Genie in the bottle
My dad lived a long happy life. As far as my memory goes he never bothered much about our report cards and hardly gave me or my brother sermons like normal dads. At the very end, his magnum opus, he finally stamped out his lesson for me to decipher ,by playing out his adieu on my birthday.This Christmas Eve he might want us to carol Happy birth and Death day in the same breath.Frivolity of birth and life , the yin and yang juxtapositions hardly meant anything at that point of time. Every time I go sit with mom he peers down ceremoniously from his frame with that quizzical smile so as to say...Did you guys get my cue? The only cue we got was absolute freedom to lay hand on two bottles he had brought down from Bahrain . My dad was a teetotaller and this was one of his 'spirited' ideas of sanitizing the customs officials, as he came down for good.The bottles bobbed into Kochi shores unscathed and he kept it uncorked for forty long years till this very moment!!It ...