Latest / My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story / My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 82: My Father's Grandson

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My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 82: My Father's Grandson · My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story

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My playful wife. He's a watchful one, that boy,
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he said. You've done well with him. And I understood
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that this, from my father, was an entire and
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overflowing speech, that you've done well with
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him was as far as the man would ever be able
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to travel. It was Saloni who said I should take
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Kabir to see my father. She said it lightly,
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the way she says the things she has thought about
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the longest over the marigold one morning, and
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then she left it in the air and did not press,
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which is how she presses. And I said yes of course,
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soon, and then I did not arrange it for three
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weeks, because I had been keeping the two of
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them apart without ever admitting to myself that
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this was what I was doing. It is a particular
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kind of cowardice. the avoiding you do without
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ever letting yourself see that you are avoiding,
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and I am good at it, better than I would like
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to admit. I had told myself a dozen small reasonable
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things, that my father tired easily now, that
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Kabir's routines were delicate, that there would
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be a better week, and every one of them was true,
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and all of them together were a fiction, a screen
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in front of the real thing, which was fear. I
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did not want to sit in that flat and discover
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that the man had not changed and that the boy
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would learn, in a single afternoon, the same
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lesson I had needed a whole marriage even to
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begin unlearning, that you can sit in a room
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with someone entirely willing to feed you and
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still go hungry for the one thing they cannot
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give. The distance had been the accidental -on
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-purpose kind, a visit forever almost arranged
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and somehow never quite, and it took Celonie
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saying the thing aloud for me to see the shape
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of my own avoidance. Because to take Kabir to
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my father was to carry the single most woundable
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person I know into the one room in the world
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where I had learned, in my own body, exactly
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how it feels to go unseen. My father is old now
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and alone. My mother has been gone four years,
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and the flat she used to fill with her noise
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and her opinions has settled into a great quiet
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around him. He lives as he has always lived,
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by provision and routine, the same chair, the
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same folded newspaper, the fixed Sunday telephone
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call in which he and I exchange the weather and
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the state of his knee, and almost nothing that
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could be called our lives. He was never cruel.
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I keep having to say it because the thing I am
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describing has no villain in it. He simply, across
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the whole of my childhood, never once looked
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up. And now I was proposing to set down in front
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of that man a boy for whom being looked at is
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not a preference, but the very hinge between
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safety and the old terror, a boy already passed
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over by a dozen adults who could not trouble
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themselves to see him, and I did not know whether
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I could sit in the room and watch it happen again
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if my father, too, could not be troubled. On
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the metro over, while Kabir stood at the map
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calling the interchanges before the recorded
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voice could, I rehearsed, quietly, all the ways
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that we would leave early. What frightened me
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was not general. It was very specific, and it
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was this, that Kabir, of all the children in
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the world, is the one who can least afford an
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adult who does not look. Another child, a securely
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loved one, might sit through a dull afternoon
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with an inattentive grandfather and lose nothing
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by it. But Kabir reads every adult the way a
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sailor reads weather, and an adult whose eyes
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slide off him does not register, to Kabir, as
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merely dull. It registers as danger, as the old
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confirmation that he's a thing the world's attention
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passes over, and it costs him something real,
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something I would then spend weeks helping him
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win back. I was not protecting my son from boredom.
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I was protecting him from a wound with my own
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family's name already on it. And then there was
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a thing I had not accounted for and had no way
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to have accounted for because I had been so busy
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defending against the father of my childhood
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that I had forgotten to expect the father of
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now. My father is 81. Age has been slowly stripping
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him, year on year. of every single thing that
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once ate his attention and turned his face away
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from me. There is no career any longer to be
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half -present to a child from behind. There is
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no report he must finish, no meeting pulling
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him toward the door, no next appointment, no
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ambitions still running. All the great machinery
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of distraction that had stood for decades between
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his eyes and his son has simply, with age, wound
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down and stopped. And what was left when it stopped?
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What sat in that silent flat with nothing left
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to look away toward was an old man with, at last,
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nothing in the world to do but look. There is
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a cruelty folded into the timing of this that
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I have not yet finished making my peace with.
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The very availability I had begged for, silently,
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across the whole of my childhood. The put -down
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paper, the turned -toward face, the unhurried
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attention, had arrived in my father at long last,
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but it had arrived thirty -five years too late
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to reach the boy who had needed it, and it had
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arrived only because everything else in him had
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fallen away. He could look now because he had
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nothing left to look with except the looking,
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and a part of me wanted to be bitter about that.
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But bitterness, I am slowly learning, is mostly
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just grief that has not yet agreed to sit down.
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And this grief, when it finally sat, turned out
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to have a strange gladness folded inside it,
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because too late for me did not have to mean
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too late for Kabir. Kabir, who meets everything
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that frightens him by finding the system inside
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it, who trusts the Metro precisely because it
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is the one map that has never once lied to him,
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walked into that flat and found in my father
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the single key that could have opened him. Because
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my father is older than the Metro. He is older
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than the flyovers and the ring roads and the
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malls. He is himself a living map of the Delhi
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that existed before the lines were ever drawn,
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the lost city of trams and Tonga stands, and
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the one crowded bus you waited an hour in the
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heat to catch. And Kabir, who carries the entire
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Preza network in his head, station by station,
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discovered in the space of about four minutes
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that here was a man who remembered the ground
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itself before it was tunneled, who had walked
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the streets that were now stations when they
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were only streets. He wanted it. He wanted all
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of it, with the fierce whole -bodied focus he
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brings to every system he loves. What was there,
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he asked, standing very close to the old man's
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chair, before the yellow line? And my father,
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who had answered the whole of my own boyhood
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from behind his paper with a grunt and a not
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now, set down the nothing that he had been holding
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in his hands, and he looked at the boy, properly,
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and he began to tell him. I sat in the corner
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of that room and watched my 81 -year -old father
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give my son, freely, unasked, without needing
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to be asked a second time, the exact thing that
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I had spent the entire length of my childhood
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failing to earn from him, and I am not proud
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of the first thing that rose in me, because it
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was not gratitude. It was a flare of something
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small and childish and very, very old. Why him?
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Why, for him, do you put the paper down? Why
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does this boy get the whole of your face turned
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toward him, when all I ever got was the top of
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your head and the word later? I sat there, a
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grown man in my forties with accomplishments
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I could list, and a son of my own asleep every
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night down my own hall, and I felt, rising up
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through all of it, the precise and undignified
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jealousy of a seven -year -old scanning the rows
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at a prize -giving, and I had to hold myself
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very still in that chair. and let it burn through
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and pass. I want to be honest about that jealousy,
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because the temptation is to tidy it away, to
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pretend that a grown man watching his father
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love a grandchild feels only warmth. I did not
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feel only warmth. For a long and ugly minute,
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I felt robbed, as though a thing rightfully mine
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was being handed, in front of me, to someone
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who had not had to wait 40 years for it. But
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I have come to believe that you cannot reach
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the larger, cleaner feelings by pretending you
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never had the small filthy ones. You reach them
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only by feeling the small ones all the way through
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until they exhaust themselves and something roomier
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can move in behind. It passed the way these things
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pass, which is to say it passed by widening into
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something larger than itself. Because as I watched
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him with Kabir, watched him be at 81, patient
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and exact and even, in the only medium he had
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ever been able to manage, which is the medium
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of facts and mechanisms and how a thing is built
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and how a city changes over time, something close
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to tender, I finally understood a thing I had
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been too angry for 40 years to let myself see.
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My father had not withheld the looking for me
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because I was not worth the looking. He had withheld
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it because no one, not once, had ever shown him
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how it was done. He was raised by a man harder
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and colder than he ever was. In a generation
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and a class and a century of men for whom fathering
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meant providing and providing meant everything
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and nothing else was even on the map. Men for
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whom a son was to be fed and clothed and schooled
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and readied and never, on any account, asked
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how he felt, because feeling was simply not among
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the tools they had been handed. My father did
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not fail to look up at me out of coldness. He
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failed because he had been given a broken kit,
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and told it was complete, and he used it as faithfully
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as he knew how, and it did every measurable thing,
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and missed the one thing that cannot be measured,
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and he never even knew that the one thing was
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missing, because no one had ever done it for
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him either. The not looking was not his invention.
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It was his inheritance, and it is very hard to
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stay purely furious at a man for passing down
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a wound he did not know he was carrying that
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had been pressed into his own hands, still bleeding,
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by a father harder than himself. I found myself
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wondering, in that chair, about the man who had
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raised my father. He too, presumably, had been
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handed the same broken kit by a father of his
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own. Back and back, a long unbroken line of men
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in every country stretching into the dark, each
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one loving his sons in the only grammar he was
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ever taught. Provision, duty, the roof and the
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school fees and the arranged future, and not
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one of them ever told that there existed another
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language, a smaller and harder one, made only
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of the act of paying attention. I was not looking
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at one man's private failure. I was looking at
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the near end of a rope that ran back further
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than anyone now alive could see, and I happened
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to be the first man on it who had been handed,
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by a woman with a good pair of hands, an entirely
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different kit. Then my father did the thing that
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I will keep. He was in the middle of explaining
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something, the tram lines, the way the number
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of a route used to tell you its whole history,
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and he stopped and he looked at Kabir for a moment,
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and he said, You like it when things are kept
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in their order. The lines, the stations, all
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in their proper row. I can see that about you.
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And Kabir went completely still. In the particular
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way, he goes still when something true has been
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said about him out loud, because almost no one
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in his whole past over life had ever bothered
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to look closely enough to name the shape of him
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and then simply handed it to him like that, plainly,
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as a gift with no bill attached. My father, who
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never once managed to see me, had somehow, in
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a single unhurried afternoon, seen Kabir. And
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then, at the door, when we were leaving, he did
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the nearest thing to an apology that exists anywhere
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in him, though it was not aimed at the old debt
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and never will be, because his generation did
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not receive the words and cannot now be expected
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to produce them. He said it gruffly, and not
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quite looking at me, jerking his chin toward
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the boy already halfway to the lift. He's a watchful
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one, that boy, he said. You've done well with
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him. And I understood that this, from my father,
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was an entire and overflowing speech. That you've
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done well with him was as far as the man would
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ever be able to travel towards saying, I see
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you now, son. I see the thing you are managing
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to do for him that I was never able to do for
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you. And I took it. You reach a point with an
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aging parent, where you have to decide to take
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the thing they can actually give you instead
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of standing there for the rest of both your lives,
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holding out for the thing they never could. On
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the metro home, Kabir was quiet in the good,
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full way, the way of a child turning something
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over. And then, somewhere around the river, he
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tried a word out, carefully, the way he tries
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out every name before he will trust his weight
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to it. the way he once spent months arriving
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at Papa and Ma. Dada knows the old lines, he
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said, to the window, to himself, to me. Dada.
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He had gone and found it for himself on the ride
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home, the name for grandfather, and he set it
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down on the air between us like a coin laid on
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a counter to see whether it would be taken, and
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I said, yes, that's right, your dada knows all
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the old lines. Nobody knows them better. And
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Kabir nodded. satisfied, and I watched him file
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the old man safely away into the map of his world,
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given at last a fixed place on it, a station
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of his own. Can we go again, he said, and I said
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yes. We can go again. I wrote it that night in
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the sixth notebook, Kabir asleep with a new name
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in his mouth, my father alone across the city
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in his emptied flat. the marigold on the balcony
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holding its patient leaves. That the man who
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could not look up at you may, grown old and finally
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emptied of everything that once claimed his eyes,
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learn to look up at your child, too late for
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you, and just in time for him. And that the correct
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response to this is not the old arithmetic, not
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the tallying of why him and not me, because that
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arithmetic has no bottom and will drink your
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whole life if you let it. The chain of not looking
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was not forged, link by link, out of cruelty.
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It was handed down, father to son to son, by
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men who were each given a broken kid and told
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it was whole, and who could not teach a tenderness
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that had never once been shown to them. A wound
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passed down in ignorance can, in a single generation,
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the decides to be set down. I had already decided
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to set it down for Kabir. That was the whole
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of last week's understanding. What I had not
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expected was to stand in a doorway and watch
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my father, at the very end of his life, set down
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a little of it too. Not for me, it is too late
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for me, but for the boy, which turns out to be
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its own strange completion. I got to watch the
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chain break in both directions at once. Forward
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in me and backward, late and partial and gruff
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in him. And I found... To my own surprise, that
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I did not want to spend the watching being angry.
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I wanted to spend it being glad that the boy
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got looked at, and that the old man, before the
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end, got to be the one doing the looking. Then
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the working line, the sixth notebook open, two
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old wounds and one new name all quiet in the
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dark. The father who could not look up at you
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may, grown old and emptied of everything that
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once turned his face away, finally look up at
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your child, too late for you, in time for the
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boy. Do not spend that looking on the old arithmetic
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of what you were owed. It has no bottom. The
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chain of not looking is rarely forged by cruelty.
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More often it is handed down by men given a broken
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kit and told it was the whole of the job who
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could not pass on a tenderness no one ever showed
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them. But a wound handed down in ignorance can
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be set down on purpose. Break it forward for
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your child. And if you are very lucky, you will
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stand in a doorway one afternoon and watch the
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one who wounded you break a little of it backward
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too, late and gruff and imperfect for your child
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if not for you, and you will have to choose then
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between the grief and the grace. Choose to see
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both. They are both true, and only one of them
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will feed you. I kept the pen. That Sunday, when
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my father rang at his fixed hour, and we had
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done the weather and the knee and reached the
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usual silence where the call normally ends, I
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did not let it end. I asked him a real question,
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a small one, nothing enormous, a thing about
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the tram lines that Kabir had wanted to know
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and I had not been able to answer, and there
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was a pause on the line, a surprised one, and
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then my old father. alone in his quiet flat across
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the city, put down whatever nothing he had been
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holding, and began, for me this time, to tell
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me. And I stood in my own kitchen with the phone
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against my ear, and let the boy I used to be
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sit down on the floor at his father's feet at
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last, and listen, forty years late, to the sound
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of being answered. To be continued in episode
19:04
was episode 82 of My Playful Wife. If this story
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is staying with you, the next episode is already
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waiting. Subscribe so you don't miss it. The
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plus bonus chapters are on my Patreon. Links
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are in the description. I've Mia. Thank you for
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listening.