My Father Had a Dream
My father had a dream,
Not the grandeur one but a dream stitched with humility, audacity and simplicity.
My father was courageous,
He wanted to build a state with his family and kids.
Not the ones that would glitter from the chandeliers but from stars,
From constellations above!
He chased the unreal for a long period and made every impossible into a possibility, into a potentiality with chivalry.
His dreams smelled of novelty.
Of concrete cement that gathered beneath his fragile fingernails.
My father's breath smelled like paint, dust and cloves.
Because, once he was an young boy with empty pockets, sleeping in the unknown shades, looking for living in the foreign lands,
Those alienated soils gave him identity,
A reason to work harder to build his generation's pathway, their gripping identities.
The social destiny that he curved for us was nothing less magical.
Unbelievable was his journey-
Starting from a humble beginning of an young man belonging from an ancestry of rural peasantry to glittery shiny oasis curating his path towards legacy.
His survival taught him the language of building and repair.
Restoration and stewardship.
His struggles reminded him the allure of the unattainable.
He learnt too early that he cannot complain.
He grabbed whatever he could to feed his children.
He not only fed them, he gave them luxury.
That is why,
Today his all living assets enters into a room so confidently.
He built rooms with his own hands where books replaced hunger and lamps defeated the darkness of incompetence.
Where he taught his young ones to dream like him, move like him towards the unknown...
Walk like him, talk like him and think alike!
He taught his younger minds to build and rebuild after chaos, after losses, after all the tears shed!
So, now the future talks louder than the past could ever speak of them!
He planted seeds of the trees of which he could never sit beneath.
His wealth is not measured in deeds,
But in degrees, achievements and accolades of his kids.
How proud he must be when his children carries his name in everything they have been doing!
He carried unfinished dreams and incomplete conversations inside his chests,
Roads he wanted to take,
Countries he wanted to travel,
The home he wanted to build,
Grandchildren he wanted to spoil,
A morning to enjoy with a warm cup of black tea without any worries of how his children are doing!
But, life happened and it kept saying,
"Tomorrow",
'Maybe another day',
'What's next?'
'Perhaps',
'Not today, in future'.....!!!
He kept dreaming for the future that he never got to see happen.
Now, the walls remain- perhaps, taller with different colors.
His name still alive in our signs.
On papers, on gates,
And, on his big grave stone.
The big capitalized letters of my father's name feels the heaviest to read, my chest get burdened with the weight of every letters of his name.
The cemetery smells like my dad.
I talk with him there.
Sometimes, I think, am I doing enough to make him proud?
Doing enough to fulfill his unfolded dreams and redo what's left undone?!
Some days, I feel I am doing all right,
The other days, I doubt myself.
But, today, I feel I am just on the ground where I should be, where my father once thought of me standing!
I am eternally grateful to him,
To my humble roots- my entire lineage and ancestors.
Because of them,
I stand tall.
I carry their memory in my cells, in my neurons.
©® Farheen Akter Bhuian
Tinestamp: 1.49 am, 4th August, Mirshorai, ancestral home.
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