A journey that began with a conversation in a tiny room with my father. Small house in a crowded metropolitan city where all I could see, hear and listen was the vehicles passing by. I remember my father working day and night. Never had any complaints against him always felt that he enjoyed his own space and time once he was home with his spiritual books and the divine knowledge. At that age, I couldn’t find the right word to define him and thought he was selfish always into his books but now I do, he was self contained. Like everyone else, I assumed him to be the most loving, knowledgeable and smart father in the world. I feel I wasn’t wrong.
There was a time when he did everything he could to live the future he dreamt of. I saw him struggling, calculating, arguing, advocating everything a normal person would do in his daily life. Suddenly, it changed, the moment was so strong that changed his life’s purpose. The whole phenomena of living and fighting was then disappeared. Always felt that my father was calm and relaxed as if he had found his inner soul, delving into self and his own existence.
I am blessed to be born as his daughter. I am nowhere near in comparison to my father but I always liked pretending to be like him in many awkward situations. Every weekend when at home he would ask me to read few lines from his books. I would read the sentences written in a foreign language without knowing their meaning. After I finished the sentence he would explain to me what I read. Usually, me and my siblings would find a way to escape whenever they (parents) shared their knowledge and views with us, we always took it as an extra lecture beside school. But my time with my father was something special, I would listen to him explaining things written on the books that he was very fond of. He would not stop reading until the dusk.
My father knew that I lack patience. With the time, situation changed and so as our lifestyle. Thanks to our parents opinion on education that we were able to go to a very good school and educate ourselves. I remember being asked about my aim, “What do you want to become?” I never had an answer for that. I would sit beside my father when home, he would take me for a long evening walk. He would buy me a treat on our way back home for walking such a distance with him. I remember eating lots of strawberries with him. He would do groceries and household shoppings from different vendors for home. I learnt how to negotiate on items from him, he taught me the best way of reading a person’s psychology without even talking to him. I would watch and observe small details of his conversation with different vendors and his attitudes towards money and things. Next was my turn to walk on his footsteps, he would ask me to buy groceries on mornings before school. I remember giving him wrong changes back multiple times he would smile and point out that I must count the change properly within the store because most of the vendors would be poor in maths.
My father shared great respect for honest men. He would always tell me to be good in life no matter how the situation goes. At that point of my life, I said to myself may be that is what I want to be in life, a good person. It sounded funny then and even now but the feeling and essence has never left me. A dream to be a good person still resides in me.
I remember sharing a cup of tea with my father on a balcony, under the warm sun on a winter noon along with his book. He told me about his early struggling days how he saved money to travel foreign countries in order to do business. That was the first time I heard about Bangkok and Malaysia. He shared about his flight experiences and the cuisines in foreign countries. He told me that he had a snake once and was surprised by the fact that it didn’t taste any different. I couldn’t imagine myself trying or even going near to a snake then. I remember him sharing the story on building the airport in Kathmandu and Bangkok. He remembered that both the countries had built their first airport in the same year but Bangkok had become a very popular and successful with tourism but Kathmandu on the other hand failed to grow.
With his experiences, I started dreaming of being on a flight. I never dreamt of leaving to any particular destination, I just wanted to be on a flight and experience the feeling that my father had felt. I started dreaming more than sleeping. I would go onto the terrace at night watch airplanes flying across the sky leaving a strong noise and a trail of smoke. I would stare at the sky watch closely to the stars and the beautiful moon. Back then I had no knowledge of stars, but I started marking them up for myself on my own imaginary way. I was very inquisitive but peaceful and relaxed at the same time to watch those beautiful shining stars on a night sky. It never changed…