That’s all I could muster. I felt like a seven-year-old again, thinking that’s just how life goes. That everyone finds out who their father is when he is about to die.

‘Please forgive me.’

I stayed quiet. It was raining that day, and my mind raced towards a nagging worry that I might have left my umbrella in the office. But then I thought I didn’t need to go to work that day, because maybe that’s what everyone did when they found out that their father didn’t have much time left.

I am ashamed to inform you that I made the trip to India to see my dying father rather begrudgingly. What is there to see and do now, I thought. I am ashamed to say that I hated my mother to have told me about him. Why did you have to tell me now? So that I have to make a 13,000 kilometre trip to witness his death? But things changed once I reached Breach Candy Hospital. There was a line of people from all walks of life visiting my father every day to pay their last respects, even as he could barely open his eyes. They told me that there was more to him than the man who used to greet me warmly, although a little awkwardly, and stand in a distant corner during gatherings. That there was more to the story of my mother, who, while staying behind the camera, breathed life into the songs lip synced by larger-than-life movie stars. They told me about how these unlikely lovers came to share a bond that stood the test of time and distance.

There was more that I had to find out to give meaning to my childhood. I couldn’t just stand there and look at the lifeless body of my father, having less in common with him than the innumerable well-wishers who shuttled in and out of the room. I was his son. He wasn’t the lucid man who remembered the minute details of people’s lives by the time I arrived at Breach Candy. What gave me comfort, however, was the one glance he gave me – the only time his eyes opened in my presence. He looked at me, unable to speak or express himself, but the look he gave me with his one good eye was that of recognition.