A long day at work -I had four meetings! -went to sleep without eating dinner. Woke up just now and this image floats through my head of pappa washing clothes especially bedsheets on the large washing stone in the back of our house, a towel tied to his head to catch the sweat

Our neighbours would peep through their windows and watch. My mom embarrassed would try to ask him not to, people might call him “hen-pecked” but he just laughed. The days he came back from the farm were spent helping mom out with the chores. No chore was too “feminine”

He would go back on Monday after lunch to the farm to return on Thursday evening. Those four days when he was home were so perfect. So familiar. Every day just like the other. I miss this giant of a man so much.

Each chore he did I remember from a Different vantage point. Like ironing of our uniforms in the morning I remember his bare back and his blue checked lungi, cause the study table on which he ironed faced the wall. Patience was imperative for two skirts, one shorts, three shirts.

His cooking I remember from sitting on the platform as he made chicken curry and gave my sibling and I the chicken fat to drink from a steel glass travelling with him on the Bangalore-Mysore bus I remember it from leaning on his shoulder then and going to sleep on his lap as

He gave explanations on how the gear box in a bus works or why trees have a white sometimes red band painted on them.