Member-only story
My Father Is Living His Best Life
Navigating aging by not giving two hoots about the world
If we have been connected on this platform earlier or you have read my pieces before, you probably know that I share complex feelings with regards to my father. Much like both of us, our relationship is layered and fluctuates arbitrarily like the weather. We are too different for comfort but in some ways too similar.
If there was one thing that I really loved about my dad was just how easily he goes against the grain. When he feels strongly about something, he always manages to do it regardless of the opposition or how socioculturally inappropriate it might be.
A few months back he texted me a picture of his learner’s license — for a two-wheeler. I learned that he had started taking lessons to ride a motorbike, much to my mother’s chagrin.
He is 66 years-old and the pockmarked roads in our cities are a death trap, my mother lamented on the phone. Soon enough, Dad got his license and now he has bought a Royal Enfield!
A couple weeks back he reminisced about how he had first started learning to ride a motorbike with his friends in high school but never got around to getting a license because it became forbidden in the household. His father had recently booked a swanky bike and had been dreaming…
