Appa, The Voice That Echoes Through Time

“Appa”, “Appa” the voice came loud, clear, and urgent. That was my 12 year old calling for me. A voice filled with love and a brashness only a child can possess. “Appa” is another word for Daddy.

And as it echoed through the hallway, probability shifted its weight inside me.

Because somewhere beneath that call was another voice—mine, decades ago. Calling my own Appa. Did I ever call him that way? How did he feel about it? It feels like eons since I called that way. My dad passed away twenty four years back on September 5.

My mind struggles to gather shards of memories to recreate the past. It seemed only the other day. A tiny blip in the cosmos of time, but a large swath in my own timeline. And all I could muster was inconspicuous images from memory’s dim corners. 

I can see him sitting at ease in his rocking chair, reading the daily news. I can revisit his walk into the house dripping water after a quick shower - the bathroom conveniently being situated outside the main house. A practical design, improbable now in another country, another life.

I can see images of his devotion - praying to the family deity while keeping his pulse on the surroundings. I can see days spent discussing mundane politics, time fixing the nooks and cranks in the house.

Many small irrelevant details. Now relegated to a faraway black-and-white image with too many grains surrounding it. 

His world encompassed working in the backyard to clean that little weed that dared to encroach on the otherwise barren land. His interests were simple. A cup of tea, the daily newspaper and the evening television. He rarely involved himself in routine household chores yet never hesitated to step up and lead especially when we had a terrible water crisis. The municipality would release water for a narrow window each day. And he would move with purpose, filling pots, buckets, every available container before the supply thinned to nothing. Leadership revealed itself in scarcity.

He always remembered to get some fritters like “curry puffs” while going on his daily walk. A small, predictable joy wrapped in paper. The probability of comfort secured in advance.

His temper was widely known and overshadowed his generous personality. His jovial nature got subdued with age and he became ever so silent. He took care of the family — and the extended family — with quiet maturity. No fanfare. No craving for greatness.

By the time I was old enough to question him, his younger days had already become folklore — fragments of movie nights and indulgent habits, shared in lowered voices, never confirmed, never denied.

I grew a rebel teenager, ignoring him and his ideas. I argued. I dismissed. I rolled my eyes with the certainty of someone who believes time is abundant. I fought for my “way,” though I could not have defined it if asked. I mistook resistance for identity.

I left for the United States convinced life was linear. Study. Work. Return. Reconcile. I assumed there would always be another page.

It did not - before I could call him not out of obligation but recognition. Before I could understand the architecture of his quiet sacrifices.

He was gone.

Probability does not pause for emotional readiness. It does not consult our calendars

Now he exists for my children only as a story. A figure in photographs. A name that floats in conversation. The man who made my existence statistically possible now lives only in their imagination.

There is an irony there that I can only smile at gently. The architect of my being reduced to an album caption.

And yet, I see him.

In my own impatience. In the way I scan the house during prayer. In the urgency I feel when family tensions surface.

Traits travel across generations with no passport control. Probability threading itself quietly through bloodlines.

When my child calls “Appa,” I feel the weight of that inheritance. I feel the quiet gamble embedded in the moment. Every response I give—or delay—becomes part of the memory they will someday attempt to reconstruct.

Memory is not archival. It is editorial. It selects the rocking chair. It blurs the arguments. It softens the sharp edges. It rearranges probability into something that feels like destiny.

And still, I find myself asking the simplest question: Did I ever call my father with love loud enough for him to hear it over his own worries?

My mind searches. It returns static. Half-formed recollections. No definitive proof.

Perhaps that uncertainty is the final inheritance — the one trait I carry without proof.