Cheeku,
Late last night I was driving back home after a dinner when suddenly out of the blue I called out your name, first within and then loudly. I was surprised because there wasn’t anything that would have triggered something that would make me so acutely aware that you were far away and I needed to shout out your name to call you. “Cheeku”… From the recesses of my mind, you rose rapidly to the surface overpowering my consciousness. I stopped the car on the curb and waited. I waited for the scream within me to subside. You were too far away to be able to hear me call.
Then this afternoon, as I read in the plane travelling a mile high in the air about Nelle Harper Lee, the author of the book “To Kill a Mocking Bird,” once again your awareness enveloped me. I had read the book in school, a time when it was fashionable for school kids to read books. The central figure was Atticus Finch, who was appointed by the Court to defend an innocent black man Tom Robinson accused of raping a young woman. The book was written at a time when racism was rampant in America. Atticus Finch became a great symbol of fairness in the legal profession. I suddenly remembered how even as a school kid you had this great empathy for those in pain and suffering and how you identified yourself with the poor and those at the bottom of the pyramid. Like Gafoor Mian’s stories about how you would sit on a big stone next to him as he repaired cycles on the pavement and chatted with him. I rcalled my conversation with you when you were to go to Cardiff Law School about why you wanted to be a lawyer. Even at that stage you were so clear about professional integrity of how you wished to help legally those who did not have the means to do so. I can see you in this moment, standing in the court, like Atticus Finch, defending some underdog against the might of the state or the powerful…a tall dapper young man marshelling his arguments forcefully, like the inimitable Gregory Peck, who played Atticus in the movie by the same name….
In a black robe and grey striped trousers looking at the judge, in a moment of making a triumphal point, with glint in your eyes, a smile on your lips, from just a shade above the rim of your glasses…
Love
Dad