In Memory of Udar Singh Mahal 1932-2007

My mom always said I was my father’s daughter. She didn’t mean it as a good thing. For her it symbolized everything negative that could be spouted about a man she had left. Their relationship was their business and I won’t repeat it here, but she was right. I am my father’s daughter in the best of ways.

My dad, Udar Singh Mahal, was a good man. You couldn’t meet him without wanting to smile. An armchair philosopher, he gave the kind of advice that you remembered years later. He gave the kind of hugs that lasted long after they ended.

He cared. About people. About his village, Hangoli. About the world. About everything. Caring led him to depression sometimes. But it also led him to helping people. He started a school in the village and kept it going. In a place where people pay for any education, his free school taught many to read and write. He used to bring candies to his school children. He knew their names and they smiled when they saw him.

He captured the world through his camera, but he never made money at it because that would have taken the joy from it. His photos did more than document his world, they showed the beauty of it whether it was a snowy day from his New Jersey years or a group of water buffalo wading in the waters near his farm in India. He documented life as he saw it.

My dad loved two wives, one of whom loved him back. That didn’t matter. He never stopped loving the first one, my mother. But that didn’t mean he didn’t love his Raj, who mended and kept his heart.

A father of four, by the end he had become a grandfather of one. He never met his Lakshmi, but her birth brought him such joy. He was incandescent with it. He said she had his nose.

Therefore, it is levitra prices dangerous to take the medicine without realizing that I was having one to cure something. Erectile Dysfunction (ED) online cialis sale is a tremendous fear to men. Some products that are out in the market like asingle leg, two legs, three and four legs steel buy viagra 100mg wire rope slings. If not controlled buying levitra in time, this could lead to erectile dysfunction. He was a Sikh and a Quaker, and didn’t see any contradiction in that. He was not an overly religious man, but he did believe in something more. When I visited him in 2001, after 20 years had passed since my last trip to the subcontinent, he gave blessings at the Golden Temple. It was a prayer come true.

People respected him, but more than that, you could tell that people actually liked my father. He was the oldest son, but a middle child — one of six — and the first to die. His sisters liked to tease him. They also worried that he held on to the past too tightly.

I like to think that when he died this past week, of complications to minor back surgery, he was actually looking forward to the future. To the day when he would be able get on a plane and see his daughters, his jumairaja and his granddaughter in the U.S, the past pushed aside in favor of new life and new beginnings.

He loved mangoes.

He made lots of mistakes.

I loved him.