My father is passionate and curious about many things, newspaper, talking to random strangers and travelling count more than most others. When I was a kid, we had quite a few family vacations to many parts of India, mostly North India (plans to visit other places got tragically cancelled for reasons beyond our control). As kids, my brother and I were mostly happy to get multiple photo--ops at beautiful places during our summer vacations. But I now realise how much his passions have made us into better, more content people.
I remember when my brother hadn't even joined a school and I had just started my schooling, Papa was posted elsewhere and used to visit us only on Sundays. We used to grab his fingers early in the morning and walk to the newspaper stall half a kilometre away. There, he would spend at least an hour browsing through the numerous newspapers and magazines. Then he would buy one or two. In the meantime, we glanced through the Nandans, Champaks, Wisdoms and Chacha Chaudhary-s. Then we would walk back home, and bro often bruised his knees. Don't know why his eyes were on the sky while walking! On holidays, racing to pick the paper from the doorstep early morning before Dadu or Papa could take it was a grand ritual. As a kid, I remember watching regional movies with subtitles on DD1 on Sunday afternoons with my family. Whenever Mile Sur Mera Tumhara came up, Papa made sure I was able to recognize the different musical instruments, the different classical musicians, singers, dances, languages and regions as well, not just the movie stars! It was a shame to not being able to distinguish between Kerala and Tamil Nadu, or Telugu and Malayalam and which language belongs to which state. My GK scores were always good at school, and to Mr absolute horror, when I grew up, I discovered most people proudly term all South Indians as Madrasis😱😮. In my home, it was an unpardonable sin😅😂!
The family vacations were planned months in advance. The relevant editions of Sarita were carefully used by Papa to shortlist places to be visited and the places of interest within the tourist place that needed to be seen. After wide consultations he had zeroed in on a Yashica camera. We always complained that two reels of film were way too insufficient for the photos that we wanted to click. And we waited with bated breath after each trip for a couple of weeks till he got the films developed by the best studio in town. Recently when I visited Amritsar with my parents, he insisted on taking a picture of all of us at almost every monument!
I have grown up among HT, Editions of Yojana, Kurukshetra, Economic Survey and Pratiyogita Darpan. The India Today college rankings edition was a must have. When my peers had parents saving for their marriages or college donations, my father wanted us to have the best of education purely on merit. When I was disappointed with my results vis a vis my aspirations, he always believed hard work pays for sure in the long run, despite sometimes getting much more worried. He wanted and still wants me to learn, earn and grow. In the place where I come from, that is a bold decision. For I have seen my peers in engineering earning their degrees just for the sake of having it. I have heard guys and men, friends and colleagues, much better off financially, wanting their daughters and sisters to finish their education and having dreams of marrying them to a suitable boy. Nothing wrong with that, only my father dreamt much beyond that, despite keeping expectations low. Financial independence, married or otherwise, was hardwired into our brains growing up. So was taking independent, well thought decisions and commitments. My Mom says my father had planned that he would send us to the school we went to even before he got married! Meaningful education is close to his heart :), and so is growth. And despite me complaining that his standards are too difficult to cope up with, I think nothing else could give me my perspective that I deeply cherish. I consider him to be a visionary for giving us the exposure that he did and the lessons of intellectual honesty, value of (even if unrecognised) hard work, genuine interest in whatever is happening around in the world, and standing up for our values, no matter how difficult it gets!
My father never took a promotion till we finished our schooling. Still, he always studied for the promotion tests and kept abreast of everything, and worked overtime to make up whatever was possible without a promotion. He knows more about any exam or college or score we're shooting for, than us. I have seen my peers fool their parents and lie to them about scores and stuff with so much jest 😉😂. But, it is impossible to fool him 😎! His research interests in different career options and random conversations with strangers in those streams stretch far beyond an adolescent's capacity to lie 🤗😅 ("Baap Baap hota hai or beta beta" was probably tailor made for him). He is just keenly observant and smiling when people share with him their misadventures of life. And those observations are communicated to us as precautions for the future!
I have often accused him, sometimes angrily and at other times playfully, that his standards are way too lofty and impractical. But, the truth is, whatever realism, stubbornness and perspective on life I have had, I owe much of it to him. Often, that amounts to nothing more than that feeling of "meh" when people go gaga on their selfies at the Taj Mahal or Hawa Mahal or Sun Temple while I think "ye to Papa me bachpan me hi dikha dia tha😂😏". But more often, it has made to do just what I want by being totally deaf to unconstructive criticism and if need be, then being dumb as well 😁
My brother and i have undergone tons of pressure in living upto his standards. And we've finally made our peace with it, and with our capabilities and failings. But our lives' trajectories have much to thank him for.
He has spent continuous sleepless nights guarding us as kids even as we slept in AC train compartments during our summer vacation tours, to protect us from being lifted/kidnapped, even outside Bihar. He didn't give us too many toys and stuff, but a good book was just a phonecall away. Unlike most fathers who gladly save for their daughters' marriage over education, he was more than eager for me to start earning soon and not need him for money. And love of news now runs in the family genes, for more even my mother follows national news with operatic regularity! Sure he's had his own tantrums and quirks, but he is the fiercest, most honest and grounding critic that one can have. Thanks to that, peer pressure and need to fit in has never been much of a problem, and any delusion goes through umpteen reality checks ad nauseum.
We used to get homeworks in kindergarten to write essays on Mother and Father. I think that's too early to write it. My Yes Plus teacher often quotes some famous man, probably Churchill, who said that when he was 16 years old, he thought his father was the most foolish man in the world, but when he turned 25, he was surprised to realize that his father was much smarter than he had thought! He couldn't have been truer.
I remember when my brother hadn't even joined a school and I had just started my schooling, Papa was posted elsewhere and used to visit us only on Sundays. We used to grab his fingers early in the morning and walk to the newspaper stall half a kilometre away. There, he would spend at least an hour browsing through the numerous newspapers and magazines. Then he would buy one or two. In the meantime, we glanced through the Nandans, Champaks, Wisdoms and Chacha Chaudhary-s. Then we would walk back home, and bro often bruised his knees. Don't know why his eyes were on the sky while walking! On holidays, racing to pick the paper from the doorstep early morning before Dadu or Papa could take it was a grand ritual. As a kid, I remember watching regional movies with subtitles on DD1 on Sunday afternoons with my family. Whenever Mile Sur Mera Tumhara came up, Papa made sure I was able to recognize the different musical instruments, the different classical musicians, singers, dances, languages and regions as well, not just the movie stars! It was a shame to not being able to distinguish between Kerala and Tamil Nadu, or Telugu and Malayalam and which language belongs to which state. My GK scores were always good at school, and to Mr absolute horror, when I grew up, I discovered most people proudly term all South Indians as Madrasis😱😮. In my home, it was an unpardonable sin😅😂!
The family vacations were planned months in advance. The relevant editions of Sarita were carefully used by Papa to shortlist places to be visited and the places of interest within the tourist place that needed to be seen. After wide consultations he had zeroed in on a Yashica camera. We always complained that two reels of film were way too insufficient for the photos that we wanted to click. And we waited with bated breath after each trip for a couple of weeks till he got the films developed by the best studio in town. Recently when I visited Amritsar with my parents, he insisted on taking a picture of all of us at almost every monument!
I have grown up among HT, Editions of Yojana, Kurukshetra, Economic Survey and Pratiyogita Darpan. The India Today college rankings edition was a must have. When my peers had parents saving for their marriages or college donations, my father wanted us to have the best of education purely on merit. When I was disappointed with my results vis a vis my aspirations, he always believed hard work pays for sure in the long run, despite sometimes getting much more worried. He wanted and still wants me to learn, earn and grow. In the place where I come from, that is a bold decision. For I have seen my peers in engineering earning their degrees just for the sake of having it. I have heard guys and men, friends and colleagues, much better off financially, wanting their daughters and sisters to finish their education and having dreams of marrying them to a suitable boy. Nothing wrong with that, only my father dreamt much beyond that, despite keeping expectations low. Financial independence, married or otherwise, was hardwired into our brains growing up. So was taking independent, well thought decisions and commitments. My Mom says my father had planned that he would send us to the school we went to even before he got married! Meaningful education is close to his heart :), and so is growth. And despite me complaining that his standards are too difficult to cope up with, I think nothing else could give me my perspective that I deeply cherish. I consider him to be a visionary for giving us the exposure that he did and the lessons of intellectual honesty, value of (even if unrecognised) hard work, genuine interest in whatever is happening around in the world, and standing up for our values, no matter how difficult it gets!
My father never took a promotion till we finished our schooling. Still, he always studied for the promotion tests and kept abreast of everything, and worked overtime to make up whatever was possible without a promotion. He knows more about any exam or college or score we're shooting for, than us. I have seen my peers fool their parents and lie to them about scores and stuff with so much jest 😉😂. But, it is impossible to fool him 😎! His research interests in different career options and random conversations with strangers in those streams stretch far beyond an adolescent's capacity to lie 🤗😅 ("Baap Baap hota hai or beta beta" was probably tailor made for him). He is just keenly observant and smiling when people share with him their misadventures of life. And those observations are communicated to us as precautions for the future!
I have often accused him, sometimes angrily and at other times playfully, that his standards are way too lofty and impractical. But, the truth is, whatever realism, stubbornness and perspective on life I have had, I owe much of it to him. Often, that amounts to nothing more than that feeling of "meh" when people go gaga on their selfies at the Taj Mahal or Hawa Mahal or Sun Temple while I think "ye to Papa me bachpan me hi dikha dia tha😂😏". But more often, it has made to do just what I want by being totally deaf to unconstructive criticism and if need be, then being dumb as well 😁
My brother and i have undergone tons of pressure in living upto his standards. And we've finally made our peace with it, and with our capabilities and failings. But our lives' trajectories have much to thank him for.
He has spent continuous sleepless nights guarding us as kids even as we slept in AC train compartments during our summer vacation tours, to protect us from being lifted/kidnapped, even outside Bihar. He didn't give us too many toys and stuff, but a good book was just a phonecall away. Unlike most fathers who gladly save for their daughters' marriage over education, he was more than eager for me to start earning soon and not need him for money. And love of news now runs in the family genes, for more even my mother follows national news with operatic regularity! Sure he's had his own tantrums and quirks, but he is the fiercest, most honest and grounding critic that one can have. Thanks to that, peer pressure and need to fit in has never been much of a problem, and any delusion goes through umpteen reality checks ad nauseum.
We used to get homeworks in kindergarten to write essays on Mother and Father. I think that's too early to write it. My Yes Plus teacher often quotes some famous man, probably Churchill, who said that when he was 16 years old, he thought his father was the most foolish man in the world, but when he turned 25, he was surprised to realize that his father was much smarter than he had thought! He couldn't have been truer.
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