Today I want to write briefly about my late grandfather, S. K. Prabhakar, as I have come to know him.
Daddy, as all of us called him, was the most well-read and upright member of the family. I could not spend much time with him, at least from what I can recall. When he died in 2001, I was only 7 years old. I have a very sketchy memory of him.
He was an army man. After his retirement from the services, he started learning homoeopathy on his own. Everybody, especially my grandmom, tells me that he was like me. Earlier, I couldn't understand why they said so. I was too young to comprehend.
I actually got to know and understand him better after his death, when I was given access to his room.
His room was a treasure chamber. It had a lot of books, mostly on Homoeopathy, Stock market and Self-help. The latter was something I was most interested in. The self-help section had all the bestsellers of his time. So, later on, whenever I would visit my grandmom, the first thing I'd do was to check out his room. I always believed that his room, especially his books, had his soul. The underlined parts, the marked paragraphs, the scribbled notes and the lottery tickets in his books, all had some instances of him. The interesting thing was that Daddy never won a lottery in his life, but you'd find a ticket in each book he ever owned.
After I was able to go through most of his books, I started digging deeper. I got to see his files and stationery bags and miscellaneous boxes. Everything was special and unique in some way. There were hundreds of newspaper clippings, fact notes and poetry inside the files. The stationery bags were full of old multicoloured pens with multiple nibs, papers with graphs & dots on them, notepads from his army days and sticky notes with Urdu scribblings on them. Yes, Daddy could read and write in Urdu and was the only one in the family to be able to do so. My grand mon tells me that he used to write secret things in Urdu. I tried taking those scribblings to a friend who understood Urdu, unfortunately she too could not decipher most of the text.
Later on, I got access to his diaries. Most of them were half finished, scribbled with words in Urdu and English. There were notes on life, health, dates and what-not. I took one of his half-filled diaries and made it my own. If he was alive, he'd never let me have it. I started using that diary to write stuff and used it till 2011 until it became too heavy for me to carry all along in college.
After all this, came the real treasure. Deep into Daddy's stuff, I got to see what an interesting photographer he was. There were some old photographs that he took. Everyone in the family had some memory of him photographing an important event in the family. I was told he always carried his camera along and was never shy taking photographs of family. The most shared instance was that of the death of his younger sister who died at a young age and how he made it a point that she needed to be photographed one last time. Taking photographs during a funeral was a social stigma at that time since it was a very emotional moment, however Daddy thought it important to keep it as the last memory of his sister. What I admired the most were the black and white photographs that he took. There is a sense of natural composition and asthetics in them.
For many years I dreamt of him. Every time in the dreams I was convinced that he was not dead, and that he had just gone out for some time and was back now. Also, I'd tell him all that was happening in my life, show him my sketches, photographs and he'd give his opinion. I think, at times I deliberalty tried to not wake up just so that I could extend my dreams as I knew he would vanish as soon as I was up. Maybe that was my brain making up his personality, an illusion of him, through my exposure of the possessions, writings, through the stories of him that my grandmom narrates, and his collection of music cassettes.
I miss those dreams at times.
Today is his birthday.
Daddy, as all of us called him, was the most well-read and upright member of the family. I could not spend much time with him, at least from what I can recall. When he died in 2001, I was only 7 years old. I have a very sketchy memory of him.
He was an army man. After his retirement from the services, he started learning homoeopathy on his own. Everybody, especially my grandmom, tells me that he was like me. Earlier, I couldn't understand why they said so. I was too young to comprehend.
I actually got to know and understand him better after his death, when I was given access to his room.
His room was a treasure chamber. It had a lot of books, mostly on Homoeopathy, Stock market and Self-help. The latter was something I was most interested in. The self-help section had all the bestsellers of his time. So, later on, whenever I would visit my grandmom, the first thing I'd do was to check out his room. I always believed that his room, especially his books, had his soul. The underlined parts, the marked paragraphs, the scribbled notes and the lottery tickets in his books, all had some instances of him. The interesting thing was that Daddy never won a lottery in his life, but you'd find a ticket in each book he ever owned.
After I was able to go through most of his books, I started digging deeper. I got to see his files and stationery bags and miscellaneous boxes. Everything was special and unique in some way. There were hundreds of newspaper clippings, fact notes and poetry inside the files. The stationery bags were full of old multicoloured pens with multiple nibs, papers with graphs & dots on them, notepads from his army days and sticky notes with Urdu scribblings on them. Yes, Daddy could read and write in Urdu and was the only one in the family to be able to do so. My grand mon tells me that he used to write secret things in Urdu. I tried taking those scribblings to a friend who understood Urdu, unfortunately she too could not decipher most of the text.
Later on, I got access to his diaries. Most of them were half finished, scribbled with words in Urdu and English. There were notes on life, health, dates and what-not. I took one of his half-filled diaries and made it my own. If he was alive, he'd never let me have it. I started using that diary to write stuff and used it till 2011 until it became too heavy for me to carry all along in college.
After all this, came the real treasure. Deep into Daddy's stuff, I got to see what an interesting photographer he was. There were some old photographs that he took. Everyone in the family had some memory of him photographing an important event in the family. I was told he always carried his camera along and was never shy taking photographs of family. The most shared instance was that of the death of his younger sister who died at a young age and how he made it a point that she needed to be photographed one last time. Taking photographs during a funeral was a social stigma at that time since it was a very emotional moment, however Daddy thought it important to keep it as the last memory of his sister. What I admired the most were the black and white photographs that he took. There is a sense of natural composition and asthetics in them.
For many years I dreamt of him. Every time in the dreams I was convinced that he was not dead, and that he had just gone out for some time and was back now. Also, I'd tell him all that was happening in my life, show him my sketches, photographs and he'd give his opinion. I think, at times I deliberalty tried to not wake up just so that I could extend my dreams as I knew he would vanish as soon as I was up. Maybe that was my brain making up his personality, an illusion of him, through my exposure of the possessions, writings, through the stories of him that my grandmom narrates, and his collection of music cassettes.
I miss those dreams at times.
Today is his birthday.
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| Second from top left. |
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| The last photo of Daddy's younger sister. |
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| I was told that he asked all the villagers to collect the skulls of post-partition victims and pose with them so that he could take a photograph. Need to know more about the incident. |
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