It was in the early 80’s. I could not remember exactly what actually happened, the details of the incident. But one morning, my mother told me that my father was asked to go hiding in one of the rooms of the house. An unknown young man had come looking for him in the morning. The insurgency movement in Manipur was still at its infancy. We could still go at night to the movies and walk back home. It was a safe place to stay. Safe, did I say that, it was indeed the best place to stay: weather wise, food-wise, community wise! But when a youth came asking for my father everyone was panicked. Though, there were no gun or grenade incidents, physical assault was not something unheard of. So everyone had asked my father to stay in one of the rooms and the women folk would handle the issue.

With panic in their hearts, the women in the family went out to meet the young man, who had come in a cycle,

"Ibungo, karigino Oja bu unaningbadi?" My father had been a teacher before he became an officer in the Education Department.

The young man climbed down from his cycle and said,

"Ema, Ojana toubase eikhoi yam nungaijei amukta thagatchage toubanee. Matric parikha asuk chaoba ama touraga, question da English laana fongbase nungaijade. Ojana khabargee thongda masi laale haina haapibase, eikhoi yam nungaijei!"

"O adugira! Oja di chathokhine, Ibungo!"

Saying this, the man mounted his cycle and drove back on the road on the banks of Imphal river towards the Mahabali temple. Everyone was relieved. We went to meet father and told him that it was a young man who read the papers a few days ago and was happy that my father had corrected the English errors in the question papers of the Matric examination that year through the Newspapers!

Though I grew up without much of his attention, I had very few but memorable incidents. It was during some of the Christmas holidays when I and my step brother would be spending the holidays in Churachandpur where he was posted as the Deputy Inspector of schools. We would go for our morning walks and he would throw the English sentences, one to me and another to my brother and asked us to change the voice: active to passive and vice versa! I enjoyed them and though most of the memories fade away, I still remember those winter mornings and still feel the cold breeze hitting my face. Every time when winter cold breeze hit my face it brings tears to my eyes. In the evenings, the smell of the bread in the bakery next to our rented accommodation is still so etched in my memory that when I smell something of that sort anywhere in the world as I travel, I still felt his presence.

The backdoor of the house faced a pig pen and the dirty smell would also arouse my memory about him despite the abominable odour. When my daughters jump up startled when the pressure cooker whistles, I do remember him. I had done that with him so many times. I knew it was coming but could not help jump panicked every time it whistles. My elder step brother could help that. Maybe he was stronger and more stable.

After a few years later, he was diagnosed as having Cancer of the Gall Bladder and it had spread into the Liver and nearby organs at the time of diagnosis. I was in still in my early high school. The family physician told us that it was a late stage and there was no use for taking him anywhere. He was admitted in RIMS, the then RMC hospital. I spent many nights sleeping on the cold floor of the RIMS hospital in one of the cabins. Within few months, he died one evening, at home. The day was a day before Shivratri, one of the darkest nights of my life!

When I became a doctor, years later, when I worked as an intern posted in Surgery, that particular room did not belong to that unit I was posted in. Yet, I would just flip through the file of the patient who would be admitted in that cabin. I do not know what I was looking for. I was not looking for my father but every time when a new patient got admitted in that room, I would look for his file.

One more thing which bring back memory of my father was a small cheap exercise book. It was the first draft of an English grammar book. My father had started writing an English grammar book. Those were "Make sentences". He had started writing a few pages but when I was studying my high school in Don Bosco, I used to borrow his sentences. This was from where the first time I knew the meaning of a new word, "abound". He could not complete that book.

As a child, as I grew up, I remember thinking, "One day I would complete this book!" I could never do that. Though I was interested in English literature, I was drawn towards medicine because of the need of a doctor in the family, my financial position and of course the destiny. I lost the trace of writing and English while going through the Medical grind. During the medical college days I just needed to remember the likes of symptoms of Diabetes and just enumerate them. Nobody bothered whether your English was correct or not.

Destiny then took me to places and when I was doing my post-graduation, I took to writing once again. I realised that I could still express myself. I would still cry reading the words that come out my hand. This was the time I started seriously remembering my father again after many years. This was in 2005 and 2006!

Last year in 2011, my first book "My Days in Tihar Jail" came out and I had this urgency within me to write more and more. And I started missing him more and more. I did not complete his book but I wrote a book of my own.

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