'Mr Vineet Mishra, we regret to inform you of the death of your father. Nobody knew much about his personal life, but our registry has you named as his next of kin. We request you to come and collect his remains and effects.
Signed, M/s Kanoria Industries.'
Vineet put down the short but informative letter. It had come in his office mail that morning. He sat down slowly and leaned back in his chair. Looking at the ceiling, body numb and mind racing. He found himself trying to remember the last time he had seen his dad.
He was eight years old back then. His mum was a schoolteacher. His dad worked as a system mechanic in an electrical components company. His parents never smiled or laughed, and never seemed to enjoy each other's company, or anything for that matter. Life was just work, the nine-to-five rut, coming home to do your duties, and starting all over tomorrow. Dad would come late some days but mom never even showed concern. Vineet always wondered whether life had to be such a compromise, and vowed that when he grew up he would be the most cheerful person on earth.
One day his dad just left. No note. No explanation, no forewarning. He left the front door unlocked and ajar, and had worn his favorite pair of loafers as he left with a small bunch of clothes. That morning his mother had shut the bedroom door on Vineet's face, but came out half an hour later looking perfectly composed. Vineet was scared, angry, confused and hurt. He didn't know what was happening or what would happen. His mum held his hand and dropped him to school. He walked home a little slower that night, apprehensive. He came home to see mom set the table like she did everyday, and he sat down to dinner. And just like that, they'd reached an agreement to never discuss his dad again, and face the world as two people now instead of three.
Ten years passed in the same grind. His mom meant the world to him and Vineet wanted to have no close contact with anyone else. He did not trust people. Now Vineet was joining college but to supplement his mom's earning he worked at a restaurant as a waiter and lived off his earnings. The tips he earned, he put aside for future plans, although he didn't have too many of those. He worked hard, and observed everything that happened at the hotel. Four years later, he finished his graduation in hotel management and had become a qualified chef. Those saved-up tips of his had accumulated enough for him to buy a small hand-cart off which he sold various confectioneries. Money came up as word of his food spread far and wide, and the hand cart became a small stall, then a dinghy hotel, to finally a fine-dine location. His rise was the stuff of inspiration.
Yet on the day of the hotel's inauguration, he found himself strangely devoid of emotion. He found only that his mind was thrumming with the numerous tasks he had to take and distribute among his subordinates once the hotel opened. That was when the thought had hit him like a thunderbolt.
He had become what he vowed he would never be. He had become his parents.
He carried the realization with him as a burden, but there were too many things for him to do to sit and mull over it. He got engrossed in the running of the hotel and he turned it into one of the city's finest gourmet places. The day a very imporant food critic had awarded his hotel five stars, he brought the paper home to show it to his mom. Only he found her stationary, head slightly tilted to the left and lips slightly apart. She had suddenly and unexpetedly breathed her last.
He felt like his connection with the rest of the world had been severed. He wanted nothing to do with other people anymore. The ones that were necessary in his work, he interacted with. The ones that gave him business, he smiled and talked with. But no one slept a more lonely man every night than Vineet.
And five years had passed thus. His restaurant had now opened branches across the city, and were soon going national. People just couldn't have enough of his food. But he still didn't have any of him to give to any person.
And now this. This letter. Vineet didn't know how to feel. He figured he should just go and do the necessary, and finish it.
But as he left to get his father's remains, he felt this growing pain inside him. Only he didn't understand why he was feeling sad; he didn't have reason to. It was almost as if he were an outside observer to someone else's pain. He trudged upto the receptionist at the company, and found out where he had to go.
He picked up the urn containing his father's ashes. Vineet found it difficult to objectify those few memories he had with his dad, the entire entity of that being, as a jar and kept it back down, feeling too many things at once.He rummaged through the effects, looking to see if there was anything about him. That is when he found a letter addressed to him. He opened it and started reading.
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