Missed Translations - Sopan Deb Page 0,31
object of fascination. It emphasized agency. You can be who you want, whenever you want. It was unfamiliar territory for a man who, I would come to learn, was given little choice his entire life.
“What do I want to do next?” I repeated his question back to him. “I don’t know, Dad. I’d like to . . .”
I didn’t have a good answer. At that moment, my only goal was to make it to dinner without melting from the heat. In the long term, my future is something I’ve thought about every day for years and have never come up with a satisfactory answer. I have always gone from job to job, figuring it out as I go. And short-term goals have sometimes been sidelined, orphaned by layoffs and my own impulsivity. I get easily attached and invested in side projects: I am going to write a play and stage it Off Broadway. And then easily detached a short time later: Eh, who goes to see plays nowadays?
“I might go into comedy more after this. Maybe write a television show,” I volunteered.
“So you’re a comedian?” He smiled. “I find that you have two qualities of mine that you have inherited. One is music. The other is comedy.”
“Yeah? You think I inherited comedy from you?” I said, dubious.
“Of COURSE!” my dad squealed. “Whenever I have gone to the parties and all these things, I am the main focus. Even now.”
“Is that right?” I said.
“EVEN NOW! Telling the jokes. Making people laugh—that is my hobby.”
If you’re wondering about my skepticism, it was because the father I knew growing up was the least funny person I had ever met. He never once made me or anyone around me laugh. I have little memory of him even smiling or making anyone else smile. He was more likely to be the class frown than the class clown. If I had inherited my comedy from him, it would explain the number of times I’ve bombed a set. So, thanks, Dad.
Off in the distance, we could see the central Ramakrishna Temple, a grand building combining several different architectural styles, as if to adhere to Vivekananda’s vision of inclusiveness. There were domes of different sizes scattered across the top of the elegantly designed structure, made up chiefly of marble and wood. It was roughly a hundred feet tall and had a pinkish-red color. Monkeys roamed the grounds, crisscrossing among delighted tourists and locals who ignored them.
Wesley, Shyamal, and I took our shoes off and went inside the temple, where it was nearly silent, save for the shuffling of feet and the occasional whisper. Several visitors were on their knees with their eyes closed in front of a marble carving of Ramakrishna, the celebrated nineteenth-century spiritual figure who spent his life contemplating the divinity of several religions and his belief in the Supreme Being. I found the atmosphere inside the temple peaceful rather than spiritual, perhaps owing to my agnosticism. Shyamal took delicate steps around the temple, separate from Wesley and me. I couldn’t figure out what he was thinking, whether he was recalling Ramakrishna’s teachings himself or not.
Finding myself in a contemplative state, I briefly considered that maybe I had dismissed Shyamal being one of my unwitting comedic influences too quickly. After all, as an engineer, part of his job was to try and use logic to overcome complex puzzles. It required an analytical mind to excel at solving them. That’s not too far off from comedians who point out logical fallacies and search for the right punchline.
Maybe that was a stretch.
Shyamal had one more sight to show us after we had left the temple. He beckoned us to follow him to the banks of the Ganges as the sun went down. For forty-five minutes, we stood on the water’s edge, taking in the beautiful landscape as the sky became darker. We watched as several locals dove into the water for a swim. We weren’t inside the temple anymore, but we remained silent. It was peaceful. It was perfect.
The trip to Belur Math offered a window into my father and his idiosyncrasies. But it took a while after we first arrived to find our rhythm. Those first two or three days felt like weeks. On our first morning, Shyamal picked us up at our hotel. We didn’t get much sleep the night before; I had woken up at about four in the morning and gone for a run to reduce both my anxiety and that weight gain my