Missed Translations - Sopan Deb Page 0,67

accordion for her and that they occasionally went on dates together. He said that he brought her back to his house. This house. The woman was impressed by Shyamal’s paintings on the wall and their conversations, he said.

I was in disbelief. I had never really discussed dating with my father before. I didn’t count him meeting Bishakha as a date.

“What’s wrong with that?” he said, noticing my writhing face.

I stammered that nothing was wrong and immediately steered the conversation toward more specifics about the mystery woman. She had an extra sense about my father. According to Shyamal, she suggested he would get bored by her. Shyamal agreed. After about six meetings over the course of a month, the two broke it off. My father was back on the singles boat.

Shyamal attributed his loneliness to being picky and demanding of those he surrounds himself with, but I see it differently and I’m betting the woman did too: He can be an impatient, rigid man and a challenge to live with.

“Getting a partner for me was always difficult,” Shyamal said.

“So do you think there’s an equal chance of being happy in an arranged marriage as in a love marriage?” Wesley tried her hand at getting my father to engage on a specific topic.

But again, my father demurred. “Marriage is luck,” he said. “Marriage is luck.”

Before we left for the night, Shyamal insisted I play his piano one more time. He set up a tripod and a camera to shoot my short performance. I sang an out-of-tune version of one of my favorite Billy Joel songs, “Summer, Highland Falls,” and plinked some jazz tunes I knew. The Joel song, about manic depression, is one I’ve played since I was a child.

My father kept flashing the thumbs-up sign to show his approval. In some ways, the visit had come full circle. Sitting down at his piano was one of the first things Shyamal had me do when we initially arrived in Kolkata. Just like last time, I was playing a Billy Joel song. The Omar Sharif picture still hung nearby. But my father and I barely resembled the men who had reunited at the Kolkata airport. After traversing so much emotional ground, the same ground had shifted beneath us.

“Fantastic, very good. I appreciate it. Very proud of you,” Shyamal said, clapping his hands.

Wesley and I packed up our belongings and got ready to head back to the hotel for the last time. We would be heading to Bengaluru shortly for Manvi’s wedding, before meeting Shyamal again in Delhi.

My father’s flat had its own cozy charm, infused with his personality, but it was missing something. I gave him a gift: a print of my first-ever front-page story in the New York Times, over which he gushed with joy. It was from the day of Trump’s inauguration, which I helped cover during my first month on the job. The print would fit on his wall just fine next to his historically accurate paintings: The article had been rigorously fact-checked.

“Beautiful! Beautiful! Oh my god,” Shyamal said, holding it in his hands. He leaned over and kissed me on the head. “You know, some of the writings I don’t understand. I am not a man of literature. I am a man of engineering. But I read this with pride. So beautiful. My son.”

Shyamal examined his wall for a place to hang the print. A driver was outside waiting to take us back to our hotel.

“This feels like home to you,” I said, looking around. “This whole place. India. Kolkata. It feels like it’s your home. Does it feel like home to you?”

Shyamal sighed.

“Yes and no,” he said. “The lights of my life are not around me. You and Sattik. That does not make this home. That will never make this home.”

His eyes darted to the Times print he clutched, then to our faces. My father, who claimed himself to be a man of no regrets, flashed a hint of sadness in his face. His lips pursed. Shyamal contemplated for a few seconds, before raising his head and fixing his stare on us again.

“But I am comfortable here,” my father said.

Wesley and I left Shyamal’s flat and climbed into the car. As we pulled away, my head swiveled toward his flat, cementing it in my mind. When we had first pulled up to this building, I felt I was nervously chatting with a stranger and was unsure of what to expect. Now I felt the sharp pain of a