‘It’s one of those hats they wear in Yorkshire. What do they call them? Oh yes, a flat cap. I couldn’t remember what they called it. He used to wear it all the time. In that day and age people used to wear all kinds of hats. He used to wear it everywhere he went, he’d always have it with him. He had a few of them, but I think this was probably his favourite.
It was synonymous with him. It didn’t matter what the weather was, whether it was cold or warm, sunny, whatever, he always used to wear the hat. Walking. Holidays. Wherever he went. When he passed away, they were going to dress him up in the coffin with it on, but we said, ‘No, no, no, we want to keep it as a memory’. I’ve given it to my daughter Roshnee and she’s looking after it.
I would say he had it 30-40 years. A long time. We took it with us when we climbed Kilimanjaro after he died. The reason we took it was he spent most of his life in Moshi in Tanzania. He grew up in the foothills of Kilimanjaro. We said, "Dad is no longer here but we can take a piece of him, so that we are climbing on his behalf, he is there with us in spirit."
He used to own a shop there selling all sorts of stuff, mainly shoes and shirts and what the Africans wear, kanzu and kitenge. I sometimes went to help, stacking shelves or putting price tags on. It was a carefree childhood, a happy childhood. But he kept insisting, ‘Keep studying’ because he hadn’t studied much when he was a boy back in India.
He never used to wear a hat there. It wasn’t part of the tradition. But he came here and bought one. Initially, he might have bought it because the weather used to be quite cold. We used to get a lot of snow in London in those days.
Dad used to do a lot of walking. When he started putting on weight he realised he needed to do something about it. He wasn’t working full-time by that time. He used to walk five or six miles in a day and sometimes I used to go with him. He was quite active until his health started playing up, and then he couldn’t. But he had a walking stick to help him walk and even when he was house-bound he had, like a walking frame – what do they call them? – a Rollator that you could walk with and when you got tired you could fold down a seat and sit on it. Even at the age of 90 he used to walk up and down in the house using his Rollator, so he was quite active.
Then he had a fall. In fact, he fell down a few times and the third time he was taken to hospital, and when he got home he was just scared. They tried to get him to walk but he’d lost his confidence and became bed-bound. So then we had to look after him. I used to spend two or three nights a week there so my mum could get some respite She looked after him in the day, but we looked after his physical requirements and got him to his doctor’s appointments, took him to the hospital, and so on.
In the end I think it was just old age. His physical health deteriorated and by the end he had become quite frail. But even in his 90s his mind was still quite sharp. I wish I had a mind like that."