My father believed in lists. My grandfather believed in principles. I have ADHD. This has made family gatherings difficult.

My grandfather used to say that a man should own only what he needs. My father took this seriously. He owned exactly what he needed, plus six cupboards full of things he might need one day.

I own things I forgot I bought. We are, in our own ways, very good at inheritance.

My grandfather left my father a distrust of money. My father left me a fear of wasting it. I left myself twelve subscriptions I cannot remember signing up for.

My grandfather was a communist. A real one. Not the recreational kind.

He believed property was theft, profit was exploitation, and anyone who owned more than one house had probably forgotten somebody else’s name.

He died owning one pair of shoes. I inherited them. They were brown, cracked and two sizes too small.

My father said this was typical of Baba.

“Typical of him how?”

“Everything had to be principled.”

My father was not a communist. He simply spent his entire life recovering from having been raised by one.

He saved. He planned. He compared prices. He kept bills. He kept receipts for things that no longer existed. He once kept a warranty card for a mixer grinder for eleven years. The mixer grinder had died in 2004. The warranty had expired in 2002. The card survived.

My father said: “You never know.”

I heard those words thousands of times. You never know. It was his answer to everything.

Why keep this? You never know.

Why not spend it? You never know.

Why are you worrying? You never know.

Why haven’t you booked the tickets? You never know.

Why don’t you start the business? You never know.

He believed the future was a room full of disasters waiting for someone sufficiently irresponsible to leave the door open.

I was diagnosed with ADHD at thirty-four. My father was sixty-eight.

I told him. He said: “Everyone gets distracted.”

I said: “Not like this.”

He said: “You need discipline.”

I said: “I have discipline.”

He looked at the unopened electricity bill on the table.

“Clearly.”

My grandfather had a system for everything. My father inherited the system. I inherited the feeling that I was constantly failing it.

There were rules. Bills first. Work before pleasure. Save before spending. Finish what you start.

Don’t buy things you don’t need. Don’t make decisions when you’re emotional. Don’t leave things until tomorrow.

Don’t forget. Don’t forget. Don’t forget.

2. I forgot. I forgot birthdays. Passwords. Appointments. Where I put my wallet. Why I walked into the kitchen. Why I opened the refrigerator. What I was supposed to buy at the supermarket.

Once, I spent twenty minutes looking for my phone while speaking on it. My father would have found this funny if it hadn’t been happening to him.

Instead he said: “You don’t take anything seriously.”

I did. That was the problem. I took everything seriously. Just not in the order it arrived.

I understood generational wealth when my college friend Rohan got a car. His father gave it to him. Not lent. Not co-signed. Gave.

It was a second-hand Maruti.

Rohan handed me the keys. “Take it.”
“I don’t know how to drive.”
“Then learn.”
People with money have a strange relationship with verbs.
They say things like: Buy. Start. Move. Try. Learn.
As though each were a thing you could simply decide to do.

I went home and told my father: “Rohan’s father bought him a car.”

My father nodded.
“Good for him.”

“He didn’t buy it. His father did.”

Another nod.

“Good for him.”

3. “Don’t you think that’s unfair?”
My father looked at me.

“Life is unfair.”
He said it without bitterness.

That annoyed me. I wanted him to agree. I wanted a witness. Someone to confirm that I had been born halfway through a race and given the wrong shoes.

Instead he opened the newspaper.

I have spent twenty years proving he was right. When my grandfather died, we had an inheritance meeting. This was ambitious. We had almost nothing.

A steel trunk. A Godrej cupboard. An old harmonium. A pressure cooker. Twelve silver spoons. Eleven, actually. Nobody knew where the twelfth had gone. Three shelves of communist literature. A broken transistor. Some photographs. A bank passbook showing ₹8,417.

My uncle wanted the harmonium. My aunt wanted the pressure cooker. My mother wanted the photographs. I wanted the passbook. Not the money. The passbook. I wanted evidence that my family had once possessed something that could be measured. I lost it within six months. I found it three years later inside a book I had never read.

This was considered by everyone to be a joke.

It was. I was also offended.

The will arrived six months after the funeral. Four pages. The first distributed objects. The second distributed debts. The third contained instructions about the funeral.

The fourth began: I leave my children the consequences of my decisions.

My uncle laughed.

“Very Baba.”

4. Underneath: They may distribute these among themselves as they see fit.

Then:

To my eldest son:
Fear of losing money.

To my youngest:
Fear of appearing unsuccessful.

To my daughter:
The belief that wanting more makes her selfish.

Then my name. I leaned forward.

To my grandson Anirban:
Nothing.

Everyone laughed. I laughed too. A communist had finally managed to die without leaving me anything.

That evening, I photographed the page. I meant to send it to my wife. I sent it to my dentist.
My dentist replied: Okay.
I never went back.

There was another sheet folded inside the will. I found it months

later. It said: Anirban will complain that I left him nothing.

5. Below:
He will be correct.

Then:
But he will mistake what he was not given for what he was given.

I read it again.

Below that:
He has been given a mind that refuses to travel in straight lines.

I stopped. The next sentence was crossed out.

Underneath it:
I do not know whether this will make his life harder or make him notice things the rest of us miss.

And then:
Perhaps both.

I sat very still.
For years, I had thought my grandfather had left me nothing. He had left me one thing. A sentence he wasn’t sure how to finish.

My father had migraines. So did my grandfather. Three generations of men who could not look at sunlight without negotiating with God. The family treated it as our one successful genetic investment.

6. My father kept his medicine in the second drawer. Two strips. One for emergencies. One for emergencies while travelling to an emergency.

My migraines began when I was thirteen. Mine were less disciplined. They arrived during classes. Exams. Meetings. At weddings. On flights. Once during a job interview.

My brain had always had terrible timing. The migraine was almost comforting. At least one thing in my head obeyed inheritance.

My father died when I was thirty-nine. After the funeral, I found his notebooks.

He had written everything down. Expenses. School fees. Medical bills. Repairs. Things to remember. Things not to forget. Things that might happen. Things that probably wouldn’t.

On one page:
Could have bought the house in 1983.

Below:
Should have.

Another:
Could have taken Dubai posting.

Below:
Didn’t want children growing up without me.

Another:
Could have started consultancy.

7. Below:
Too risky.

Another:
Could have bought shares.

Below:
Father said speculation is immoral.

I sat on the floor.

My father had spent his life believing that caution was the opposite of regret. I had spent mine discovering that they could be the same thing. His problem was that he was always preparing for tomorrow. Mine was that tomorrow occasionally arrived while I was looking for my keys.

Then I found the land.

My grandfather had owned a small parcel outside the city. He sold it in 1978. I calculated what it would be worth today. Then calculated again. Then checked the number with three websites. Then forgot what I had opened the websites for.

I called my mother.

“He owned land.”

“Yes.”
“He sold it.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”

8. “He needed money.”
“For what?”
“A factory worker’s daughter needed surgery.”

I said nothing.

The perfect family tragedy had dissolved into an ordinary human decision. My grandfather had traded an asset for a child’s life. He had also destroyed my imaginary fortune. Both things were true.

I found his notebook.

Sold land. Girl operated. Good decision.

Then, lower down:
Bad investment.

I laughed. Then I cried.

Then, because I have ADHD, I noticed a stain on the page and spent the next ten minutes wondering what had caused it.

That, too, somehow, felt inherited.

My wife once told me I had inherited my father’s anxiety. I said anxiety wasn’t

inherited. She said: “No. His explanation was.”

I didn’t understand.

9. She pointed at me.

“You keep doing what he did.”
“I don’t.”
“You don’t save money because you’re afraid of losing it.”
“That’s different.”
“You don’t spend it because you’re afraid you’ll need it.”
“That’s different.”
“You don’t finish things because you’re afraid they’ll fail.”
“That’s my ADHD.”

She looked at me.

I hated her for being quiet.

Because sometimes silence is just another way of refusing to give you an argument you can win.

The first time my son asked for something expensive, I said no.
He wanted a cricket bat. It cost ₹2,400.

“Why?”
“Because you don’t need it.”
“I like it.”
“That’s not a reason.”

He looked at me.

10. “Why?”

I opened my mouth. I could hear my father. “You never know.” I could hear my grandfather. “Wanting more makes you selfish.” I could hear myself. “People like us can’t afford that.”

Three generations. Three sentences. One room.

My son was waiting.

I bought the bat. He smiled. Then he asked if we could get the more expensive one.

I laughed.
“Absolutely not.”
He laughed too.

It felt like the first negotiation in our family that hadn’t been conducted by a dead man.

The house came to me two years later. My father’s house. It had finally become worth enough to qualify as generational wealth. The phrase I had spent half my life using as an accusation had arrived at my door in the form of a property document.

I signed.

Lost the pen. Found it in my pocket. Signed again.

My mother cried. My cousins calculated. I calculated too. Then stopped. For the first time, I owned something because someone before me had owned it.

11. I walked through the rooms. The Godrej cupboard. The old shelves. The empty wall where my father’s calendar had hung. The second drawer. The medicine. The shoes.
I put my grandfather’s shoes on. Still too small. I stood there anyway.

My son came into the room.
“Are we rich?”
“No.”
He looked around.
“Then what is this?”

I thought about the house. The land. The migraine. The notebooks. The will. The car I never learned to drive. The things my father saved. The things my grandfather refused.The things I had started and abandoned. The things I had wanted and explained away.

“What do I inherit?” my son asked.
I looked at him.

For once, I didn’t have an answer prepared. I almost told him about the house.

Instead I said: “You get to decide.”
He frowned.
“Decide what?”
I smiled.
“Everything.”
He shrugged. Then he ran outside.

I stood alone. My head began to hurt. The old pressure behind the eye. The tightening. The familiar darkness approaching. I opened the second drawer. My father’s medicine

12. was still there. I took out a tablet. Held it between my fingers. For a moment I wondered whether taking it was another form of inheritance.

Then I laughed.

Of course it was. So was refusing it. So was wondering. So was making a philosophy out of a headache.

I swallowed the tablet.

Outside, my son was shouting at someone. Probably asking for something.

Probably something I would think was too expensive. Probably something he didn’t need.

I listened.

Then I heard myself say:
“Go ask your mother.”

It was the safest sentence I could think of. Which was how I knew it was the one my father would have said.

And for the first time, I decided not to.