Today was beautiful. Pure love across generations, with Anaiya and Jaan very squarely in the middle. From the moms who raised me even though I wasn’t blood (too many to list), To all my friends who are moms (forthcoming, first time, or on infinite repeat).
To Masi and Masis, Mamis, Fai, Bhuas, Kaki, Chachis, Nani, and Nani, who were here but weren’t “here”.
To Ba, who first taught me how unqualified love should be.
To my Sis, Anu Kiran, who’s a mom in sister’s clothing.
To my Mom, Satinder Chadha, who’s taken me in as a son from day one.
To my Mumma, Renu Bhatt, who’s at the center of all I am.
To my wife, Priya KC Bhatt, who’s at the center of all I want to be.
There’s nothing more profound than these moments. Today was beautiful.
Today was also profoundly different. 2018 and the first part of 2019 will have many of those, profound yet profoundly different moments. It’s nice to have love all around you as the universe insists on moving forward.
For all the rains, there are no dark clouds hanging over us. Just stars, moons, and a profoundly different POV on everything we have going on down here.
This album is going on, what, 15 months of owning my life? Undulating. It hits me in waves, and when I forget about it, or move onto something else, a song grabs me by the collar and pulls me all the way back. Slaps me in the face. And reminds me I’m not done yet. I missed the Grammy’s but have kicked-off watching discrete performances in spurts since. Who’d I decide to start with?
Terrified. Because, yes.
And the range he pulls off comes as close to reminding that Prince is gone, but with an influence that’s still very much alive. #iamgrateful and #iamthankful for some Gambino! And what’s that I’m hearing about a tour?
This song is one of many 25’s on this album. Wonderfully done. Milk this album for all its worth. It’s exceptional.
Dad was the biggest Eagles fan. When you think of the speed bumps his fandom took on the way to becoming what I consider to be their #1 fan, you’d agree. How far he traveled to get here. How many sports he immersed himself in to get here. How much time he gave up to give himself time to watch. A politician’s son from India, to a Sunday afternoon loyalist of all things Eagles.
But that wasn’t all. My Dad may have been the last known adopter of the DVR. Which means all games were scheduled for and around, and All were consumed (not watched, but voraciously consumer) … live.
He died effectively the day the Eagles won their first Super Bowl. It’s cruel. When you consider the evils inflicted upon him. The mythological travails of an Eagles fan for effectively their whole NFL existence. I mean, Richie Kotite alone. And on the doorstep of greatness he took his last breath.
While you live, it’s how you are. But when you’re gone, it’s not how you lived, it’s how you’re remembered. Which is what makes this recent gift so incredible. I have no words for it. I bawl as I write this. Just as I did when I received. Just as my sis did when she saw it. Just as my mom did when we placed both in her lap.
“Thank you for being here with us in spirit to guide our Super Bowl victory. We’re grateful for his presence & the joy it brought your family to celebrate with us. He will be missed!!!”It’s amazing and humbling how many people have kept him and us in their thoughts, prayers, hearts and minds these past few months. I am humbled beyond belief. I feel like I should walk only with my hands clasped, head down, knees bent, and mouth open…“Whispering on repeat, thank you thank you thank you.”
Because thank you. To the friend who did this. I won’t tag you here and now because “it’s not about you” (but it is). I won’t tag you here, now, but we are here for you now and forever. #iamgrateful and #iamthankful for great friends. We all are.
A year ago we sold our place in Jersey City and moved in with one set of our parents in Edison, NJ. It was supposed to be for a short while. A few months. And as we all know, life happens.
Over the course of that year, Satinder Chadha and Daljit Chadha have been nothing short of life savers. We are their kids.
Of course.
Jaan and Anaiya are their grandkids.
Of course.
We know that. And academically, philosophically, hypothetically, we all know that they will always be there, doors, arms, hearts, wide open. But the past year has been anything but academic, philosophical, or hypothetical. We’ve invaded their house and their lives and they’ve gone above and beyond on a minute-by-minute basis to spoil us and their grandkids rotten.
Living space.
Food and nourishment. Laundry. Pick ups and drop offs. Peace of mind. More than anything, peace of mind.
For all the transactional things that saved us time and energy, they bigger picture is peace of mind. All they did for us that can’t be recounted individually can be summed into peace of mind.
Filling every waking moment of our lives with love, support, and all the unsaid, unspoken words and deeds in a way only parents can.
Sure, during work travel and late nights, it was invaluable to have the 24/7 support they provided. But that pales in comparison to where we find ourselves today.
Never more has this support been on fuller display than the past 3 weeks, while I’ve been away. Just this morning, in what’s become routine, Dad is dropping Priya off at the train station only after taking the kids to school; and on the flip side of the day Mom will be there to pick the kids up and bring them home while Priya attends to a late work meeting.
What the hell would we do without them? I have no words. I’ve got nothing but immense gratitude.
#iamgrateful and #iamthankful for you guys. I know Renu Bhatt and Anu Kiran are. And I know Daddy died feeling at peace knowing your love and guiding hands were on our shoulders at all times.
We’ve been roommates for a year, Mom and Dad. So I guess, happy anniversary? Love ya.
12 days since my Daddy left the physical world. Hinduism is incredibly ritualistic. I’ll leave it at that. But in essence, our family is using the next few days as a way to help my father’s soul find peace as it rises to the universal soul, while also slowly bringing an end to the mourning period at which point the family is supposed to more formally transition back to normal life. Yeah. Thanks for the roadmap, Hinduism.
What I do love about the way we celebrate someone’s death is one key point: danam, which literally translates to gift or offering, but in the context of mourning and death rituals, it more spiritually means charity.
Our family will travel to a local school for children facing physical and mental difficulties, and bring them a fun, healthy and indulgent lunch. 200 kids. My father spent his life serving people (family, friends, the community at large). For all the pujas, prayers, moments of silence, and fantastically colorful and sense overwhelming procedures, this is the single greatest thing we are doing to honor Daddy’s legacy and soul.
This is the single greatest thing we can do to help him achieve universality (though he’s done more, with plenty leftover, to cover his journey and credit a world with what he has left over).
12.
That’s the 12.T
he 40?
That’s my wife.
She turns 40 today.
You’ve heard me write, over and over again, that Daddy said out loud and often, that Priya is the single greatest thing to happen to me and to our family. He knew his sh*t.
Today’s her birthday. A big milestone birthday. On the day that the celebration of my Daddy’s life moves from the inauspicious (mourning) toward the more auspicious (celebratory), I don’t find it to be any coincidence that we’re sharing this day with Priya’s 40th.
She’s spent the past two weeks dealing with two kids, bouts of the flu, kids with nightmares, kids with 4am fevers, all while facing an incredibly demanding stretch at work, all while mourning and grieving for her Daddy too. And she’s done it with grace, dignity, huge smiles, and without missing a beat.
She spoke at an impromptu religious ceremony held by our community in South Jersey (what an amazing extended family, those friends we’ve known for 50 years in South Jersey) and carried the full thoughts and weight of our family on her shoulders, and delivered the kind of thank you that my Daddy would have raved about for years.
She made him proud. As she always did. This is the woman whose vows to me during our legal ceremony 7+ years ago anchored in her promise that we will always be there for our family (collective). We didn’t know how soon or how often. But she’s never wavered.
The way she has handled the past 12 days is evidence and validation of Daddy’s earliest words to me about her: she’s the best thing.12 days.40 years.12|40.
Priya, you and Daddy are bonded together in eternity, in service and in the most celebratory and auspicious of ways. I smile wide today for that reason.Hey, best thing. Happy Birthday. You make all life and love possible.
The ability to feel love, is for all intents and purposes, eternal. You express it involuntarily from the moment you’re born, and you express it in whatever form possible for as long as you’re humanly capable. But the ability to show that love to someone, to extend it to the people you love, to know they feel it in return, is incredibly finite. The ability to make someone feel loved is INsanely finite.
For today, for this Valentine’s Day, I hope you are motivated by the insanely finite in pursuit of the infinite.
#iamgrateful and #iamthankful that I kissed my Daddy on the cheek every single time I saw him, and every single time I said goodbye. Including when I landed in India last week. My love for my father is infinite and will carry with me until my own last breath.
My ability to say it to him directly, and to know that he has heard me, to make sure he knows he was loved, feels today, very much in the realm of the finite. Love your family. Love your friends. Love the people around you. Not the way you want to love them, but the way they want to be loved.
Love them not so you can say aloud that you expressed your love, but rather, so that someone very comfortably and very consistently and very clearly says “I know you love me.”
My sis is my guardian angel. She always did everything at home, for my family, for our parents, so I could run off and explore the world. For 17 years, splitting time with my mom, she was the primary daily caretaker of my bedridden ba (grandmother).
While I was off being a kid and a teenager, my sis went from 11yo to grownup overnight. With a daily list of responsibilities that filled the day, and reset at midnight. It wasn’t until she was approaching 30, when my ba passed away, that she was able to focus on herself. But at that point, life was in full swing.
Work.
Expectations.
Society.
My sis never had a childhood and she never had the chance to truly focus on herself later in life.
That’s what my Daddy wanted for her more than anything. For her to take that step back, find out how amazing she is, achieve her fullest potential as one of the sincerest and purest and most loving people the world has ever known. They had that discussion in December before my parents left for India, and even in January he was telling her “2018 is your year.”
The power of love, with family and with friends, puts the world’s most powerful force (love) against the most delicate of subjects (human feelings). What my Daddy and my Mumma have always wanted for my sister is what they believe is best for her. It didn’t always work for both sides. For all the mutual want, she never had the space or the opportunity or the impetus to create that space for herself when the world wouldn’t give it to her.
As we search for our “why” around all of this mess, Anu Kiran, I have found one that gives me peace.
Daddy wanted to give you space in a way nobody else in the world could.
The single thing that will make him the happiest (not would, but will, as this is not a past tense appreciation) is reading your note below, and watching you move forward with that torch firmly in hand.
#iamgrateful and #iamthankful for the power and selflessness that the most powerful father/daughter bond I have known for my lifetime, has created.
My arms are sore. We lifted my Daddy up 10 times yesterday. Some were small transfers. Some were lengthier. Including down seven flights of stairs. As we carried Daddy out the front door of his dream house in Ahmedabad, I heard a rustling.
Breeze?
Leaves?
A light rain. A light sprinkle. Extremely odd. Because it never rains in Southern California, or in Ahmedabad in February.
As we descended the stairs the sprinkles, the “chhatna” as we call it, stayed light and steady. At each flight’s midpoint, the stairs turn at a landing, with a waist high level wall and an open window to the courtyard. At each turn you’d be able to peek out the open window and see the pavement and roadway slowly getting clean. Raindrop pointillism. Like how light rain freshens up the driest concrete, the dustiest sidewalks, and makes all grass look fresh and new. No puddles. No accumulation. Just a light sprinkle to freshen up the ground. Then we got downstairs. We had to carry Daddy outside briefly to get him into the garage where the ceremony would begin. During that quick turn the rain…stopped. Not a drop of exaggeration. It sprinkled just enough to freshen up the ground and clean up the world for my Daddy. Who did that for everything he owned and interacted with. Clean. Precise. Fresh. Presentable. Mother Nature did that for him when he couldn’t do it for himself.
I found the timing beautiful. I’m not religious and barely spiritual, though there’s something hopeful about believing in the magical as possible, just not relying on it.
But as I spoke to my Daddy’s eldest cousin, who I sat with for 90 minutes to hear stories going back to toddlerhood, he mentioned this idea of the “Ami chhatna”. An auspicious sprinkle, that happens just as did for my Daddy, for the loftiest of souls. As his rises to universality (and to become a star) it has been beautiful to watch the outpouring of support for our family and in memory of how he loved and in recognition of how he will continue to influence them in the future. But I know my Daddy. And I know how loved he is. So I expected all of that outpouring.
I was humbled though when the skies, literally opened up, with their own outpouring. Perfectly delivered. Freshening his path to the crematorium. And clearing his path to whatever is next for him.
#iamgrateful and #iamthankful for the support and symbolism. He never let anyone make a big deal about him while he was here. Happy he gave the human, material and spiritual world a reprieve as he leaves us. Love you, Daddy. You’ve earned all of this and More.
Also, does this dude look 77? The pic was taken just a few months ago just after that birthday. v
Yesterday, our Dad became a star. There’s still a lifetime of things to say, but here is step 1… Today I fly to India to join the strongest person I know, my mom, and a community of friends and family, to help the world say goodbye to his body. His light. His love. His spirit. His crappy jokes. His absolute moral perfection and purity.
Those will live on forever. Envelop us from moment-to-moment. Protect us. Remind us. Break us but only momentarily. Because his strength and resilience are also with us forever.
#iamgrateful and #iamthankful to have called you Daddy for 42 years, and now, to close my eyes, or to look at the sky, or to look at your grandkids, and be reminded and fully inspired to do the same.
Forever.
I will see your body soon. I will do my best to live in a way that makes you proud and is worthy of your legacy. See you soon, Daddy. You’d be proud and brought to tears if you heard Anaiya explain her love for you, and, how she knows you’ll always be with us. I’ll whisper it in your ear when I see you.
Also, go Eagles. You earned this Super Bowl run with a near lifetime of dedicated fandom.
Thank you all for your love and support. It’s a testament to the person he will always be and the person my mom is. Send love. Send strength.
Shed no tears. Channel that emotion deeply and powerfully toward the people you love.
Ummm. So far so good. Love the experience on my phone. #iamgrateful and #iamthankful for innovation. Let’s see how it works for refined searches but for now, the swipe function makes phone navigating so much easier.
Suneet Bhatt 