In his heyday with mummy’s cousin Loy…
The eternal chapter…
We envision our father, right now, lounging bare-chested in a deckchair, sporting navy shorts in Air-India suit material, with black silver-buckled leather belt and sandals; left ankle on right knee; sipping a glass of whisky and soda, on ice - nestled in the borough of heaven that offers the choicest food and music, and the finest view of his grandchildren on earth.
He would have already briefed the chef, politely articulating - if he’s going to be eating here for all eternity, do contact Odil and learn how to take out a masala properly - ‘no hard feelings!’
The eldest son of five children, he lost his mother at age 18 and shared a close bond with younger siblings Rudolph, Renee, Gloria, and Jovie. He loved retelling stories of his mother’s incredible beauty and his fathers single-handed parenting escapades.
With family and friends at Lighthouse.
The early years…
The most marvellous present for Daddy in heaven will be the joy at being reunited with his beloved parents Manuel and Stella Medeira.
Papa Manuel’s dream was to go to Rome on a pilgrimage; Daddy made that happen for him and felt humbled by it.
Daddy was apparently very keen to avoid troubling his father (or, I suspect, getting in trouble with him), and rumour has it the neighbours once found him huddled on the stairs attempting to bandage a broken arm with two sticks.
He joined Air India as flight purser after a jaunt with Voltas and was able to combine his passions for travel, education and family, embarking on a most intriguing life…
The love of his life...
Best friend. Lover. Carer. Companion. Mummy was everything to daddy. This was taken on their Honeymoon in Mauritius.
They were engaged and married in a whirlwind romance in 1975 after meeting at the wedding of their siblings earlier that year.
At their 25th wedding anniversary
I think they were expecting me in this picture.
Santos!
The wedding entourage included nieces and nephews – Shalu, Claude and Colin Sequeira.
Daddy couldn’t go a few minutes without calling out to mummy for something or the other. We had a family joke that ran: if mummy died first, Daddy would poke his head into the coffin and say – ‘Odil - could you take out the masala before you go?’
To Mummy, he was and always will be the perfect soul mate; she has stuck with him through the toughest of times and would repeat it in a heartbeat. This is him singing to her at my wedding.
Lighthouse and Magwill Lodge
In Mumbai, the family spent years at Lighthouse in Byculla before they moved to Mahim where we shared many happy years together with cousins before Ella (Uncle Rudy), Jojo and Goya moved to Marol.
Daddy and Ella at Lighthouse.
With father, brothers and intriguing T-Shirts!
Daddy and Jojo at Magwill Lodge. To me, always Home.
Daddy adored his sisters, and his brothers were his best friends.
This photograph includes brother-in-law Alfie, sister-in-law Gerry (Geraldine) and cousin Maria taken at Jojo’s flat in Marol.
Daddy with his parents in law William and Veera DSouza and several of mummy's siblings - Franklyn, Alfie, Antoinette Rosette, Yvette and Marina. Missing from this picture are mummy's eldest and youngest sisters Meena and Lynette.
Daddy was also very fond of his many in-laws, the D'Souza family, and spent a lot of time with them both in India and abroad. He shared close bonds also with the Price's and the Heelon's - the families of his children-in-law Nick and Laura.
Before Aquil
Daddy Cool...
He was the quintessential family man. Homework, (especially Geography and Maths), extracurricular activities, taking us (and friends and cousins) swimming every week – including culinary treats and pony rides on Juhu beach - just watching our lives unfold around him, was his most engaging hobby.
Taken just a few months ago, with American grandchildren at daddy’s home in Rhode Island, this video epitomises a typical erstwhile family evening – daddy providing geo-political instruction, mummy providing culinary instruction to the young menfolk and photographs of their English grandchildren, whom they had not seen in person for a long time, resting in front of them.
With Aquil on knee, waiting for mass to begin at my First Holy Communion
In our teenage years, Daddy enjoyed spending time with our friends, shocking our suitors, arguing about topical and philosophical issues, and animatedly watching historic films together which he furnished with running commentary in the ‘surround sound’ home theatre setting of our drawing room at Magwill Lodge.
An incorrigible technophobe, we had every gadget invented, possibly a few hours after shelves were stocked. I remember solar calculators first coming out - Aquil, fascinated about how they worked, decided to immediately dismantle his. Daddy was very proud of ‘Aquil’s curiosity’ and got him another one.
Decades later, doing puzzles and homework with his grandchildren.
A Passion for Education
Daddy said we’d be learning on our deathbed. Beckoned skyward, he smiled before he stopped breathing. I wonder what he learned in those final moments.
There was another standing joke in the family that if necessary for the education of his children, daddy would sell his kidneys. There was always (no idea how) enough money for education. Academia was education. Sport was education. Travel was education. Music was education. Faith was education. Food was education. Everything was education.
There’s a story behind all this passion:
Daddy was an avid mathematician. After college he got a scholarship to study Engineering, but contracted jaundice, followed by a relapse, after which he felt obliged to take up a job with Voltas (India’s leading engineering brand) forsaking the scholarship, to help support his father and siblings.
Losing out on the most valued opportunity to study, daddy took up the education of his own children and those less fortunate, as a cause, with a fiery passion. He paid for the education, books, and uniform of many children in our neighbourhood, and for night school for members of household staff.
Aquil and I decided to go to America and England for post-graduate degrees in the same year. I discovered only years later, the incredible lengths (and humbling) daddy bore to make that happen.
His only expectation was that we give our children a better education than he gave us. It is a tall order.
Aquil and I both highly value our education, and take up the torch for posterity, not because of the exposure it afforded us but because of the sacrificial love upon which it was based.
Daddy carving the turkey, Mummy serving the children, cousin Ryan with his finger in the food and Aquil already having impishly downed some grownups glass of wine!
The Great Entertainer
Daddy loved a party, especially family gatherings and was a zealous host. It was never about showing-off but always about warm hospitality as an expression of faith. The food plenteous, the glasses always replete.
Scurrying, boisterous children were rampant as were party games invented by daddy (The Whistle Game an all-time favourite), impromptu singing with guitarist friends, and daddy angling over the pianist in diverting rhapsody – always deep bass. Lively dancing and dance instruction were mandatory – It’s gotta be Rock ‘n Roll music, if you wanna dance with him…
He always commemorated his wedding anniversary and the sumptuous fare often included roasted piglet and platters of exotic delicacies dressed by our young menfolk - Aquil and Manuel in the picture here- who, bequeathed with the love of food, took it up professionally in later life.
No matter how cramped the space, there was always enough room for him to watch his children dance together.
Globetrotter
Travel was education. Daddy was convinced that first-hand immersion in and exposure to international cultures would create well-rounded children fluidly conversant with anyone about anything. Daddy and mummy both regularly sacrificed holidays, or any break whatsoever, so they could send us abroad twice a year.
He would sit us down with the globe and quiz us about the world, leaving his son with an insatiable wanderlust, his daughter with a relaxation found in cultural immersion, and everyone with a passion for a culinary smorgasbord.
He was a great storyteller and our international escapades equipped him with an eclectic repertoire.
It was the 80’s in Dubai when toy guns were in fashion and political correctness had not yet reared its questionable head. Daddy managed to buy Aquil toy handguns that looked and felt like the real thing. Aquil decided to plonk them in his hand luggage on the return flight.
I shall leave you to visualise the Arab panic and sirens when that bag went through the screen.
And Daddy’s face.
I remember jumping the gate at the closed tulip fields in Amsterdam (at daddy’s insistence), Aquil being in three countries at the same time doing ‘the splits’ in Europe; him marvelling child-like at the kite festival in Stockholm, enjoying postings in the great Australian outback, getting ill on an upside-down rollercoaster in Thailand, missing the fantastic Israeli pilgrimage and revelling in the sunsets of Key West, the bustle of Manhattan, and the variegated autumnal colours of New England.
Not to mention all the obliging diaspora of friends and family that hosted these spirited excursions. Thank-you one and all.
Thailand in the 80s.
We loved watching daddy delight in the union of all his seven grandchildren in the warmth of the Roman sun hosted by the Price family in Italy.
On my last holiday with daddy and Jojo in Goa in 2001, we walked on the beach with bare feet, ate crabs with our toes in the sand at twinkle-lit shacks at night, lay in shaded deck chairs reading peacefully and discussing politics, not so peacefully. We also did a lot of shopping for fish and the usual animated cooking of it, in true Medeira fashion.
Roland to the rescue
Daddy was renowned for his calm in crises. He was called upon to intervene in many a neighbourhood brawl, and did so gallantly, with great alacrity.
He could always see the humour in every situation and lifted our spirits a million times with his wry wit, getting Aquil’s friends out of many a scrape – including being jailed for traipsing about Mumbai, in the dead of night, sporting airguns looking for bandicoots.
He kicked up a ruckus until God-son Claude got the appropriate attention at Masina hospital when dangerously ill; and rescued God-son Ryan from the ordeal of protracted family condolences by apparently whispering with twinkling eyes ‘come Ryan there’s a kebab joint around the corner…’
Aquil had many an exotic pet furnished by Daddy, including a magnificent fish tank with motley sparkling creatures. Dead pets were furnished flower-pot funerals but when tortoise Abraham escaped for the last time – daddy’s quip, to our mortification was: ‘Someone’s having tortoise soup tonight…’
The older we got, the more he expected us to brave the harsh world.
Once Aquil pinched 7000 rupees from daddy’s briefcase (because everyone knew the combination was 999) jumped on his motorbike and headed to Goa for some fun in the sun. Unabashed by the tomfoolery, daddy was harping on about how he has not brought up a son to ‘die on the (treacherous) western ghats!’
Cheeky chuffing chops
Daddy’s traffic antics on his scooter were legendary.
Cousin Manuel remembers incredulously riding pillion on many a jape when daddy would almost but not quite, break the rules, and then nonchalantly wave at peeved policemen.
One time we got away crossing a red light with daddy exclaiming dramatically to the officer ‘Mera Baap Mar Gaya!’ (my father died) and later insisting indignantly he was most certainly NOT dishonest, he just didn’t say when his father died.
Daddy loved dressing smart, and he would spend a lot of time and money helping choose the best corporate fashions and discussing how the cloth was to be cut.
The family, reunited at the baptism of his first grandchild in Ripon, Yorkshire.
‘They’ll know when they have their own kids’
I cannot imagine wanting any other kind of father. I absolutely love how daddy always did things differently and taught us to think differently, never to be happy with mediocrity, that ‘assumption is the mother of all muck-ups’ and to ‘never teach your father how to suck eggs!’
He would enrapture us with bedtime retelling of boarding school ‘adventures’ - all scintillating, but of questionable veracity (We are forever intrigued by how one could steal so many watermelons with one piece of string and then climb them up to a dormitory).
He was the first philosopher and feminist I knew and my memories of daily chats with him about anything and everything moral, philosophical, and practical, are the comfort of my life.
Letting Go
Daddy and mummy encouraged us to fly the coop, study abroad, explore the world, to live life to the fullest, to push our boundaries; he did this knowing he would not be around to watch it unfold anymore. More unadulterated, sacrificial love.
Blessing his daughter-in-law at her Roce.
Cuddling first grandchild Barrie William Price.
Feeding Rehaan
With Lynn Rhea D’Souza who genially took our place in Mumbai.
Magwill Lodge - The empty Nest
For two decades we were dispersed in three different continents. Mummy and Daddy entrenched in the bustle of Mumbai, Aquil raising rascals in Rhode Island, and I juggling my brood in the Yorkshire dales.
Although deeply missing his children and grand-children, daddy visited us often whilst his health permitted, and was actively involved in the children’s daily lives on WhatsApp right to the last.
In Mumbai he relished mummy’s professional achievements, glorified in her accolades, and was blessed with marvellous and faithful friends who made life a great deal of fun - like our precious neighbours the Azaam family, our cheerful and accommodating housekeeper of many years -Sangeeta, and beloved friend Lynn Rhea D’Souza – to all of whom Aquil and I will be eternally grateful.
Rhode Island - The final bustling Chapter
I shall be forever indebted to my wonderful brother Aquil and his beautiful wife Laura for enabling my parents’ emigration last year.
Daddy spent months sharing his wife’s delectable suppers with his cherished son, delightedly ensconced in the pattering feet of scampering grandchildren, teaching geography yet again - now with the latest ‘apps.’
While I know he would never have articulated this, he was overwhelmed with pride, not because he saw the emigratory move as a fulfilment of the American dream, but as a sign of his sons love for him.
He also knew he was leaving his wife in safe hands.
Daddy - You lived life to the fullest. You ate heartily. Laughed warmly. Danced vivaciously. The absence of your indomitable spirit has left us a black hole.
You spent quality time with us every day, larger than life –fitting us a treasure trove of magical memories.
I close this celebration of your enchanting life, with your own words, as I remember you counting your blessings with child-like awe–