We miss you, Baba.

 

Time flies, and how!

It seems just like yesterday that Ajinkya called me and said, “Arti, it looks like we have lost him.” It still seems unreal. He always seemed invincible, almost immortal. There were so many occasions when he had a close brush with death, but he would always bounce back. This time too, we thought, would be no different. A few bottles of saline and he would be home again. But it was not destined to be.

In the last year, he had become very frail, but still, he was a source of strength and having him around, made it seem as if nothing could go wrong.

I remember last year, just about a week before he passed away, one morning as I was about to leave for work, Arya, my son, came and told me that Aaba is asking for a wheelchair as he is finding it difficult to walk. So, I went and checked on him, he was sitting at the dining table to have his morning tea. I told him to wait till evening and then we would decide. As soon as I got back from work, I went to see him but he was not in his room and nowhere to be seen. A near frantic search revealed that he had gone for a shoot to some studio that was two hours away. He left in the afternoon without having lunch and came back home late in the night, completely exhausted. He had forgotten the sandwich that the shooting guys had got for him at the shoot itself. He had not eaten anything the entire day! That’s how he was, once in front of the camera, he would forget about everything else, pain, hunger, thirst everything took a back seat. He was a true showman!

Everyone knows about him, his body of work, the legacy he has left behind. So frankly, I was very diffident about writing a blog on him. But then, I thought, everyone knows his life story, his career, but not many knew him as a person, when he was not in front of the camera, or in the public eye. I was fortunate to have known him closely for the larger part of my life so far. He had a larger-than-life persona, and in the initial years after my marriage, I remember, I used to be in awe of him and rarely spoke to him. But over the years things changed. He called me ‘bitiya’ and always said that I was the daughter he never had. I soon found myself working with him, handling production, handling the accounts and even assisting him on shoots. He worked tirelessly; work was his passion. When in front of the camera he used to be a transformed person, but he was equally happy working behind the camera as well. His work ethics were impeccable, whether at the peak of his career, or later, as a senior artist, he would never report late for shootings. He was happiest while working, even if it was working in the garden, in the house fixing something or polishing the brass lamps at home. No job was below him.

Also, no work was too small for him. When our dog, Kibo was a puppy, he would pee and poop all over the house. One day I came home from college and was aghast to find Baba cleaning Kibo’s poop, but for him, it was like, someone has to do it, there was no one else, so I am doing it.

During his youth, Baba was an extremely dashing person with a somewhat formidable and wild personality. But over the years he mellowed down. He was God fearing, very emotional and made no compunctions about it. He would easily tear up while talking about his mother or elder sister. He prayed in the mornings and before going to bed and photographs of Tuljabhavani, Kolhapurchi Ambabai and his parents hung on his bedroom walls.

He was a romantic at heart. I remember on Aai’s (my mother-in-law’s) 50^th birthday, he bought 50 different gifts for her and hid them all over the house, in her room, in the kitchen and inside vegetables. He never failed to get her a gift for her birthday and their anniversary.

He was also a very caring husband. A few years back, when Aai first started to show the signs of Dementia and Alzheimer’s, he took extremely good care of her. It was a very challenging period for all of us, especially him. But whenever I suggested that we get a caregiver for Aai, he would desist saying, “As long as I am there, as long as I have strength in my limbs, you don’t need to worry about her. I will take care of her.” He would take her out, get her favourite goodies, just to see her smile and spend endless hours chatting with her.

Had he not fallen at the start of the lockdown and broken his femur bone, I am sure he would have lived to be at least a hundred.

I miss his care and thoughtfulness. He would be quick to notice when something was wrong with me and would immediately ask, “What is wrong bitiya? You don’t look fine. Are you not feeling well?” He was also the first to compliment me for anything.

He was very sensitive towards animals also. One day when I was in college, he called me around 11:00, that was the time he would take Aai down in the building for a walk, and said, “Can I ask you something, if you will not get angry? There is a small kitten that has run into our building trying to get away from the stray dogs. It is very tiny and scared. Can I get her home?” He did not really need to ask me this question, it was as much his house as mine. But still, he did. And when I reminded him about the big dog in our house, he said, “You don’t worry, I will take care.” When I got home in the evening, I saw that he had lined a shoe box with cotton and soft material and made a nice house for the kitten.

He took joy in the small things in life, like gardening, flying kites, making ‘goadaamba’ (a sweet from ripe mangoes that his mother used to make), eating simple home cooked food like pithla bhakri, shrikhand puri, …

There is so much for us, his children, and grandchildren to learn from him and his way of living. We are blessed to have had his guidance and support for so long and am sure that wherever he is, he will continue to guide us and bless us.

We miss you Baba!