camphor and control

i’ve been struggling to write about my father for as long as i can remember, like any other woman, any other daughter. then i saw a reel video by sarga_mmm [just some time ago while doomscrolling under my soft covers while spying on my mother snore hoping she doesn't wake up]. she captures the essence beautifully (soft, naïve even; i would’ve said it betok-elaan), but still, it caught the whole alphabet of my inner child’s begging, a to z. maybe that’s why it hit me the way it did, not as a poem or performance, but like a mirror shoved in front of me mid-breath. 

how strange that simple, uneven words can unearth what’s buried. i’ve written about love, and loss, and freedom, but never about him, not really. i always stopped just short of the truth, as if my pen got scared. maybe writing about him is like unlocking a room sealed years ago: air heavy, familiar, still smelling of camphor and control. 

that video made me notice how many versions of me lived inside his silence: the girl who waited for footsteps to fade before exhaling, the teenager rehearsing bravery in whispers, the woman who pretends she doesn’t flinch when someone raises a voice. ridiculous, patterned, real. i wonder if he knew... the tiny rebellions, the swallowed sentences, the high marks that weren’t pride so much as safety. and why, after all these years of living alone, paying my bills, choosing my life, my chest still tightens when someone says “papa.” 

maybe forgiveness isn’t a grand event but a slow undoing, one layer at a time. maybe this is me trying. not hating the fear, just acknowledging it, tracing its edges, learning its name. and somewhere between ache and understanding, i still want to ask him; softly, without trembling; “papa, कैसे हो?” not for an answer, but because saying it out loud feels like reclaiming the part of me that was too afraid to speak.

maybe the fear didn’t start as fear. maybe it became a habit, like folding bedsheets too neatly or rinsing cups twice. the house trained me to hear mood in the clink of keys, the weight of footsteps, the way a door shut half an inch faster. i got fluent in that language. i still am. some evenings, when the light turns the color of old brass, my shoulders climb on their own. the body remembers what the mind negotiates away. 

there were good days too, which is what makes it knottier. a mango sliced just right. a new pencil on the first day of term. a ride on the scooter where the wind slapped my cheeks and i forgot, for ten minutes, to be careful. these little mercies confuse the verdict. they soften the outline of the man and blur the edges of the rules. you’d think that would help. sometimes it does. other times it feels like a trap inside a kindness. 

i keep circling the question of fault like a stray dog around a closed bakery. was he cruel or simply unequipped. did he hold the world like a hammer and see every noise as a nail. nobody trained him in tenderness; men of that era were given belts and budgets and silence. i know this. i also know my knees learned the choreography of apology before my voice learned to say no. both truths sit in the same chair and won’t make room for each other. 

what i want now is smaller than forgiveness and somehow braver. i want the right to enter a room without shrinking. to speak a sentence to completion without scanning faces for weather changes. to laugh at full volume and not feel disloyal to an old version of myself. to put down the tray of chai, अख़बार, sugar in a steel katori and sit. simple verbs. sit. stay. breathe. 

today i tried something ordinary. i made tea and didn’t rush. let the kettle sing. i watched steam curl like handwriting i could almost read. i said “papa” into the empty kitchen and waited for the alarm in my chest. it came; prickly, fast; then loosened. i sipped. too sweet. i sipped again. no disaster. only the dissolving peppermint crystals getting louder. it felt like cheating fate. it felt like nothing. it felt like a door opening a quarter inch.

i’ve been thinking about the girl i was, the one who perfected invisibility. i want to take her to a fair and buy her that stupid neon balloon shaped like a rabbit. i want to let it go on purpose and watch her cry and then laugh at how silly it was to hold so tight. i want to teach her a better trick: hold your own hand first. 

if i ever have a daughter, i won’t be a saint; i’ll lose my temper and burn the dal and forget sports day. but i will not confuse fear with discipline. i will not call obedience love. 

somewhere in the middle of all this inventory receipts of pain, receipts of care, i find a thin place where the world softens. i don’t know what to do with it except keep standing there. i can’t rewrite childhood, but i can edit the margins of today. call it reparenting, call it late learning, call it me growing a spine that bends toward gentleness. i think of the women before me who stitched their mouths shut with duty and still sang lullabies. i think of the men who swallowed apologies until their throats turned to stone. i am tired of inheriting geology. 

so i will practice small sentences that make room in the air. “i’m not comfortable.” “please stop.” “i need time.” “i’ll visit next month.” “no.” i’ll let my no be a full stop, not a comma leading to an explanation. i’ll let my yes be chosen, not extracted. i’ll keep the old photographs because history matters, but i’ll put them in a box that doesn’t open by itself. 

and if a day comes when i can look him in the eye and ask, steady and clear, “papa, कैसे हो?” i hope i also remember to ask myself the same question, first. maybe the answer will be simple on that day. maybe it will be a paragraph. maybe it will be silence that doesn’t scare me. i can live with any of those. 

for now, i’ll end here, not because the story is finished, but because i am. i’ll wash the cup, switch off the light, and let the night be only night. tomorrow i’ll wake up with the same face, newer by a breath. and in that tiny newness, i will try again.

~ Oizys.

Endnotes:

1. “papa, कैसे हो?” — “Papa/Dad, how are you?”

2. “chai, अख़बार, katori” — chai = tea; अख़बार (akhbār) = newspaper; katori = small steel bowl.