Pomegranates, With Love
A Portrait of my Father
The room was awash with the orange waning sunlight as he walked in. He methodically placed a big glass bowl on the dining table, a ceramic plate to its left and his favorite paring knife in the middle. Before he sat down on the buffeted chair, he flipped the backside of his neatly ironed cotton kameez to make sure it didn’t crumple under his weight. And thence began one of his intricate ways of expressing love: he was about to peel half a dozen pomegranates for his wife and children.
I was lounging across the room while watching my father, my Abbu, expertly scoop out the blossom end of the pomegranate. He kept the little crown on the side and after some more knife work, pried the majestic fruit apart. Some of the bright red arils popped, turning the platter into a scene of carnage. He carefully stripped all the seeds that held on dearly to the membranes. This process was repeated five more times, staining his fingers red and growing the pile of discarded peels by his side.
As the room grew darker at twilight, lamps came to life. My siblings gathered around Abbu, chatting away about the day, talking over each other. I hung back a few more minutes, drinking in the scene. My father, his dark hair glistening, eyes twinkling with a smile and hands now busy deshelling pine nuts for Mama, sat at the center of it all.
I wasn’t quite listening to the comedic story my older brother was narrating in his usual animated way. Or maybe I was then. But decades later — now — that scene in our living room, when my parents were young and we were younger, has only muffled, faraway voices. The memory seems to have a quality of a movie with bad sound. But it’s a happy, sappy movie. Of five ordinary lives all strung together, living under a single roof, eating at the same table, bickering, laughing and growing, unaware of the many tomorrows to come, some spent together and some far apart.
This moment has somehow stayed with me. I don’t remember when I first recalled it, but it is tucked away in a special corner of my mind, ready to soothe me when I am feeling low. It is not a day anyone else would’ve marked but the memory has stuck. The ordinariness of it is probably what draws me to it. I love life’s ordinary moments. I savor them and I cherish the bittersweet nostalgia.
The beauty of a seemingly ordinary moment runs deep. In its wonted quiet, it speaks of the larger times it is tethered to. Of times echoing with the music of Ace of Base, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Strings. The times of fewer ice cream flavors but an astonishing variety of scrunchies to match every outfit. It folds in the feelings of being a 13-year-old girl finding her way in life, of making sense of a world that was mostly bewildering, sometimes disappointing, and usually exciting. It is embedded within the emotions of parental anxiety mixed in with the free spiritedness of rudderless teenagers. It revels in the laughter of siblings, the three of us standing precariously at the rooftop, chatting away deep into the night. These were times when the road ahead seemed exhilaratingly long, all friendships promised to last forever and acne was the only real problem in life.
And what holds this universe of a moment together, is my Abbu’s smile. His unconditional love radiated throughout those perplexing years. Even with his demanding work, he took out the time to do things for us that most brown fathers don’t. Peeling pomegranates and stringing the beads together of your favorite bracelet as you sobbed, didn’t exactly make it to the priority list of most dads in those years. But our bracelets did make it to Abbu’s list. And for that I am eternally grateful.
I finally amble toward the dining table scooping out a generous helping of pomegranate seeds into a bowl, complaining that so few are left for me.
“Uh-ho, acha acha I’ll get more just for you tomorrow,” says Abbu soothingly.
And he did.
Many times over.
And not just pomegranates.
What he continues to bring to us is unbridled joy, unceasing care and the surety that our bracelets will be fixed.
Thanks, Abbu.
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If you are happy with what you read above, you might like this other gratitude piece I wrote, Thanks for the Bread.
I would like to thank the wonderful Warren Brown for the “Special Moment” prompt.
For one of my recent favorite pieces on Medium read T. Mark Mangum’s Divided Lands.
P.S: Yes, somehow I can’t seem to correctly format the links to these stories as storyboards! arggh!
