The last time that I met Uncle, I almost did not! The more I think, not just about the last two months, but also the last fourteen years, an uncanny pattern begins to emerge. More about that later. As I said, when Masi first called me to invite us all for dinner, I reluctantly declined; with two days left to leave for home, and one leg at my in-laws' and the other at Mum's, I was fairly run off my feet. When Davinder came to know, he cancelled some of his errands, and I called Masi to say we would be able to come after all (I don't know which of us was happier!!! )So there we were, including newlyweds Jappi and Timmy, youngest Jawai of the two families whose turn it was to be initiated into the colourful clan he had married into. As it was for Davinder, rightfully the eldest Jawai, but a Johnny-come-lately ( his recollections in my next post).

We were all there, well, not all because we missed Holly, Michelle and their kids and Jaswinder, Daisy's husband. There was another person who was not there, but he would be missed in a different way. Anyway, not one to be fazed by her husband's absence, Daisy proceeded to bring the house down as she regaled us all with imitations of our host cousins' childhood musical performances, starting with Holly, ( Kali re, kali re, tu to kali kali re; remember this Holly? or the other song by Sushma Shreshtha that you and I used to sing?), going on to Guria (Nova piyo ji Nova, Nova se inkaar kaisa?) at her most nasal, and signing off with the most guttural and constipatedly-voiced Yankee Doodle ever that went to town riding on a pony, courtesy Mannu!!!

We were all in splits, eating, drinking and being merry, and then Uncle disappeared! I assumed he went off to answer a phone call that had become long, and after asking Masi repeatedly where Uncle was and getting a non-committal reply, gave up. It is only now, after Uncle is gone, that Masi has told me and I know. Why he went away was because while Masi had Mum, and we cousins had each others' company, it was Uncle who was alone, and he was missing our Daddy! So he had to go away to compose himself so he could once again step in, not just for his nieces, but for their husbands too, the Jawais that Daddy never saw.

Talking about patterns, even the last time that I met my own father, I almost did not. I know this is about Uncle, but as Holly commented on my last post (pun not intended), perhaps it is time to bring it all out so we can find a salve for our collective grief. What happened fourteen years back ( it was January, the very days when Uncle was in hospital this year!) was that my parents were in Delhi and I was supposed to come down at some stage and meet up with them. It was more than an year since I had seen Daddy, and I was looking forward to when I would.

Then I called Delhi on the 20th and came to know that Daddy had to rush back to Nagaland, and was leaving on the morning of 23rd Jan, while Mum would stay on. So I went off to get my tickets for the next evening, 21st January (dates! dates !). What with a grumpy supervisor not really happy to grant me leave, and being stuck in the criminally-slow traffic of Varanasi, by the time I made it to the travel agent, the last tickets were gone; so that when my friends got back to hostel to take me to the station, I was a mess and promptly burst into tears. No worries mate, said one of them who was leaving for her hometown Kanpur next morning, 'we'll get you to Delhi and to your Daddy , no matter what'.

So there we were, at Varanasi station at 3am, catching the train to Lucknow from where we took a taxi to Kanpur, Swati having phoned her sisters to be there at Kanpur Station with food for me. At Kanpur, I was pushed into the train, having run into a friend of Swati's who was also going to Delhi. We managed to find room to sit, which by nightfall, materialised into room to lie down, not that we were going to lie down, the train being due in Delhi by 8pm! Unfortunately, this was the express that was not! three hours short of Delhi, it ground to a halt, and stayed put. And we waited as 8pm became 10pm, and the hours crept on, and I wondered whether I would make it to Delhi by 6am when Daddy's train would leave for Guwahati.

We finally crawled into Delhi at 4am. I got off on a deserted platform and called masi to ask whether I should come home or wait for Daddy, and she told me that my parents and Uncle had waited all night at the station and had just come home so Daddy could collect his lugggage, while Mum was there at the station itself. By this time it was becoming hard to lug my suitcase around, so I was wondering what to do with it when I spotted an elderly Sardar Sahib doing Paathh on a bench waiting for the someplace-Amritsar Express to arrive. I excused myself and asked if he would mind keeping an eye on my suitcase while I went looking for my Mataji, trying to make Mataji sound like a doddering 90-year-old in urgent need of being found! Well, the eye that the Sardar Sahib gave me and my suitcase ( while I strove not to look like a female terrorist) was not very encouraging, but he agreed.

So I traipsed off to find Mum, avoiding the shadowy ends where I thought shady characters might lurk. Said Mataji not being found at the end of a combing operation, I decided to make an announcement and found Mataji had been smarter and made an announcement only fifteen minutes back (probably when I was hobnobbing with Sardar sahib). Finally found Mataji at the shadowy end, being one of the shadows that lurked there, her arthritis having reduced her to a Mataji indeed on a freezing January morning!!!Well, mother and daughter united, we made our way to the Sardar Sahib who was as much relieved to see a Mataji in substance as he was with a well-behaved suitcase.

On to the platform where Daddy's train was supposed to go off from,and sometime later, the train came in at nearly the same time as I spotted Daddy. This was the second time in my life that I met Daddy at a railway station, and I was as overjoyed; the first time being when we went back after Masi and Uncle had got married. Daisy and I were very little then, 4 and 5, I think, and as our train pulled into the Howrah Station at Calcutta, I saw Daddy making his way through the crowds, and I yelled with joy. I did not yell at the present occasion, but was very happy and told him of my adventure over a cup of tea.


Then there was an announcement, the train blew its whistle, and he was gone, that precious half hour with him my last in an year and half. Four months later our lives changed for ever. His death and Kulwant Uncle's could not be more dissimilar, but neither of them literally knew what hit them! they went without knowledge of impending death. And for that, Iam grateful. As I am to one Swati Lall!