Dr. Fuller Evermore
An old battered, yet ticking clock, ordained on the wall was inherited from the times when lives were simpler and burdens on his shoulders were nominal.
Tick-tock, tick-tock……. And the passage of time, fleeting days, and mounting pressures.
He was laid back on a sofa placed in his decent looking library of hundreds of books. The books of a wide variety of genre from medical sciences to fiction, from poetry to prose, and from history to religions were stacked neatly in racks. This was always a sight of awe and fascination for his visitor friends and family. He always boasted that all those books were not merely placed there for decoration, rather each had been thumbed down, page by page by him, with intricate details. Open up a book and it was filled with a date of purchase, notes, points to ponder, lists of future readings, sum-ups, and much more. None of the pages ever went untouched by his mental or physical scribblings. Hard copies of books seemed quite outdated in such era of fast-paced technological advancement. The AI and IT rule the world today and the online versions of books are relished by all and sundry on their smart gadgets. Yet for him, physicality of a book in its hard-form was vital just like the physicality of his loved ones around him. He seemed to get intoxicated by the aroma of pages of a book, their covers, their originality, their rarity and most of all their depths. Seemed odd, didn’t it? Had all his life-long thirst of knowledge and fun-filled learning through book-reading led him to success? Success in terms of his economic profile? Successful in overcoming materialism flourished around him everywhere and by everybody?
His three sons and a daughter, all were in their youth, and were his liability, apart from the lurking dread that he belonged to a country with rare opportunities, high expectations and an all-time judgmental society. His boys, teetering on the edge of manhood, were lost in adolescence, with futures as uncertain as flickering flames. His daughter, already passing her ideal age of marriage (as prescribed by his religion and societal norms), was dedicated towards a strong-headed career, pursuing her education in a fine university. Daughter’s marriage, in his society, was eyed as a father’s success, a test of his ability to provide and protect.
Tick-tock, tick-tock…… And on and on it went, probably mocking him of the time running out on him.
The educational and matrimonial expenses of his four teeners lay in front of him, always, even when he was busy in his academic and research tasks. A university academic has quite dynamic yet mind-boggling responsibilities from teaching naïve undergraduates to mentoring research scholars, and from juggling the academic politics to administrative tasks. And he had always been dutiful, vigilant and responsible to his duties whenever and whoever assigned him. The twenty years of his service were an impeccable example of his diligence and intellect. Research was his passion and he considered himself as a mentor who is a partner of his research scholars rather than a boss. Again odd, isn’t it? In the times when dutifulness and responsibility during a job were considered as over-efficient and boastfulness rather than the attributes of honor and integrity, wasn’t he to pace it down a bit now that he was a full professor at the height of academic excellence?
Tick-tock, tick tock….. And probably the sound was inching him towards his retirement in a few years from the job he had adored and worshipped.
His wife was a decent lady from a noble family and she had never bugged him or persuaded him into doing anything what he didn’t want. Yet her whispers of marriage of her kids filled the air like a thick, suffocating fog whenever he entered back home in evening after his office hours. She endorsed that it was a materialistic world and whoever would come to their home for tying the marital knots would be eyeing their living style, their standards and the so-called, fake made-up appearances. And appearances need to be maintained. Isn’t it so?
His house, though a magnanimous built gifted by his father, was getting dilapidated and was in shackles. Broken paint, sheets of wall plaster flickering like tattered flags on poles shredded by weathering seasons, termites crawling on many of its walls, once smooth floors now looking like multiple-colored continents of an old-timer map, leaking roofs. It needed repairs which needed money. And he wasn’t cash-strapped utterly. He had a decent pay and was in highest cadre of professionalism maintaining a white-collared life-style. But arranging huge load of money in an instant, for such hefty repairs, seemed to bow down his back even more. Were the families intending to visit for the purpose of tying knots planning to marry the live persons, his kids, or the non-life home and life-style? Weren’t the characters to be noticed in a lad or a lass while marrying of no value in comparison to the materialism?
Tick-tock, tick-tock……. True bliss, materialism, true bliss, materialism……..
He was a simple man, utterly simple and genuine with high standards and morals. But the world his children were growing into was anything but simple, genuine and moral. His bondage with his family was strong and steadfast. His family was also very loving and caring, considerate and careful in his times of distress. In times when family ties were thinning out, his family, in particular knew what familial bonds are, and they all followed them weaving an intricate and strong web around them.
It had been hours since he had been in his library. His somber face suddenly glowed like he had come up with a blissful idea. A queer smirk on his lips and he rose up and went out to mingle with his family, his four kids and his decent loving wife.
Tick-tock, tick-tock……. Indifferent to his worries…..
And now it was neither the thumping of a heavy hammer, nor the beat of a downfall. Rather an upbeat of a loving bonding family.
Through stormy seas and shades of gray
Threads of love will light the way
In the fabric of life, so finely spun
Family ties shine like the morning sun
