It was my grandfather who showed me that fish could smoke a pipe, wear a hat, dangle glasses from around their necks (?), and just be very un-fish-like. I must have been three or four years old, and this nonsense did not sit well with me, especially given his wife, my grandmother, was such a repository of good, strong, “normal” stories. I argued with him until I turned purple, “Fish don’t smoke pipes or wear hats.”
That didn’t change a thing. A couple of years later, when my parents and I moved from Calcutta to New Delhi, and my grandfather began writing postcards to me, they were always accompanied by drawings—mostly of fish. Sometimes, they would wear pants or lungis, they would have pens tucked behind their ears (another body part like the neck that they may or may not possess, they would be on their way to the store, so on and so forth.
Two evenings ago, exhausted with the weight of the news playing on TV, I picked up my sketchbook to spend time with what’s become my most cherished pastime these days. I drew fish upon fish, then when the page filled up, I began adding details. When I showed them to my husband, he burst out laughing. “Where are they all going?”
I said something like, “Morning commute.” In that moment, it dawned on me that while this drawing itself was original, the idea behind it wasn’t. It was something that had lived inside me for years and years, and that’s why, that’s how, I knew to outfit each fish.
My grandfather has been gone seven long years now, and not a day goes by when I don’t think of him. And I think I now have a better grasp of why he continues to mean so much to me than I did before. Beyond the incredible amount of love and attention he gave me, beyond the many ways he showed me he was listening, really listening, to everything I had to say, he made me realize that you should never let go of the things that make you happy. He was a very busy man right until the very end of his life. He was a bureaucrat; he wrote books and op-eds; edited journals; participated in his neighborhood’s welfare; he guest lectured at colleges and universities; and miraculously, he still always had time for everyone in his life.
Of the many things he taught me, the one I value the most these days is, don’t let your work or profession come in the way of your play—be it writing postcards to friends (he wrote something like 500 a year), singing and listening to music, playing card games (whenever my grandmother won too many games in a row, we made sure to cheat to defeat her), or cartooning or writing nonsense rhymes. Another of our favorite things to do was read obituaries and give the departed fantastic, impossible, often hilarious lives. It wasn’t the most politically correct thing to do but it was a lot of fun.
My grandpa lived a fantastic, playful life. I hope you do too.