45 minutes of gulping back tears only for them to rise up my throat. They were the longest and the shortest 45 minutes of my life.
My dada (paternal grandfather) was the director intelligence bureau for 14 years. Preceding which he had a lifetime of work in the Interpol.
For a short stint, he was also the principal of Police Staff College in Sihala.
Somehow a group photo from his time in Sihala always hung by its claws in my mind. Where everyone was looking straight ahead and he was the only one looking sideways, giggling.
If you had known him for around 20 milliseconds you’d know, smiling wasn’t his claim to fame.
He’s basically the reason why I swore at the bathtub plug the other day not realising that room service dude was standing in the room stunned beyond his imagination what hit him.
We are fantastic at attacking family members of inanimate objects. Thoroughbred at it. I honestly don’t consider them swearing but my nannhiaal begs to differ where even ullu or gadhaa elicits smelling salts for the ladies. I digress.
So that picture. Made me forever stuck to the name of the place. Sihala.
Life happens, we grew up, now growing older. That picture got snatched away in a terrible turn of events. Things “family” will do to you. As dada jaan used to say “Ajab sulagti lakrriyaan hein yeh rishtay daar…”
Cut to yesterday morning, we were on our way to Sihala, gulping down tears, as I held my 3 year old. She doesn’t even know the quest I’m on. Dang she never even met dada jaan.
It’s so sad. I feel so sad for anyone who never met him. What a loss! Their loss. For everyone who knew him would agree that just by being in his presence one felt enriched. Let alone throwing a tantrum or being a child around him. A privilege I had through my teens.
What a Wonderful teenage to have spent in his company. Food and entertainment at its best. Laced with human behaviour anecdotes. Little things every day or long and winding conversation. Taught me so much about human beings. Perhaps that is why I survived all I did…
We reached the college. I clutched his bag for life. I had forever seen my father carry this bag. So I picked it up recently asking for it to work as a sleeve for my MacBook. It was only then that I found out it belonged to dada jaan. Made my claim even stronger. My palms sweaty holding the brown weathered leather hard to my side we were led to a hall and a corridor leading to a boardroom.
A lump jumped to my throat. As we walked in I silently screamed a question to every brick in the walls of this place. Was he here? Have you met my dada jaan?
Everything blurred. Conversation faded out. We made small talk as we were taken around for a tour of the facility. There was so much we talked about. Yet nothing that I can remember. I just had one question. Was he here? Do you have anything? That can for a day make me feel that he was once alive? Because it’s been a long time that I saw him.
Maybe a picture? A name somewhere in a file. I now feel like that life with him was a dream. Like I have to convince myself he was even here.
So here I was. Convincing myself, trying to find traces of his footsteps. Like a vagabond. Desperate to see a shadow he once cast. Felt like the weeks post his passing when I would sit in his bedroom. Darkened. Waiting to hear his footsteps. Maybe he would come back. To say goodbye. Or to take me with?
After a few hours of what would’ve definitely been rigorous drilling of data they emerged with two files. Bursting at the seams with bunches of yellowed paper.
From year 1967-1972. “They never used to write names back then. Only signatures. If you can figure that out…” the kind man’s voice trailed off.
Drowning in gratitude, I held on to the files. They didn’t HAVE to do this. It was so kind that they worked so hard to find my grandfather, the phantom.
He retired in 1971-72. That can’t be it. I started with 1967. Then something made me stop. Abruptly.
I flipped the file and started from the end. 1969.
Pages after pages and like a prophecy, some scribbling begun to embolden itself.
It looked like Hameed.
Reminded me how utterly ashamed he would be when he would sometimes open my mail thinking it was his. Hareem and Hameed isn’t much different when you have a thing against wearing glasses past your 80th birthday.
In a sea of blue and black ink scribbles and signatures his Blue Black Quink shone like the odd one out. What he used to call himself in that group photo.
He taught me the idiom odd one out with his picture at Sihala. Here I was. Finding his signatures with the ink he used right to the end. One that both of us would share.
I used to buy his Blue Black Quink. For both of us. He spoiled me much earlier to only like the colour.
Who knew it’ll help me find his signatures from over 50 years ago. His lopsided handwriting and curt expression.
I found him. From his brief time at Sihala where he was filling in for someone. I found him. Without a name or a reference.
In my head I made him proud. In my heart I hugged him again after years. I miss him terribly. Every single day of my life.
I probably cried 12 times and stopped while writing this small piece.
It’s disjointed. Terribly structured. But so am I. Forever. Without him.
Until we meet again. I have these pages with your signatures on them. Pages that say West Pakistan and you complaining of this thing or that.
