Nobody remembers him

Harish has lived a good life. He is the most loved in the family. At 45, he is doing pretty well for a middle aged man. He has a loving family; a roof over his head and a woman who loves him more than herself.
What more do you want!

However, for the rest of the people in his family he was far from perfect; Harish was an alcoholic; he was unemployed. He lived with his aged parents who worked hard to care for him. At times, Harish was so drunk he wouldn’t recall events of previous night. Yes, he would drink all night and then he would drink in the morning and would wait for it to be evening so that he can sneak up to his father’s room and get the bottle of whiskey.

You may think that the woman, who loved Harish most at the age of 45, would be his wife or daughter, but sadly it was still his ailing mother.

Harish was born in a wealthy family; he was the youngest son and his mother’s favorite child. This additional pampering cost the whole family very dearly. Harish’s drinking problem was never addressed by the family because of his mother’s extreme level of protection over her kid.

At the age of 22, Harish had a promising career as a civil engineer; he secured a bachelor’s degree from a prestigious institution and was about to embark on a new journey. Harish secured a government job from his father’s influence but as he was a fresher, his posting was out of state. He was to be posted in Thirupathi as a fresher.
The whole family was surprised and especially Harish’s mother, who was very much attached to her youngest son, wouldn’t want him out of her sight. She worried about his health and what kind of problems he has to encounter as Harish had never lived alone ever in his life. She declared that Harish would stay with her always and if he does a job it should be in the same city.

Harish being an innocent and immature boy, always knew that he could rely on his parents especially his mother who would never advise him which would be a bad choice for him. His love for his parents and family knew no bounds. Coming from a joint family, he was always used to being around people, playing with his cousins; every summer all the cousins would visit their hometown and played together, enjoying the fruits of village life.
Harish too was used to getting everything he wished for in his life. His father was a reputed banker and in his early days, travelled to the lengths and breadths of the country.

Being posted in various places Harish’s father was always keen on educating his children. Harish had 3 other siblings; amongst whom was one girl and two boys. Harish was the last born and was a little underweight in his childhood days and hence would often fall sick. His mother cared for him the most, protecting him from sunlight and rain alike; while the other children grew up with strong immunity, Harish was feeble physically but he was the smartest among all the four children.

After completion of his graduation, Harish wanted to do a job, earn money and respect just like his father; but because of his mother’s woes of departing from him, he rejected the offer to move out of the nest.
This was a life changing event in Harish’s life.

Had he moved out of the nest when it was time, at 45, he would be leading the same respected life as his father; a caring wife, happy and healthy children, a good career that would earn him respect.

But alas!

Harish’s life took a U-turn and he was the happy singing cricket who sang all summer, enjoying life but lost it in winter.
As days passed by, Harish developed a drinking habit to replace his lack of passion.

In the meantime, the only daughter in the family, Sapna, ran away with a stranger, bringing disgrace to the whole family. Sapna was the least loved in the family because she was a girl; she didn’t get to complete her education because her father wanted the sons to be educated.

Even though the family could afford to pay for Sapna’s education, she was supposed to be married off to a man in a few months and talks of her marriage were going on in the family as she had recently turned 18.

In those days, women’s education was not prioritized; Sapna had dreams; she wanted to be a teacher, earn respect and become a headmistress and led a retired life as a respectful woman. Her attention was grabbed by the local physical education teacher and when the time was right they ran away leaving behind a distraught family.

As the other children grew up to be eligible bachelors, all of them secured jobs here and there and were married off in a year or two. Only Harish was left and Sapna was exiled from the family completely.

All these events lead Harish to slip into depression. Harish being the shining star of the family had now become the sore thumb. His drinking and smoking problem, the unemployment pricked his ego seeing his brothers enjoy life with their respective wives which inflamed his inner self.

Harish too wanted a wife; he confided this to his mother and his Mom recognizing him feeling dejected announced to the family that it was time for Harish to get married and to find a suitable wife for him.

This announcement surprised the head of the family as he already knew that no one in their right mind would marry their daughter to a drunkard/unemployed man.

As Harish was in denial of his bad habits, he considered himself to be an eligible bachelor and no one in his family was ready to make him understand the truth.

There were a few attempts to find him a suitable bride, but by now the whole town had heard about the drinking issues and no one came out to help the family.

Days went by and Harish’s drinking problem got severe. Nobody, except his mother tried to bring him out of depression by giving a positive hope. Since Harish didn’t have any money of his own to spend on his drinks, he started stealing from his own house.

Initially only a few things were missing here and there; as it was a big family now, a family of 8, it went by unnoticed until Harish was caught red handed by his father when he tried to sell his mother’s gold chain.

There was uproar from the other wives to throw Harish out of the house or else he would be handed to the police for his theft. After many apologies and arguments the anger was mitigated and Harish continued to stay in the family, drinking from his father’s shelf of alcohol.

Harish grew a new habit. He started singing Kannada and Hindi songs mostly. He would go to the temple and sing during the bhajan sessions. He did have a beautiful voice but due to excessive drinking he crooned like an old bat. Harish wanted to sing more, but to smoothen his sore throat he had to stop drinking which was not okay.

Now and then, inspired by a random stranger, he would decide to stop drinking and get serious with life. This decision would be welcome by the family but secretly they all knew it would never work. They just wished that the whole drama would be done quickly without any lasting damages.

Slowly, the smaller families decided to live independently away from the ageing parents and an alcoholic because the kids were growing and they needed a nurturing environment where the kids would learn that drinking and smoking are bad habits, stealing is bad, helping Mom in household work is a mark of a responsible and creative child.

With an alcoholic brat and an aged parent who threw tantrums at the rest of the young members was not a conducive environment for growing children. The other two brothers had purchased land and were building homes and commercial spaces; they moved to the new house, rented out the commercial spaces and their children went to private schools.

The grand parents were extremely proud of their grandkid’s achievements but never appreciated that openly lest they hurt Harish’s sentiments. For a while the daughter in laws understood their dilemma, but soon it started affecting the personality of the children. They would be often bullied and would not stand up for themselves. Their grades got low as they were seen loitering around the neighborhood along with Uncle Harish.

To make matters worse, Harish too was never careful around the kids. He would be drunk while playing with the kids and they could often identify a strong smell of whiskey emanating from him and would tell the same to their mothers. Their mothers would admonish Harish for being so careless and shameless to be drinking around children.

After much more discussion and arguments, it was settled that the elder brothers will move out along with their wives and children and Harish would stay with his parents and take care of them. It was implied separately that Harish take care of them as their father is reaching his retirement age and it was time Harish had some earnings and pay them back by taking care of them in their old age, to which Harish agreed readily. He was happy to be given a task to do and he wholeheartedly took upon himself to take care of his parents.

Harish’s father set him up a small tea shop in front of the house to sell milk, curd and other domestic items. After that, every weekend, the brothers would visit their youngest brother and give some seed money to start off at the tea shop and encourage him to run the shop smoothly. Accepting money was not difficult for Harish; perhaps he would ask for money to random cousins and ask them to give him ‘token’.

Grudgingly, Harish’s mother too agreed that Harish should now do something. Within a month Harish lost when he wouldn’t open the shop till 12 pm. He didn’t know basics about running tea shop a let alone a successful business; he would smoke half the cigarettes in the shop himself and never took in the order for milk.

He could not build a client base for his shop even though it was in a prime area and people would frequent his shop every now and then for a packet of milk or a pack of chips. He had become the joke of the neighborhood and would be referred to as the ‘closed shop’ since it would always be closed. Soon he closed it off and sold it to another vendor for some money without informing his father.

After a heated argument with his father, Harish suffered a mild stroke and was hospitalized for over a fortnight. During the tests, it was revealed that he had damaged liver and encountered hallucinations. His days were numbered.

The old couple grieved for their ailing son in their own way.

The father drank his sorrows every night, muttering curses and his mother would be seen rubbing her knobbly knees with oil and chanting verses of Gita all day, in the temple of their house. The house didn’t remain empty; every once in a few days, a cousin or a nephew would arrive to check up on Harish, who was bedridden and could not even open his eyes to talk to his visitors.

6 months passed like this. Everyone was waiting for it to be over; the suffering of the old parents was heartbreaking. Death was inevitable; it was only a door to a much peaceful afterlife. Weddings were scheduled carefully around this time, taking note of Harish’s health. Nobody wanted an uneventful occurrence during the auspicious ceremony.

Just like that, one evening around 7 pm, as his father poured whiskey in to his glass and was about to mix soda, Harish left the physical world, on his bed, with nothing but a small sigh of ‘ah’ looming behind him. The whole family plunged into a state of grief for losing a member of the family. His mother was crying loud enough for everyone to acknowledge her heart’s wail; all the cousins, nephews, uncles and aunts visited the grieving family.

The following day, the body was sent to the crematorium. 11 days later, a small funeral was held for Harish’s soul to be released in to the other world.

The very next day, everyone got into their routine; kids went to school, fathers left for work, mothers cooked and cleaned; only one less person to worry about.

The only remainder of Harish was now a photo that hung in the living room of the old parent’s house. Harish didn’t leave any pleasant memories for anyone to embark upon, nor did he leave an ideal characteristic that could be taught to the young generations.

Harish was just a happy cricket singing his happy song and never participated in the rat race of life.

                                                                                   The End. 
                                                            _________________________