struggling for a decade plus to raise his 4 children.

Dear,

Today is your first day at your office and your first step into the world as a professional. I as a father feel I must tell you certain home truths and things that will help you take on the uncertain water and navigate in the new world filled with unknown people and their unknown interests.

Leap not with romantic hopes but with practical understanding.

It’s a Sunday afternoon and after the post-lunch siesta, I wake up to a mixed feeling of having lost out, being left behind, guilty, and filled with self-doubt - a sense of dejà vu.

Familiar with it; deep down I know that this will continue till I reach the office and start taking up things. I have lived through this feeling since my adolescence and only recently realized that many adults like me do undergo this feeling routinely and it has a name.

Sri Kutta! Does it sound weird?

Yes, that’s how he would have been officially addressed because the spelling of his surname in the official record tells just that - had Sri Srikanti Kutta (Dutta) of Bankura not protested.

Dutta was determined and was made of sterner stuff.

After repeatedly failing to move the authorities to make a valid change of the name on his ration card, he chose to stage a protest in the most non-violent and creative way. He took his appeal to the head of the organization for the fourth time and instead of requesting the authorities with folded hands wearing a hangdog look, he yelped and whined like a snarling dog much to the chagrin of the BDO in the full public view. The video became viral on social media.