Remembering our Fathers

Remembering my father, Batuk Desai.

To my five-year-old eyes, it felt like a strange dance. First, we packed the bedroll (Indian version of a sleeping bag) for my father and collected his favorite books. We waited and waited for the police to arrive. After a few days, we decided they must have forgotten about him and unpacked his bedroll. That very night, there was a knock on the door and the local policemen, who normally accompanied their wives to my mother’s clinic, sheepishly arrived to pick him up. They waited aside while he repacked his bags and took him away.