From Prague to Delhi we travelled across continents as I discovered life in its magnitude with the most incredible teacher anyone could have.
He was my father but also my pal, my guide, my mentor and my anchor. His arms were the one place I felt entirely safe. He loved me unconditionally. True we both had short fuses that resulted in angry words and banged doors, but minutes later a gentle knock at the slammed door made it all go away as he stood with a treat he had conjured that would wipe all the tears of hurt and rage. His unique way of asking forgiveness was food, a pêché mignon we shared as is amply proved by our escapades to restaurants that began when I was 5. He took me to Maxims in Paris for a three course meal serenaded by a violin. That was the first of many meals together in restaurants across the globe. But he was also the one who taught me to savour the simple of foods and eat with the simplest of people. A hot roti dipped in raw mustard oil with some salt was as titillating as a lobster or a bowl of caviar en tête à tête My greatest joy was when he fed me with his hands making that special bite. I must confess that I enjoyed those even as a gown up woman and a mom myself.
I took my first hesitant steps in life again clutching his hand and learned to walk alone with a confident stride knowing he was always just behind me in person or in spirit. He made sure I never fall. It was though his eyes that I discovered the world and he gently taught me how to look beyond the visible and see the essential. It is he who opened the dormant eyes of my heart and coloured my world with compassion and humanity. With him I discovered cities and countries and many other wonders but somehow everything was imbued with values and that 'je ne sais quoi' that made the most inconsequential place or object worth a king's ransom.
The 40 short years of this incredible journey had its difficult moments, most of them when I came into my own in my rebellious teens and we clashed. He wanted to keep me locked in his love and would have got me the moon had I asked for it and I wanted to break free and discover the street next door on my own. To the young teenager, the portly man was a far cry from all the long haired singers of the sixties, and a child of the sixties I was with frayed jeans and short skirts. I now smile with indulgence at the battailles royales we had as he frowned upon my attire and I held my on.
But the world without him may have meant freedom but everything seemed pale and faded, deprived of all the hues only he could put. It is only when I realised that and returned home as the prodigal child that I lived again.
Tatu was there at every moment of my existence and steered me through every peril and pitfall as I grew from child to woman. He made every hurt go away and every tear turn into a smile. He was the sunshine of my life. When he left he took my sunshine away. Life could only be a poor ersatz of what I lived with him. Only memories provide little slivers of light.
The real legacy he left me was not in the shape of things you can see and touch but in the most unexpected words of people that remember him, be it the woman who sold him vegetables and calls him 'the men with a hat', or his meat vendor who talks of him with gratitude for some legal work he had done or in the memories of a woman who was but a child when we lived in what was then known as Saigon.
To the world he was an Ambassador, a jurist, a man of letters, a connoisseur of wines and food, an orator, a humanist and above all a man as defined by Oriana Fallaci: kind to the weak, fierce to the arrogant, generous to those who love you and ruthless to those who ordered you around.
To me he is simply Tatu, the first man I fell in love with and still love with the same passion.
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