The garage

It is about the dilemma of father (a long retired public servant and also a widower), the bread winner, of a family.

A young couple with an adorable kid and an elderly father were living in a house, built by the father himself, in a metropolitan city. Life was hip and happening for the young couple. The young man and his wife were working for two different multinational organizations. Income was good. The kid had just started going to an international school. They had two cars in the house. One for utility and the other one, shining candy red, for the status as well.

House had a minor shortcoming. It was not having a garage. However, there was enough free space within the boundary. Naturally the cars were facing the vagaries of nature and getting old a wee bit faster.

This was giving nightmares to the young couple. They truly believed in requirement of a garage for housing the Red Candy. However, the old man, and incidentally the owner of the property, was not allowing the Garage to be built in the campus. Every polite request of subtle hint was falling flat on the ears of the Old Man.

The Old Man had his morning buddies. Five of them used to go for morning walk together at around 5:30 in the morning.

One evening the daughter-in-law requested The Old Man to bring his morning buddies for a cup of tea. The Old Man was visibly pleased.

Next day, after the morning walk, they all arrived for that morning cup of tea. His son also came and joined the group of oldies. The lady also joined them with a tray full of tea and biscuits. After initial discussion on weather, escalating cost, benefits of yoga, political and world scenario the talk suddenly veered towards importance of valuing the valuables. Then in a well planned move the lady requested friends of Old Man to impress upon him for agreeing to get a garage constructed in the campus. Very naturally his friends too started convincing him towards the same.

Suddenly the old man got up and went inside. He returned after about 5 minutes with a diary in hand. He said loudly, “I am not going to allow construction of a Garage.” He was visibly shaken. Referring to the diary he said: listen gentlemen – Mr X, a retired civil servant, Mr Y a retired Army Officer, Mr Z, a retired judge and …………………. they all started their final journey out of a Garage. They all were left to die in their Garage during their last days. I just don’t want that to happen to me howsoever worse my physical condition becomes. So gentlemen please don’t insist.