A few years ago, I started to notice a somewhat puzzling behavior from my daughter.

Whenever we spoke on the phone, she would never disconnect the call after we’d said goodbye. I was always the one hitting the red circle on my iPhone.

“Perhaps you’re overthinking it. She might be disconnecting it just around the same time you do,” I told myself.

So I decided to conduct an experiment. I started to wait a second or two after we wrapped up our conversation, to see if she would now disconnect before I would. But invariably, I was the one doing the disconnecting.

“I wonder if she’s disengaging even if she’s not disconnecting — by just taking her attention and ear away from the phone,” I thought to myself.

So I formulated another experiment. Once, when we finished our conversation, I simply let the call go on and on and on without disconnecting it.

Had she left or was she still listening, I wondered.

About 20 seconds after our goodbyes, I heard her voice again.

“Papa?”

“Yes, Mrinalini.”

“Why aren’t you disconnecting the call?”

“Well. Why haven’t you disconnected it?”

“Oh, papa! Don’t be silly. You should be disconnecting.”

“Well, but you could be disconnecting too.”

“Papa! You know you should be disconnecting after our call! You always do so,” she said reproachfully.

And then, it all came together for me. Life had come full circle.

“My dear Mrinalini,” I spoke softly, “I’ve figured out what is going on…” My voice trailed off at the end, a bit overcome with emotion.

“What do you mean?” she inquired.

“You are doing the same thing your dadi (grandmother) did with me years ago,” I said.

“What was that, papa?”

“Well, you see, when I was growing up, she would always walk out to the gate of our home when my sisters or I were leaving for somewhere in our car. She would wave goodbye to us with such love in her eyes, as the car got on to the road.”

“OK, and then?”

“And then, as the car would drive away from our home down the block, I would turn back and look. She was always there, at the gate, looking and waving. Right until the car had become a little dot, and had turned the corner and disappeared. She just kept looking and waving at the car.”

“Oh…”

“And Mrinalini, somehow, you have been born with this same instinct. You don’t disconnect. You wait, lovingly, until I disconnect our call — until I am a little dot, having turned the corner and disappeared. You are pouring the same love into our goodbyes that I saw from my mother, growing up.”

It occurred to me that Mrinalini is like this in our physical goodbyes as well. When she leaves the apartment or walks away after a meal at a restaurant, she turns back and smiles lovingly, and will not break her gaze until I turn my head and walk away.

“Dad,” Mrinalini whispered, “you’re being a bit silly.”

“It’s so beautiful,” I replied, “how you keep honoring that moment of parting.” 

We said goodbye for a second time on this call, and then after a brief pause, I did my thing of pressing on the red circle. 

Let’s pay attention to the interstitials of our life — those little spaces that lie between things. Some of them may be packed with profound significance.

Warmly,
Hitendra

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