Amar Kumar Chatterjee
December 22 1923 - August 25 2013
Night follows day and makes it seem as if, at least cosmically, one day is just like the next. But during that same time the earth travels 1.6 million miles around the sun. Our sun turns 12 million miles around the center of our galaxy. And the Milky Way itself hurtles 20 million miles through space. Every day. And each of our lives are changed for ever.
Eleven day ago, laying peacefully in bed at home, my dad passed away. Fourteen days ago, some time during the night, he had a huge stroke. Three hundred and sixty five days ago he and I boarded an Etihad Airways flight in Hyderabad and arrived in Austin later that same day. About 90 years ago he was born in the small village of Rukni in the then province of Bengal of the British Indian Empire.
I knew my dad for the last 49 years. I remember him vividly for the last 46. I called him "Bu" because my brother did - it was a word Alu had just made up. We knew that from pretty early on but we wouldn't change it because by then he was already Bu.
There are older pictures of me with Bu but I remember him from the time of this photograph. That's me on the left, Alu on the right and Raja, our brand new cocker spaniel puppy on his lap. My mother took this photo with her Rolleicord camera while we sat on the front steps of our home on top of the hill in Somajiguda probably in 1967.
I recollect my dad being big though he was only 5'6", with huge forearms. He was smart but he valued hard meticulous work over being clever. He was frugal himself but generous to a fault. He dressed well when he stepped out but he wore the same few simple clothes at home and washed them himself by hand. My dad didn't have a sense of humor - it took a lot to get a smile and even more to get a good laugh out of him. But he loved to tell old stories, specially the funny ones. He enjoyed good food but he saved the best of everything for my brother and me. He was even tempered and never ever raised his hand at me. I've seen him angry less than half a dozen times - and only once at me when Alu and I broke a statue during a cushion fight. He had hand carried this statue from Budapest as a gift for my mother. He led by example - if he wanted you to do something, he did it himself till you started to follow. He loved to travel and and he loved to walk. He did his accounts every few days - down to the last pisa. His accountant used to joke that he was extra careful when he did my dad's taxes because my dad would check his work for mistakes. My dad was a packrat when it came to books and papers but he owned or collected almost nothing himself - his two Rolex watches and his ring with his birth stone were his only personal valuables (and a nice collection of scotch whiskey that he hardly ever drank, but if he did it was a whiskey and soda). My dad wasn't touchy feely - he could be emotionally distant but family was the most important thing in his life. When my mother got sick with diabetes and eventually had and a stroke and lost her hearing, my dad stopped everything else and was with her every moment of every day - for years. He wasn't a religious man, but he ended every letter to me (and he wrote hundreds) and every phone call with "God bless you".
Om Shanti Om, dear Bu.
