He was my father

Meghnadurga (circa mid-1980s)

A few days back, Rajesh Macwan, a friend, sent me a few lines of my father Meghnad Bhatt’s poem about the advice that a father, who is entering the fifth decade of his life, is giving to his son, who is about to turn 25. 

But before I get into the poem, let me give a brief background. 

According to the Hindu Vedas, the four ashramas (stages) of a human being’s life are 

• Brahmacharya (bachelorhood, student), 
• Grihastha (householder), 
• Vanaprashta (to give up on worldly life), 
• and the final stage of Sannyasa (life of a mendicant, a life of renunciation). 

Vanaprashta means to enter the forest. When one enters the forest, one begins to relinquish one’s love for material possessions. Typically, that phase commences when a person enters the fifth decade. In most Indian languages, the fifties end in "Van" (51 = ekyavan, 52 = bavan, 53 = trepan, and so on). "Van" is forest. 

In Gujarati, Vanaprastha is called Vanapravesh. Also, in Gujarati, as in other Indian cultures, the advent of youth is a considered period of foolishness and clueless rebellion; it’s when a person, and especially a man, is no better than a jackass. 

The exact age when this transformation from a human to a jackass occurs is when a man turns 25-year-old.

Gujarati language has a term for it: Gaddha-pachisi. An approximate translation would be jackass 25, an age when young men are no better or worse than jackasses. A relatable reference is the contemporary popular psychological term ‘quarter life crisis’.

Now, let's get back to the couplet that Rajesh Macwan sent me. 

I have attempted to translate the poem into English. I'm not particularly good at translations, but I wanted to include the poem in this blog post which I'm posting on the 23rd death anniversary of my dad, so, please indulge me.

A simpler translation of the title of the poem that Rajesh sent me would be: 

Advice of an aging father to a young son 

But it wouldn’t capture the essence of the angst that the original title and the poem possess.

So, let’s go with the bells and whistle title: 

Advice of a Vanapravesh-aged father to a son who’s on the anvil of Gaddha-pachisi. 

I'm not sure if the improvised, hybridized (English-Gujarati) title works, and if it doesn't go back to the simpler version above. 

And now the poem’s translation

Till yesterday

The one who wore his father’s spectacles and romped around pretending to be “Pappa”

Has suddenly turned critical of bapu-cracy (gerontocracy), Mayank?

There never really was a gap between us, ever

The unasked, unanswered question that ends the poem is: "Or was there? (a generation gap).

Meghnad wrote this in 1985. He turned 50 that year and I was 23. He was at the height of his creativity. He was a successful union leader, having unionized the clerical staff of Mafatlal Group, in the heart of Bombay's corporate world - Nariman Point. 

His journalism was flourishing. He was writing for Janmabhoomi and Pravasi (edited by the redoubtable Harinder Dave). Although rather late, his first collection of poems Chhiplan was published in 1980 to good reviews, and his second collection Malajo would be published in a couple of years. During the decade, he won recognition as a poet from the Gujarati literary establishment. 

On the other hand, I was at a crossroads of my life. I didn’t want to do what I was doing – chartered accountancy, and wasn’t sure I could turn journalism (at that time my steadfast interest) into a vocation. 

He didn’t lose patience at my indecisiveness, and what in retrospect was clearly a sheer lack of purpose. 

I’ve often blogged about Meghnad here, but it has mostly been of how deeply he has influenced my thinking. I haven’t written much about him as a father. And more than a poet, a union leader, a committed leftist ideologue, he was a father.

I could fit a book of the many instances that I remember of him being a father. Today, I’ll narrate just a couple. 

On the evening of my sister’s wedding, after she had left with her husband’s family, Meghnad broke down and wept inconsolably. Nothing would make him stop. He didn’t want to stop. He cried for a long time, lying on the bed. 

My grandmother, my mother and I stood near him, gaping at each other, not knowing what to say or what to do. Later, I asked him the cause of his utter desolation, but he didn’t answer. He never talked about it ever. 

I saw my father cry only twice. The second time was when he reached Bombay from his maiden trip to the United States, a couple of years before he passed away. 

And, here's another instance of him being a dad.

I think the males in the Bhatt family have a genetic defect in the eyes. They all have to wear glasses at a young age. My father, my son and I have had to wear prescription glasses at about the same age. In my case it was in 1974, when I was 12 years old. 

We had moved to Teli Gali in Andheri a couple of years back, but my parents were still unfamiliar with the place, and they had excellent, long-nurtured relations in Kalbadevi-Princess Street area.   

So, I had my eyes tested at the Round Building (at the intersection of Kalbadevi Road and Princess Street) and my glasses made at Ganko opticians (at the intersection of Old Hanuman Lane and Kalbadevi Road). 

That late afternoon, we were returning home from Ganko. I was wearing prescription glasses for the first time in my life.

It was raining and I was unaccustomed to seeing through the glasses. While descending the stairs at the Marine Lines station, I nearly slipped and would have tumbled all the way down to the platform, had Meghnad not grabbed my hand and pulled me up. 

He was angry. That was rare because he was seldom angry. But it was momentary. He pulled me to him and said in a calm tone. “We must be very careful.” A little later, when we were inside the local suburban train, he said, "We must start living in Andheri." 

George Fernandes

George Fernandes in Muzzafarpur jail

It was 1998, a few months before I’d leave journalism to join the US government as a media advisor. I was at Business India as an assistant editor covering the interface between business and governments. I was at the Mumbai Municipal Corporation building waiting for my appointment with the Municipal Commissioner. In the waiting lounge were George Fernandes and Sharad Rao. Fernandes, if I recall right, was recently appointed minister in the AB Vajpayee government (Vajpayee’s second stint).

As a journalist, I’d maintained cordial ties with Sharad Rao, but I’d no real connection with Fernandes. However, when he saw me there, he beckoned me and asked about Meghnad, who had passed away a year ago in 1997. He asked about Durga, about how I was doing, put his hand on my shoulder and patted me. Sharad Rao stood beside him with tears welling up in his eyes. Just then, they were called for their appointment.

George Fernandes, the firebrand trade union leader, who was now a minister again, hadn’t forgotten his roots or his old supporters.

Meghnad was a close associate of Fernandes when he began his journey into national politics. The 1967 elections, when Fernandes defeated SK Patil, was historical in many ways, and especially so personally to our family because Meghnad worked tirelessly with a bunch of other young men and women to help Fernandes win.

Fernandes’s meetings would be held in our two-room tenement at Princess Street. These young men and women shared a vision of a new India that would be just, would ensure equality and where workers’ rights were not trampled upon. Surprising many political observers, Fernandes won handsomely and went to the Indian Parliament.

Sharad Rao and Meghnad were among the many of Fernandes’s lieutenants who had the opportunity to join him; Meghnad didn’t because he wasn’t sure how he’d support his fledgling family. Sharad Rao did and prospered.

Meghnad continued to work at Mafatlal’s and in the mid-1970s launched the first trade union with Fernandes and Sharad Rao at the Mafatlal Centre in Nariman Point. This was after Arvind Mafatlal, the head of the Mafatlal group, threatened Meghnad to get him arrested under the draconian MISA.

During the Emergency, Meghnad became – like many others – a conduit for information sharing through informal networks. There’d be heated debates amongst his friends on the torture that Fernandes’s associates such as Snehalata Reddy had to face.

After George’s arrest, his election victory, the formation of the Janata Party, the political equations changed. Meghnad didn’t share the visceral anti-Indira Gandhi sentiments that had brought all the opposition together.

He was deeply suspicious of Morarji Desai’s brand of Gandhian politics, as he was of the Jana Sangh brand of ultra nationalism. In fact, the socialists (especially of the SSP variety) were vociferous in their demand that the dual membership of the Jan Sanghis – into RSS and the Janata Party – shouldn’t be allowed, which eventually split the Janata Party.

Meghnad and his generation totally supported Fernandes’s decisions as a minister in the Janata government to drive IMB and Coke out of India. Throughout the 1980s, Fernandes remained a towering figure for many. The anti-Congressism of those days is similar to the anti-Modi politics of today – it united every political party. And Fernandes was a key figure in that schema.

There were some irksome decisions and actions that Fernandes took then – such as joining forces with Bal Thackrey to defeat Datta Samant in the 1980s – which were an indication of pliable politics that George would adopt rather dexterously and shamelessly in the future.

Throughout his political career, the sole focus of Fernandes’s politics was the defeat of Congress at any cost. In the mid-1990s, he’d no qualms joining hands with the Bharatiya Janata Party. I remember telling Durga, after the second Vajpayee government was formed, that it was good that Meghnad had passed away before he’d have to see the ultimate capitulation of the socialist dream.

The next decade saw the total and willing immersion of Fernandes into the quagmire of political shenanigans, including accusations of corruption and bribery, leading to his resignation and then subsequent political humiliation by the likes of Nitesh Kumar, leaders whom he’d created.

But Fernandes will be remembered for standing up for justice, giving hope and allowing the common Indian and especially Mumbaikar to dream of a better tomorrow.  

Remembering a family man

This morning, at 4:40 am, as we waited for the bus to arrive – the bus that would take Mahrukh to work, she reminded me that it was Meghnad’s birthday today.

As I walked back home from the bus stop, after Mahrukh boarded the bus, I admitted to myself that I had quite forgotten it was the 24th of October.  


He would have been 80 today. 

I had spoken to Durga last evening (it was the 24th morning in India already), but we didn’t talk about Meghnad. We spoke about the family, of someone’s surgery, and of someone else’s engagement, and of another one’s brave battle against an illness.
We spoke about her own loneliness, which she denied, but couldn’t hide from her voice. But for some reason we didn’t speak about him. Perhaps, she had forgotten, too, or perhaps it was too early in the morning there in Bombay for her to be focused.

Then again, it has been 18 years since Meghnad left us; and with the passage of time, memories become hazy, even if they don't entirely fade away.

In remembering him, I can only think of how I have begun to resemble him, not just physically, but emotionally, too. I remember him every time I talk to my sister, who, I think, is more like him in every which way, than I am.  

I remember him when I see my son. I hope one day I will share the same father-son relationship with Che that I had shared with Meghnad. And I see it happening already. 

I remember him when I quarrel unceasingly with Mahrukh over utterly and ridiculously petty things. My parents did that all the time. As did Mahrukh's parents. We are not too different from my parents were, I realize. I suppose we all grow up to be like our parents. And I guess that is the way it should be. 

But most of all, I remember him every time I talk to my mother. Durga married him when she was young, and was his wife for 37 years. And although it may sound utterly patriarchal, a lot of what she is today, is what he made her. 

He introduced me to the world of ideas and ideologies. And after wavering briefly, I followed his path because it seemed to me then and now to be more just and reasonable. And though the world has changed completely in the last nearly two decades, the path he choose remains as relevant today, as it was when he was alive.

He introduced me to the world of books. I remember him every time I read a good sentence, or read a good poem, or talk to an interesting person, or come across a good oratorical performance by a charismatic (and left-leaning, or at least a liberal) political figure.

I remember him for all the issues that he raised – human rights, labour emancipation, neo-colonialism, liberation struggles, Gandhi – where he agreed and where he didn’t with the Mahatma. 

He introduced me to Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, and to Bhimrao Ambedkar – two diametrically opposite Indian intellectuals, and of course to Jawaharlal Nehru, the man who inspired an entire generation of Indians to determinedly move forward, leaving behind the baggage of debilitating and dilapidated beliefs, and outmoded social practices. 

From him I learned to read the right way, and by that I mean reading to remember. He would read in the old-fashioned way – marking sentences, passages, pages in a book that he loved. It would irritate me when I read the book after he did, because I would be guided by his marking and that came in the way of discovering something in the book on my own.

I remember, when I was in my early 20s, I gifted him a biography of Che Guevara, in which I wrote, “Thank you for never giving me a cause to rebel.”

But rebel I did.

My act of rebellion was to read authors he hadn’t read, wouldn’t read. I began to read contemporary American literature, something that he hadn’t done, probably for ideological reasons.

I read Kurt Vonnegut Jr. and found out that Slaughterhouse Five’s simplicity was the main reason why it was a masterpiece. I discovered John Updike, who remained for the longest time my favourite author, till Meghnad gave me Midnight’s Children to read, asking me to judge the book for him. I read John Cheever, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and so many other masters of American letters.

He recommended the only two American authors he had read - Hemingway and Fitzgerald.

He was a poet, but for the longest time poetry left me cold. For many years, I was surrounded by great poetry and good poets, but remained oblivious to its many charms. Later, much later, I discovered the many joys of poetry when a young woman who wrote exquisite poems came into my life.

More than anything else, he taught me to be responsible. He didn’t teach this by lecturing me about responsibility, but by being responsible all his life. He always put his family first, sacrificing his creativity by devoting more time to make ends meet. He led a simple, uncomplicated life.

In emulating him, I realize how much of a struggle it can be to just be true to yourself, and to lead a simple, uncomplicated life.  

A son's poem to his dead father

Harischandra Bhatt

Readers of this blog are probably aware of Harischandra Bhatt (1906-1950), the Gujarati poet, who introduced western influences on Gujarati poetry.

Earlier in 2014, a television program broadcast in India critically analyzed Harischandra Bhatt’s poetry, and evaluated his contribution to Gujarati literature.

It is an incredibly nuanced piece on Harischandra and his poetry.

My uncle Devendra Joshi sent it to me recently.

You may listen to it here: audio recording 

Meghnad Bhatt

To my dismay, the hour-long segment on Harischandra, didn’t mention a word about his son Meghnad Bhatt, also a Gujarati poet. One doesn’t know the reason for this glaring omission, but one can’t help but think that the omission was deliberate.

I’m reproducing Meghnad’s poem on his father.

I’ve translated the poem in English, and as this is my first attempt at translation, I welcome suggestions to improve it. 

(English translation follows)

સદગત પિતાને 

                 - મેઘનાદ હ ભટ્ટ

ચૌદ વર્ષના છોકરના શબ્દકોષમાં

'આત્મહત્યા' શબ્દ કદાચ સમાઈ શકતો નથી,

પણ પોસ્ટમોર્ટેર્મ કરેલુ શરીર

નાંનકડો નાદાન છોકરો જો જુઍ

તો તો ઍ છળીજ મરે-

- આવોસંદેહ મારા કાકાનેખરો.

પરિણામે

તમારુ મુઆરમોઢું પણ હું જો નશ્ક્યો!

આજે તો

તમે જેઉમ્મરેઆત્મહત્યા કરી

તે જે ઉમ્મેરના ઉંબેરપર હું ઉભો છું

નેતોય

તમને હેજી હું આલખીશક્યો નથી.

ઍથીજ

અવસાનના અવસાદને અતિક્રમી જતું

મરણોત્તર 'સ્વપ્નપ્રયાણ' કરવાને બદલે

હું શ્વાસ લીધે રાખું છું

અનેશ્વાસ લેવાની ઍ પ્રક્રિયાને કારણે

જીવંત હોવાનો ભ્રમ પણ સે સાયો રાખું છું

આટલું પરંતું ન હોય તેમ

ક્યરેક

સ્વપ્નપ્રયાણ પણ કરં છું

સાચ્ચે જ તમને હું નથી આલખી શક્યો,

નહીં તો કયરની મેં આત્મહત્યા કરી નાખી હોત.

To a departed father

               - Meghnad H. Bhatt

A 14-year-old boy’s dictionary wouldn’t contain the word suicide

But if the young, callow boy was to see the body after post-mortem

He would definitely die.

Such thoughts may have preoccupied my uncle

As a result,

I wasn’t allowed to see your dead face

Today,

I’ve reached the age when you committed suicide.

And yet

I can’t claim to understand you.

That is the reason

I continue to breathe

When my ‘dream departure’ should have been posthumous

Through this process of breathing

I continue to harbour illusions of being alive

Although on occasions

I do manage to conclude my dream departure

Truly, I haven’t been able to understand you

Or, I would have committed suicide long ago

‘dream departure’ = Swpnaprayan / Harischandra Bhatt’s posthumously published collection of poems

(Read previous posts on Harischandra Bhatt & Meghnad Bhatt here:

Rediscovering a poet

Meghnad Bhatt)

Meghnad Bhatt 1935-1997

Last week my sister Sonal called to inform me that some kindred soul had remembered our father Meghnad’s death anniversary and written about his poetry in Divya Bhaskar, an important multi-edition Gujarati language newspaper published in India and North America. She was simultaneously emotional and ecstatic. “I’m happy at least someone has remembered him,” Sonal said without being able to hide her pride.

On checking the web link she sent me, I realized that eminent poet, writer and an institution in Gujarati literature, Dr. Suresh Dalal, had done the write-up.  Dr. Dalal’s contribution in shaping Meghnad’s literary career remains unmatched.

Is it possible to write about your father without becoming sentimental? I don’t think so, and yet it is so important to do so especially when he is someone who led a very public life as Meghnad did.

Meghnad’s is the biggest influence on my life.  Twelve years after his death I find myself to be too small a human being to fill in to his enormously large shoes. He was less of a father and more of a friend.  

In addition to being my father Meghnad was a litterateur, a trade unionist, and lifetime socialist who seared with genuine anger when he encountered injustice, a secular fundamentalist, and an Ambedkarite in an ideological sense of the word.

Meghnad was a Gandhian who loved Jawaharlal Nehru and Ram Manohar Lohia. George Fernandes was his friend, though he would have been hugely disappointed with his friend’s closeness to the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, but would have sympathised with him in his present isolation. He was an avid follower of political trends, but turned a political activist (as many others did) for Fernandes to help in the 1969 general elections that resulted in Fernandes’ historic victory over S. K. Patil.

After many years of “being exploited” he was instrumental in forming a trade union at the Mafatlal Group, where he worked as an accountant for three decades. That singular act of defiance – so uncharacteristic for a middle class clerk with family responsibilities – typifies Meghnad’s values: To remain committed to one’s beliefs even if it meant a lifetime of struggle and unfulfilled desires.

His radicalism was not just meant for the newspapers (Janmabhoomi Pravasi) where he wrote angry columns at the injustices prevailing in the society. It also got translated into his trade union work. I remember one day late in the evening when he returned home and told his stunned family that one of the Mafatlal brothers had warned him at a meeting, “Mr. Bhatt, I’ll have you arrested under MISA.” This was in the heydays of the infamous Emergency.

Above all else, Meghnad was a man of literature – a poet, a writer, translator, essayist, journalist and a raconteur, who lived and breathed the written word.  As he did not belong to any of the known “groups” in Gujarati literature and believed in his own creative merit, he remained unpublished for many years.

He published his first book of poems – Chhiplan when he was 45 in 1980, and that acted as a catalyst for him. He published two more collections of poems – Malajo (1988; I had a minor role in getting Baiju Parthan to design the book cover) and Amthabharan (1994).

He also published the Gujarati translation of Dr. Rafiq Zakaria’s fictionalized biography of Razia Begum, the queen of India and the world’s first woman Islamic ruler. Dr. Zakaria is perhaps be better known in North America as Farid Zakaria’s father, but Zakaria senior was in his days a well-respected moderate scholar.

Meghnad also published Spiderman – a book of essays on death and dying, written after  my cousin Hamir’s death at a tender age of nine, caused by leukemia.  He wrote a short novel – Amthanubhav (1980) and two short novellas – Avadhoot Sarika (1988) and a book of literary criticism Sankhaghosh (1991). 

He had an unpublished book of essays on Mahatma Gandhi when he died at 62, which was not returned by the person who promised to get it published and then published under her name some years later. 

Meghnad left behind a voluminous output of poems and polemical journalistic writing that remains relevant (but unpublished) more than a decade after his death.

Despite such tremendous achievements he remained extremely modest, and considered his father Harischandra Bhatt to be a far greater poet than himself. Harischandra is often credited with introducing an international perspective to Gujarati literature and his seminal book of poems was published posthumously.

Meghnad was hyperactive. In addition to his accountant’s job that he hated with rare passion he gave tuition to supplement his income. 

He struggled all his life working 16 to 18 hours a day, and enjoyed his struggle. He didn’t know what to do with his free time after he retired and became a full time journalist, writing about wine and non-vegetarian cuisine – he did a surprisingly good job of it considering he had been a firm teetotaler and a vegetarian all his life.

Soon after he died, Sonal spoke to me about how perhaps at the moment he was dying she felt a heart-wrenching pain in her chest, and I told her that I had felt the same, although at that time I had dismissed that feeling and had blamed excessive alcohol.

I have also never really acknowledged my mother Durga’s influence on my life. In so many different ways, I’m more like her than my father.  I have always romanticised my parents’ relationship. To me they were like Marilyn Munroe and Arthur Miller...maybe that's a stretch, but you tend to think of your parents in what you wanted them to be not what they were. 

Durga sacrificed her ambitions - she remained a radio artiste when she could easily have been an actress - first for her husband and then for her children...but about all that, too, a little later on the blog.

I’m reading Isabel Huggan’s The Elizabeth Stories; it’s a book about the pangs of growing up expressed in a stark lyrical style that is breathtakingly simple and yet unrelenting in the unease it causes to the readers because Huggan has succeeded in portraying the seemingly enormous and often insurmountable difficulties and challenges we all experience during our formative years.

Huggan writes evocatively about Elizabeth’s growing up years from childhood to puberty (I’m still reading the book, so I don’t still know till what age the writer will take Elizabeth’s journey), and the predominant emotion that one feels while reading the book – even to a male reader – is “Yes, of course, I felt this awkwardness, too; and I really would’ve done things differently if ever I were to get another chance.” At one stage in the book, Elizabeth confesses, “...how much I sounded like my father but how much like Mavis (her mother) it was to go and lie down. I could never escape them.”

I guess that really is the story of everyone’s life: We inherit the worst qualities of our parents.  

Loyalty Management -- Keep Toronto Reading One Book

Last month, on the occasion of the 175^th anniversary of Toronto, I attended a literary event at the City Hall branch of the Toronto Public Library. 

One of the star performers – and there were several that afternoon – was Glen Downie, the poet who has won the Toronto Book Award 2008 for his book of poems Loyalty Management.

The Toronto Book Award is a city council award that honours “authors of books of literary or artistic merit that are evocative of Toronto.”

At the event Downie sat unassumingly in the third row. When he was introduced, he quietly went up to the podium and began to speak to the audience in a soft voice, introducing his book and then began to read from the book.

Frankly, I didn’t quite enjoy the poems as much as I thought I would. Perhaps it was the choice of the poems or maybe I don’t really appreciate poetry as much as I appreciate other forms of literature.

Now, Downie’s book is being promoted by the Toronto Public Library for all of April as part of the Keep Toronto Reading One Book campaign.

I borrowed Loyalty Management from my Amesbury library last week, and began to read it. I must admit that my first impression – made from what I heard when the poet recited his poems – was made rather hastily. 

The poem on cows really didn't impress me then (when I heard Downie reciete it) and doesn’t impress me now because cows on the streets are such a common sight in India. And they just don’t seem to evoke the same sort of surprised exasperation that they might in Toronto. They don't represent the same ideas.

There are other poems that are really interesting. What I find surprising is the streak of socialism that runs through the volume. Maybe that would be true of any poem written with an urban backdrop. Or maybe it’s just my imagination. 

I’m quite sure Meghnad would have loved the book, as I’m sure Joyce Wayne must have. There are many poems with what I call socialist theme. Petitioning is the one I identified with because I’m an immigrant.

Petitioning

They’re on their knees
in the precious dirt
when you come around

the people who sign
because they have little enough

the ones with far too much
zucchini  too many plums

who fill your protesting hands
with their stake in the nation

who nod & smile
& say neighbourly things
in unofficial languages

Dowie possesses a rare ability to surprise the reader; he does this by abruptly altering the main motif of the poem in the last few lines and introduces a completely different line of thought. Almost always, it’s a juxtaposition of the innocent and the evil. The most vivid example of this is the poem Cold Snap.

Cold snap

Pacing he sleepward   her tiny
fist clutching my chest hair

I think rabbits
how they pull out their fur
to nest their young

how her uncle  as a kid
failed to keep them in straw

& found them one morning
frozen to the metal cage floor

                                          Drunk
on breast milk   she slumps against me
warm in her first winter while   in his
the Premier

drunk on power  declares
holy war on the poor

& we find them  one by one
inadequately nested
frozen in alleys  doorways
& the floors of unheated bus shelters

I liked these two poems the most. However, they aren’t illustrative of the volume, so don’t be misled by my selection.

Read the book; borrow it from the local branch of your library if you’re in Toronto.  I’m sure you’ll like it.

If you’re not in Toronto, read a few poems here. Also check out the Toronto in Verse site.

Images: http://www.keeptorontoreading.ca/one-book

Visit to Niagara

When you are face the enormity of nature, in its exquisite beauty, there’s nothing that you can do but stand dumbstruck and gape in wonder.

You do that when you are at the Niagara Falls.

There couldn’t have been a better way to celebrate my 47^th birthday – first in Canada – than at the Niagara Falls.

The journey was impromptu – as most things are in my family. We decided to take the Via Train because Che was keen to go by train. Unfortunately, it turned out to be an Amtrack train and Che was distinctly displeased because it, as he said, looked like Mumbai’s local trains from outside.

The journey wasn’t too long – just a little over an hour-and-a-half. Then a quick taxi ride and we were at the falls. 

I had expected many people. Any tourist place in India would have at least a few hundred thousand tourists from both across India and across the world. At Niagara, there weren’t. Half the shops at the shopping mall near the falls were closed. The reason: It was bitterly cold even though March 20 was the first official day of spring.

The first impression I got of Niagara at the railroad station was that I was in a small town in Uttar Pradesh. Mahrukh felt the station resembled Lucknow railway station; except that there weren’t any people present. Lucknow's railway station is grand. 

Niagara's railroad station, I felt, resembled Bahedi, a small town on the foothills of Nainital that I visited twice in the early 1980s when I was trying to fulfill my father’s unfulfilled ambition of becoming a chartered accountant.

Thankfully, after a few years I gave up trying to do something I didn’t want to, and to his credit, Meghnad supported me wholeheartedly as I became a journalist.

I’m sure Bahedi must be a much bigger and bustling town today. But in the early 1980s it was a sleepy one-train town that probably grew near a sugar factory.

Sorry for that digression. I'm getting old and I reminiscence more than I should. 

The falls are the force and fury of nature in all its untamed violence. We had seen nothing like this before. 

The closest that I can think of are the the Dhaundhar falls on the Narmada. Mahrukh quickly pointed out that I was merely being India-obsessed and not real. She’s right. Niagara is incomparably amazing.

You’ve seen the video along with this blog entry.  Even in an amateur video the magnificence of the fall is all too evident.

Then we sat in a 50-meter high Ferris wheel, which got Mahrukh all excited and then we went a few miles out of Niagara Falls into the US territory – not crossing the border – but the cell phone service switched over to the US and reached the butterfly conservatory. 

I’ve already put some of the photographs on the blog (the right panel). This was an unexpectedly wonderous experience. Tropical butterflies from across the world in a climate-controlled transparent dome - a sort of a hothouse.

Our barometer of whether a place is good or not is how Che reacts to the place; and after initial diffidence, he got involved and loved every moment we were there.

A cab driver – from Newfoundland – took us to the conservatory and brought us back to the railroad station. He found my fascination for our apartment at the intersection of two of Toronto’s busiest streets – Keele and Lawrence Avenue West – quite odd. That's not surprising. Most Canadians prefer quieter areas to live. 

We spoke about the Sikorsky helicopter tragedy last week that killed 18 Newfoundlanders.

The return journey was also by Amtrack. We’re already planning a trip to Montreal. Che says Amtrack can’t be going there! He’s keen we do the Toronto-Vancouver trip. Maybe in a couple of years.