Most
of the children born in the early 80’s in India, who had access to a TV at
home, will recollect having just one channel in TV those days. It was a
national broadcast by the government and was called Doordarshan. Obviously, the
number of programs were all defined well in advance with very few live
programmes unlike today, where majority of channels do live streaming.
Among
the limited set of programs on TV, there was one animated series called He-Man
& The Masters of the Universe. It was quite natural that He-Man became my
favourite superhero for all the amazing things he did to save the world.
But
even before I knew He-Man, there was another man who was already my superhero,
my dad. He did the most amazing things which a child would only imagine
superheroes will do for them. Be it taking you to various places in and around during
vacations or buying the tiny pottery set from the local market so that we kids
could play ‘family’ along with our cousins in a makeshift house creatively
carved out of the cardboard box of a recently purchased refrigerator. The list
was endless.
While
dad did this and many other things for me and our family, he lived through his
life with one motto. Live life to the fullest. He always used to say that you
are given just one chance to live and make the best out of it. He also had a
deep-rooted belief that eventually when death catches up with him, it will be
an instant one. And so, he lived his eventful life, till one fine day in 2021,
during Covid times as the world was reeling in the greatest pandemic ever known
to the history of mankind.
A
bit of a blood stain in his faecal matter was where it all started. A quick
test at a local hospital led to the doctors finding out something was wrong.
More advanced tests followed and by the time the New Year celebrations
concluded for 2021, the diagnosis confirmed that his colon had embraced one of
the most dreaded diseases in the world, cancer!
I
still remember the first conversation with him over the phone as soon as the
news was known. His response was typical of his personality. As with most
things, he simplified it as though it was a bit of a dirt on his body which
needed to be washed off. That was dad.
A
couple of surgeries and a few rounds of chemo followed and a year later he was
declared free of the ‘dirt’. Needless to say, we all were quite happy and
relieved to see even cancer bent down before his will.
Dad
did get to replace the calendar at home one more time before he handed over
that responsibility to rest of us.
His
legacy lives on…
Part 1 - The Limestone Trap: https://trexperiences.blogspot.com/2024/06/the-limestone-trap-death-defying-dad.html
Part 2 - The Road Trap: https://trexperiences.blogspot.com/2024/06/the-road-trap-death-defying-dad-part-2.html
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