An Elegy for my Lost Diary

(My papa had once mentioned that my grandpa while traveling in a train had lost his briefcase that carried his literature- all his work, his thoughts, and maybe his reason to live disappeared in that very moment never to be found again. This elegy is therefore as much dedicated to him as much as to his grandson who met with the same fate, though not as fatal.)

I carry your blood, grandpa.
And have probably inherited your destiny as well.

I never saw you, but my papa sees you in me.
I neither carry your pencil moustache
nor your debonair persona. Nor your ambition

or your Oxford knowledge.
Haven’t touched your literature, forget about reading it.
Infact, I don’t even know your language,
and Varodara for me is as alien as my Bombay dwelling.

All I know is, I despise you for reasons aplenty.

You left my dad just as Harilal was left, in order to follow Gandhi’s footsteps. Why, I want to ask.
Didn’t you have the courage to bring up a family? You coward!
Weren’t you brought-up in one by my Great granddad; with a silver spoon in your mouth, if I may add. 
The decision of yours to change my religion from a Jain to Vaishnav Hindu does not matter to me. But leaving your family in disarray shouldn’t have been yours alone.
I haven’t lived your life and seen your times and witnessed your life-episodes and met the people who've influenced you.
I don’t know whether there’s any truth of your high morals or were you ‘high’ every time you stepped outside.
Your contemporaries of illustrious people whom I read of today, were they really your circle of trust or were they only eyeing your fortune?

But I do know there are many secrets buried in the family which do not want to see the light of the day. Nobody wants to talk about them. Only brag and boast about the affluent past and die cherishing it.

Your son never complained. But his son is not your son. If I ever want to carry forward any legacy from this family then pride will be the last thing. I only want to carry your boundless yearning for literature.

I only want to meet your once. Not in Ganga but maybe in Chanod or wherever you’re comfortable to make me pee in my pants.

And want to ask you just one question- were you responsible for my lost diary? For making me lose that ambitious poem of mine which I’ll never be able to recreate. The kind like Kubla Khan was for Coleridge: though that work was lost and later found in a mystical way and published. Can you be that Dorothy for me?

P.S. In no way this piece looks down upon any one in particular. It is entirely a work of imagination.