I wish my father were still alive to speak

My father was a wonderful raconteur with an amazing recall of detail and atmosphere. His India is the India I know best, although I lived there till the age of eight and have been back to visit many times. My father, Jatinder Nath Kapur, was an executive in the limestone quarries in Orissa and then an oil executive in the jungles of Assam in the '50s and early '60s. His stories of the British-style social life in these remote outposts, the tense relationships between executives and labor, the hierarchies between British and Indian professionals, of the whole aftermath of colonialism that formed his experiences also formed the India that lives in my imagination. My father knew firsthand the conflicting cultural forces that created modern India and I wish he were still here for me to interview on camera, so that his stories of India's recent history could be heard by others. My beloved father passed away on January 29th and I wish I had recorded his voice. I have all his stories down in writing, but there is something special in hearing the tale from the speaker's own mouth, in his inimitable style, for it is not only the story but the storyteller himself that recreates the past in an invaluable way. Our parents embody a culture in their way of speaking, their habits of thought, their mannerisms. Please take advantage of this site to record who they are and what they came from, it is a wonderful way of tying us to our past.