Poles Apart

Chapter Forty-Four

Arvi

I follow my father to the garage, wordlessly, resisting the temptation to ask him what this is about.

"Shall I drive?" I ask him when he doesn't call for his driver.

He turns to look at me, a faint smile on his face. "I haven't completely forgotten how to drive," he assures me.

I force a smile at him, trying not to appear too phoney and walk to the passenger side of the car.

This whole ordeal seems awkward. Should it be awkward that I'm going out with my father, wherever it may be? It shouldn't be, he's my father. But I can't help but feel fiddly as Nanna pulls out of the parking lot.

"Do you remember" he starts, "I would take you out to get ice-cream when you were younger, and ask you to hide it from your mother because she would get angry if she knew?"

I short chuckle leaves me. "It's probably been two decades since that happened." I don't mean for my response to sound sarcastic, but I suppose it does since my father doesn't try to bring up another topic.

Letting out a soft sigh, I turn to look at him guiltily. "I didn't mean to—"

"It's alright," he says, without hearing me out. "I hadn't expected us to have a fully engaging conversation, and that you would forget everything I've done."

It's not about what he's done, always about what he's not done. It's the things he can give me, is able to give me, but chooses not to, it has always been so, but how would my father know when he hasn't ever had one decent conversation with me?

"I—" I don't know what to say, so I decide that I must be honest. "I don't forget a lot of things," I let him know. "I guess I have a memory too good," I joke, to end on a lighter note.

My father turns to glance at me, briefly. "You speak like my grandmother," he says. "You know that's who I named you after, right?"

That's a story I could never say no to hearing. It made me feel special; connected to her.

"You know the story, don't you?"

I grinned. "I don't mind listening again."

My father chuckles, and for the first time in a long, long time a sliver of hope that we could have a father-daughter relationship rises within me, but I suppress it before I can fully acknowledge it. Expectations only hurt you. I've had expectations of my father; far too many, and each time I've ended up broken.

I squeeze my eyes shut, resisting the thoughts. I only open them when he starts the story. "Your great-grandmother, Janaki Devi and great-grandfather, Ravichander, loved each other. When their families didn't agree to their wedding, they left home."

They didn't elope; they left.

"My grandfather had a degree from a college in the UK, he was one of the privileged people who crossed the seas for their education. My grandmother convinced him to take a job with the government, and he did. They stayed in Madras for a while, until independence and then moved to Vishakapatnam. Then, they finally moved to Bramapuram after my grandfather retired because one of my grandmother's old friends stayed in the same town. She had been married to a man in Bramapuram and had been staying there for a while.

"If not for my grandma's insistence to move to Bramapuram, I might have never met your mother, so I gave you her name, Janaki."

I smile brightly at my father. He smiles back. "You are like her in a lot of ways," he murmurs, thoughtfully.

My mother always said that, too. She had never been fond of Janaki Devi, though. Because like many mothers and grandmothers, my father's grandmother also thought that my mother wasn't good enough for her grandson.