Speaking For My Father

My father passed away this past June at the age of ninety.

When I think of him, I begin with his life, not with the way it ended.

He was born in a small village in Kashmir in British India, the sixth of eight children in a family of modest means. He was the only one of them to pursue postgraduate studies, specializing in entomology.

My father, Bansi Lal Tikoo, joined the Central Silk Board and spent his entire career there. Upon joining, the Board deputed him to the Indian Agricultural Research Institute for two years to train in breeding and genetics. That shaped the course of his work.

He became a leading sericulture researcher, breeding silkworm races that significantly improved both the quality and yield of silk. His work earned national recognition, and those races remain in use decades later. 

His work was never just a job. He would slip away to his institute at odd hours to check on a new project. When he named the races he developed, he wove in his family’s initials. Even as administrative responsibilities grew later in his career, applied research remained his first love.

Because of him, I learned that government organizations are not just bureaucracy and inefficiency. They also contain some capable, committed people who quietly make lasting contributions.

The same quiet devotion marked his marriage. At the time, arranged marriages often meant the bride and groom never met until the wedding day. It was, in many ways, like a lottery. My father felt he had hit the jackpot. He was captivated by my mother from the beginning and loved her until the very end.

Together they raised three children. Knowing how education had transformed his life, he made ours his highest priority. He ensured we attended the best schools and stayed involved through college and beyond.  

I am grateful for the life he lived: a boy from a remote Kashmiri village who traveled the world, built a deeply satisfying career, found lasting love, and watched his children flourish.

That was my father for most of his ninety years.

What Alzheimer’s Takes

As he entered his mid-eighties, Alzheimer’s began its relentless work.

It is a gradual dismantling of a human being. It took his ability to read and write and to recognize almost all of his family and friends. It stole his vocabulary, one word at a time, until it took speech itself. Eventually, it took even the body’s most basic functions: continence, chewing, and swallowing.

Alzheimer’s unmakes the person long before the body gives out. It forces those who love them to grieve someone who is still in the room.

Until his early eighties, he remained the incredibly active and independent person he always was. That contrast made his decline all the more heartbreaking.

The Difficult Decision

The end came when he was hospitalized with critically low blood pressure and pulse. He spent nearly three weeks in the ICU, while doctors searched unsuccessfully for a reversible cause.

After ninety years, his body was simply giving out.

The conversation shifted from treatment to choice.

Should he remain in the ICU, with his blood pressure and pulse sustained by medications and intensive medical care, or should he come home?

He didn’t have an advance directive. We had never spoken about a situation like this. For his generation, such conversations were rare, and advance directives remain uncommon in India.

So I had to decide. I drew on what I believed he would have chosen and what I would have wanted for myself. My brother and sister had arrived by then, and their presence and consensus made the decision a little less agonizing.

After discussions with his doctors, we took him home. He lived five more days and passed away in his sleep, in his own bed, surrounded by family.

I will never know whether I chose exactly as he would have.

When you must decide whether to continue life support for someone who can no longer speak for themselves, you are making perhaps the most consequential decision you will ever make on another person’s behalf.

This experience compelled my wife and me to write our advance directives, so that our son never has to guess our wishes.

After Death

Every religion and community has its own way of saying goodbye. Kashmiri Hindus have elaborate post-death customs. Some traditions have faded with time, but many remain.

After the cremation and immersion of the ashes on the fourth day, we performed rites on the 10th, 11th, and 12th days, on the banks of the Ganges in Haridwar.

The rites unfolded amid early-morning chants, holy fire, lamps, and incense, with offerings of flowers and rice-flour balls, which were later released into the current.

As I went through the rituals, most of them didn’t resonate with me, though their underlying purpose—praying for the salvation of the soul—did. Even so, I chose to observe them. What if they mattered? Grief is often not a time for philosophical certainty.

Just as we wrote our advance directives, we have also documented our preferences regarding post-death customs to spare our son the burden of social expectations or the fear of falling short.

Reflection

In the end, I think not of his difficult final years, but of everything that came before: the scientist who advanced Indian sericulture, the husband who hit the jackpot in love, and the father who built the foundation we stand on.

That is the father I remember.