“Nana, I hope you are not planning to jump from the first floor on this trip?”

My son asks my octogenarian father, tongue in cheek, followed by whoops of laughter from others in the room.

It is an unusual but pertinent question. A few years ago, just before the pandemic, papa went to Goa with friends. When he discovered that he had accidentally locked himself out on the balcony, without his phone, what did he do? Did he wait for his friends to come looking for him for the daily evening walk? No. He jumped down from the first-floor balcony, in true Bond style. Worse, he did not tell me. When I did find out, I was quite shaken and stirred.

Papa is very wise, by any standards. Yet, to the combined pride and chagrin of the family, he routinely engages in figuring out the extent of his physical endurance, and our equanimity. No mountain is too tall, no island too remote, and no outing too taxing. I remember a trip to Sri Lanka to celebrate the 50^th birthday of a close friend. I had flatly declined to partake in any arduous activity; after all, this was a luxury holiday. Yet I felt compelled to climb the 1200 steps to the top of the Sigiriya Rock just because I remembered Papa had done it effortlessly at the age of 62! Did I feel on top of the world? Nope. I lay on the rock, in the most undignified way, for thirty minutes before I could breathe normally.

Rock climbing is not the only misadventure I undertook to follow in his footsteps. It took me quite some years to realize that I had decided to study engineering not because I wanted to become an engineer but because it would result in my becoming knowledgeable, calm, and collected, like my father. I eventually forgave him for ‘my’ decision to study a discipline I had little interest in. And now, I am reconciled with the idea that I will never attain his equanimity or his calmness, not in this lifetime, not ever.

In two weeks when he returns from his current adventure, he will have traveled through three continents and six towns – in planes, trains, cars, and golf carts. It would take him a good couple of months to recover. He could again go to the orthopedic doctor and complain that while doing Vajrasana, there was a little knee pain. At which the doctor’s eyes will meet mine in amusement and he will, with utmost seriousness, prescribe the same knee exercises that he prescribes for me. The almost three-decade gap in our ages makes it galling to digest my lack of form.

Even the current James Bond has taken to armchair sleuthing in movies. Possibly, I can convince Papa to set a more reasonable pace for me.