Officers of the All India Service (AIS) are attached to different states across the country, referred to as “cadre” in bureaucratic speak. At times, it can be a traumatic experience, to be posted to a place thousands of miles away from your home town. Yet, it is exactly this isolation and detachment that at times provides an officer the strength to work as per his conscience and not the dictates of the powers-that-be. The common refrain that one hears is that if an officer is a thousand kms away from home, a transfer a few hundred kms here or there will not affect him.
However, as one grows older, and the need by the family members grows, especially aging parents, sometimes this devil-may-care attitude changes. This is true not only of officers of the AIS but anyone working away from home. The guilt of not doing enough for one’s parents when they need you is a heavy burden to carry. In my story, “Flesh & Blood”, I have tried to capture the feelings of a young man who like many of us, leaves his home and birthplace to make his own life. Yet, he never really leaves it and a short visit to Assam brings back memories that he would rather not relive.
“It's me, Kamru, Dada.”
His fingers tightened around the phone. Why was that cursed Kamru calling him at 2.13 a.m. over an ISD connection? And how did he get his number?
“Who gave you my number?”
He injected all the distaste he felt for the man at the other end into his words. There was a moment's hesitation, as Kamru appeared to be debating what to say. And then words came—a torrent, icy cold like the Dikrong river near his village.
“Deuta had an attack... He is in the ICU.... Doctors say he may not live for long. Come at once Dada. Come at once. Ma says...”
Bursts of static and the line went dead. Just like that. Kamru's voice dissipated in the darkness, with the suddenness with which it had invaded his world. He did not know for how long he held the receiver in his nerveless fingers. He continued to sit in the dark, staring with unseeing eyes at nothing in particular. Deuta. Ma. Assam. India. All his life, his father had been his “Deuta”, Devata or God. It used to amuse his friends in the US that he addressed his father as god and they would tease him mercilessly. At times, he would laughingly explain that this was a tradition of his forefathers. No matter how much he adapted to the ways of the West, his father would always be Deuta, never Dad or Pop. Did they understand what he meant? Most likely not. Perhaps it was a cultural chasm that physical proximity alone could not bridge. Perhaps it was the difference in appearances, visible to the human eye that cloaked the common lifeblood surging within. After spending one-third of his life in the US, he was still not one of “them”. He never would be. Perhaps, he did not want to be. He longed for home. His soul was calling out to Assam, to Deuta, to Ma.
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