My dad Patrick’s cycle

Whenever I feel weak and tired in life, I remember him cycling hours and hours across the city in the hot sun, laughing, joking, singing.

The concept of weakness doesn’t arise when one is living in love.

In a society where people forced their children into arranged marriage, he was famous for negotiating between communities to help lovers get married.

The atmosphere and culture was so anti-love, with honor killing and death as the consequence of falling love. It was so bad, that lovers often terminated themselves, ran away to other cities with no money and such.

In such a time, my dad who was respected like no other elder I came across in any community in my life, would go searching for runaway lovers, bring them back, negotiate between families, help them get a house, get a job.

My (fake) brother was from a very casteist land owner background family, but fell in love with an Anglo Indian (absolute anathema to all castes).

At his wedding, the hall had the groom’s side all on the left, in traditional sarees and clothes speaking in Telugu. Sixty feet of empty space and the bride’s Anglo Indian family in dresses, suits, speaking in English.

I cannot describe to you the divide and the tension.

Then my dad, Patrick, stepped out from the groom’s side. He crossed the sixty feet diagonally on his own to go greet the bride’s family.

He then brought them into the middle of the space and had the groom’s parents come up and shake hands.

That one man, went like a needle through cloth drawing people from the opposite ends of the hall into the middle.

My dad believed in love.

When his beloved, my mother passed on, he didn’t give up on me, a mixed race child born into what could be considered a hopeless situation.

He never considered any situation too much for me to handle.

It’s because he knew what he was made of. And he knew that is what I’m made of.

His body was never found.

An elaborate fake grave stands in St. Mark’s Cemetery, which doesn’t have my name as a survivor of his. It is regularly the scene of elaborate dramas of people revering his memory.

But I feel him more today than ever before. He’s in my son’s body, in my hair, in our laughing; and in the way I love you, Ed; the deepest wisdom of life, that love conquers all.