Not many people know (including the MacDowell Colony authorities) that my dad was in the Colony too. He was not an artist or even a writer. He arrived before me (he was already there when I arrived) and was there when I reached the Colony gates.
As I walked in around noon of February 12, I had a brief glimpse of him outside the entrance of Colony Hall, but he quickly disappeared. Maybe he didn’t know I had seen him; or maybe he didn’t want to be seen – but I had caught his mischievous smile.
So was this where he had been since he left us suddenly in the wee hours one summer morning?
I was still mesmerized by the beauty around me to think clearly. Perhaps I was hallucinating – I had been missing him badly and it was probably my mind playing games. From the time I left Oneonta in the early morning, the drive had been an exhibit of sheer beauty – the snow, the blue sky and the greenery had created magic.
As I walked to my studio, Schelling, I heard his muffled chuckle behind me. I turned around, but couldn’t see him. He must have gone to hide behind any of the tall trees that lined both sides of the rough road. Hide-and-seek had been one of our favorite games – but this time I was not seeking. Just sulking a bit.
For the next two days, whenever I was not working I was walking around the colony or sitting by my window admiring the sheer beauty of the place. I had come at a beautiful time – there was snow all around, and I could see it all from the cozy warmth of my studio.
My dad had told me stories of Mount Kailasa – the snow-capped peak in the Himalayas where the lucky and virtuous devout could see the dance of the Hindu Lord Shiva and his consort Parvati. He had described golden deer prancing around the divine couple’s abode and the perpetual vain effort by hunters to trap it. Many of his other stories too had golden deer – like stories from the holy epic Ramayana. Children in India typically grew up listening to stories from the epics Ramayana and Mahabharata as well as stories about gods and goddesses.
We didn’t believe there really were any golden deer, but his stories were so convincing and fascinating, that we rarely interrupted him to ask questions.
On the third day I was sitting at my laptop working – actually, looking out of the window more than hitting the keyboard. Behind me was a mesmerizingly beautiful golden sunset reflecting off the glass window in front of me – it looked like there were actually two sunsets. By now it had begun to snow lightly and I absentmindedly admired the snowflakes falling gently, dusting the trees and my porch white, like a sprinkling of sugar.
And right outside my window, I saw them – the golden deer. Right in front of me was a herd of six golden deer, including two young ones.
Their coats shone bright shining gold – the same as the ring I wore. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I ran out to see them. If I could, I would have caught them and kept them with me, just like the queens had wanted to in the stories my father told me. .I heard that familiar chuckle behind me again . “Now do you believe the stories about the golden deer?” he asked. It was just a husky whisper – or was it the rustle of the dry leaves?
I ran out unmindful of the snow, wearing nothing warmer than a shawl, and then tiptoed toward the herd, so as not to startle them.
And then I saw their gold – the molten gold of the sunset sparkled off the fine flakes of snow on their coats, giving them an ethereal sheen. They looked like they had been dipped in molten gold – like gold-covered jewelry.
As I neared them, they looked up at me and pranced away into the thickets. I tried to follow them, but soon lost my way – like the hunters in my father’s story who were sent to capture the golden deer. Before I could meet the same horrible fate as them at the hand of wild and animals and guards of the forests, I tracked my way back to my cottage.
I realized I was almost frostbitten – my hands and feet were numb. I ran warm water over them, all the while pondering the happenings of the last few days.
All my life my father had promised he would be with me – always. He had always said if ever I was in any trouble or difficulty, all I had to do was call and he would be there to help me. And he had been there – whether to help me with my mathematics or to unravel the mystery of the night skies as I would lie down gazing at the stars on clear nights. Later on he would sit for hours explaining the underlying myths and principles of the sequence of events in the great epics of the Ramayanma and Mahabharata that I would not have got from the usual translations. And much later when I had my own family, a single phone call and he would be at my house with my mother, whether to nurse me back to health after an illness or to help me handle my small children, while holding a job and no domestic help.
And then one fine day, he just vanished from our lives without warning. He and I had many things to finish – the stories we started together, the books we meant to write, the traveling we meant to do. How could he? He had promised never to leave me. He had promised he would be there whenever, wherever, I needed him.
As I walked back from the library to my cottage at 2.30 a.m., I wondered where he was. The first couple of days, I jumped at every shadow and the sudden noise of trees and the rustling leaves. The crunching snow under my shoes echoed off the trees, creating eerie noises as I rushed to my studio, my heartbeats faster than my legs warranted. The moon weaved in and out of the shadows and painted a strange light along my path, while the tall trees often blocked all light and created pitch dark stretches. Where was he when I needed him on this walk?
Years ago, when I had done similar walks while coming back from college through the dark roads leading to my house, he would be there next to me, having waited at the bus stop for hours, sitting on a bench at the small shack selling tea, chatting with the shopkeeper and sipping ginger tea till my bus came. But here I was walking alone at an unearthly hour in as strange land and he was nowhere.
In the late afternoon, when I walked back to Colony Hall carrying my lunch basket and backpack, I looked for him. Sometimes, my hand hurt carrying the basket, but I didn’t ever see him rush to take it from my hands, like he used to years ago.
I often sat outside on the porch of my studio looking around at the beauty of my surroundings and waiting for my muse. One evening, it suddenly struck me that my cottage was almost exactly as the house we grew up in. Had he got me this particular studio so I would enjoy the comfort of familiarity in new and strange surroundings? The view from my porch was exactly the view from the house I grew up in – tall trees, one big house in the distance, the sound of vehicles on the highway that was almost exactly as far as the one in front of my house and the two grazing patches on either side of the small lane leading to my house were near replicas.
Did he have a hand in the choice of this studio? I wondered.
As I carried my backpack and the lunch basket, struggling with the combined weight of both and the added burden of an unfamiliarly large number of layers of clothing on a snowy morning, enjoying the crunchy noise as my scrapers dug into the fresh snow, I realized that I was enjoying the walk. I was actually dancing to a familiar Hindi song I was listening to on my phone.
That afternoon I went to the amphitheater. For over an hour, I sat alone, my eyes closed as I listened to some of my favorites songs playing loudly from my phone. The last song was a favorite of his and it brought tears to my eyes. As I got up to go, picking my heavy bag, I heard the soft hum of a familiar song – and then I heard his whisper. “If the load is too heavy and you can’t lighten it, strengthen your shoulders.”
Exactly what he would tell us as we grew.
I realized then that he was right beside me. Instead of taking the basket from me, he had helped strengthen my shoulders. I now carried it with a lot more ease than on my first day. I now walked the dark and lonely stretches to my studio and to other parts of my colony with ease and joy, stopping to enjoy the beauty around me as the moon lit up the sky and the woods.
I realized he had reached MacDowell Colony just before me so I would have a great stay and understand his stories a little better.
I realized then that he had not broken his promise to be beside me always.
The heavy blanket of grief that had covered every memory of him slowly lifted and vanished. It gave way to a misty fragrance, leaving behind the memories covered only in the golden hues he had described. I had found him and my made my peace with his leaving. Only the joy of the memories remain. Eighteen years after he left us, I have finally recovered from the loss of his physical presence – for that’s all I have lost. The rest of him is with me whenever I need him.
At MacDowell Colony, I finally found my father whom I had been looking for through 18 painful years.