Diwali -- a bittersweet reminder of Dad a year later

For Hindus, today is the holiday Diwali -- the day the god Rama rides into town, bringing light and goodness.

It's a time to celebrate and reflect on new life and its potential; it's a time of hope.

For me, it's a bittersweet reminder. Today is the first anniversary of the day that, for a long time, made me doubt hope and God. A year ago the best man I have ever known died: my father, Ganesh Shenoy.

Early in the morning a year ago, my mother, sister and I were listening as the pauses between my father's breaths grew longer. He succumbed to leukemia after we begged him to stop fighting.

Tired friends and family gathered in a hospital waiting room outside watched dully as Democrats nationwide celebrated election results that gave them control of the Senate. Life was already going on, swiftly.

But for us it seemed that reality couldn't continue. My dad was the nucleus of our small family. For 36 years, ever since my father and mother, Mumtha, defied the Indian tradition of arranged marriages by falling in love on their own and marrying, Dad had been encouraging Mom, my sister and me to fight, support ourselves, think for ourselves and never depend on anyone.

He believed in us, and in return we adored him. Dad called us "Ganesh's Angels," after the three-woman team on the television show "Charlie's Angels."

Everyone adored him. The youngest son of a big family, my father as a child was the Tom Sawyer of a small South Indian village.

When he wasn't supposed to know how to swim, he led a pack of boys to the ocean after school each day. The contest, which my father often won, was to swim out far enough to touch the bottom of fishing boats. He wasn't dissuaded even after a water snake wrapped around him and fishermen had to save him.

He was naughty and handsome -- every time I return, people in the village tell me how he resembled movie stars of the time. When his mother wouldn't make the dinner he wanted, my father would hang by his hands from the top of the well and threaten to drop to its depths.

Dad, at a very young age, would sneak into mango orchards and climb trees to steal the fruit. Once, an owner found him. Shaking his cane at my father far above, the owner demanded that Dad descend. Instead he did something more than a little mischievous from that height . In the ensuing confusion, my father fled from the enraged -- and wet -- orchard owner.

In his teenage years Dad shaped up. He attended a new engineering college that was part of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru's plan to educate India. Unfortunately for my father, when he graduated there were still few companies in the young country that had use for engineers.

My mother and father grew restless with what they saw as India's cultural and economic constraints. After a yearlong screening process, my father, filled with nauseating fear, boarded a plane in July 1973 with $7 in his pocket to join my uncle in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

My mother was scheduled to arrive later the same year on Christmas Eve. Indians were still such a novelty that a news television crew went to the airport and waited with my father to greet her. The plane was delayed and she arrived the next day amid a snowstorm in a sari and sandals, carrying my older sister, Aarthi.

The next few years were filled with desperately hard work and, at times, cruel poverty. After earning more degrees, my parents got good jobs. I was born and my family grew more affluent, but we endured illnesses and hardships.

At the same time, my parents did things like buying the first model of minivan and taking long family trips in an effort to show my sister and I every state.

Through it all, basic Hindu beliefs -- many of which I consider American beliefs -- guided us: God tries to reward those who work hard; little is more important than the duty to and love of your family.

My mother became a feisty, independent woman with financial smarts. My sister, whom my Dad nick-named "Rocket," worked to become a brilliant doctor with a passionate commitment to her patients. And my father encouraged me as I traveled my own career path, even though it was what some would consider an unusual choice for an Indian.

Before operations took away his ability to speak last November, my father said, "What's going to happen to my girls? My poor girls."

The year since he died has been hard for us. But I think it means something that Diwali falls on this anniversary. In its symbolism, the holiday urges Hindus to vanquish the doubts and character flaws that keep us from fulfilling our true potential. In other words, it tells us to drive away the darkness that clouds each of our souls.

So as my mother, sister and I mark Diwali today, we will strive to be what my father worked his whole life to give us the opportunity to be: strong women with bright futures.