My Father Expired

My Father, Brojendro Oinam, expired on Mar 22, 2005. He was born on February 13, 1953. He is survived by his three sons and a daughter.

About a week back, I received calls from home that he was taken to a hospital and was in a bad shape. Later, I got further information that he was recuperating after couple of intermittent coma that overtook him. While I was still preparing to go down there, somewhere late in evening of Mar 22, 2005, his condition worsen suddenly and succumb to his illness.

Though he was never a man who excel in anything, he will be best remembered as somebody from whom we learn not to make mistakes in life. When he was alive, when we were with him (which were always rare occassions), he himself made sure that we do not fall in his footsteps, but instead become better persons in life. I am sure, we all learnt from his mistakes, and he was proud that all his sons and daughter are more competitive and rebellious enough to survive on their own in this harse world. We were not the best, but were good enough in our own rights.

He was a man who would rather keep his sorrows to himself, rather be silent about his un-happiness, be shun away from the world than bringing up his hardship to anybody near or dear. In time of happiness, he would eventually share with us. Though a concerned father, he was helpless enough not to be able to do much for his kids. But he was rather more of a practical man, who would teach us to be practical than to crave for things that are just fantasies.

One of his most commendable deed, which I realized at a much later stage in life, was during the time when our mother left us all for somebody else. We were all very young, I was still in third grade and our youngest sister was in the earliest phase of her life. As agreed by elders and relatives, she was deported to our Mother while the three of us remains home. Our Father who was away at that time, came to know of the whole situation, took the drastic step of separating his very young daughter from her mother and unite all the kids.

I can still remember one of his best lines, which comes out only when he is drunk (it was rather frequent anyway), that “Your cleverness will never surpass my foolishness”. I converted that to my own idiom and love to follow the same; “Never understimate your opponent, nobody is a fool.”