Happy Father's Day!

Ask my kids to describe ‘father’, and the answer that you’d get would be something like this:

The father is a person who is mostly away, supposedly working at a place called office. While at home, he is mostly dormant and could be found lying on the lower bunk in the other bedroom. During the last KeYoberfest, he gifted us a bunk bed with the ulterior intention of getting us banished from the Master Bedroom, but in turn got himself banished! Ha ha ha! What a loser. Our father doesn’t snore; he roars. If he is not sleeping, one can find him on the computer playing games or socialising on FB. He is a mood spoiler, for as soon as he returns from work, he fiddles with the TV remote and changes channel to the boring news or cricket. He is also the person who drives us around the city and, using a plastic card pays for all the stuff that we shop. He does play football or basketball with us for some time during the weekends, but fakes to get tired and dozes off on the sofa in the living room. If he is awake, and roaming around the house, one should be vigilant and should constantly monitor his position, for one, you might have to jump in and rescue our mother from whom he might try steal a hug and a kiss, which rightfully belongs to us or even to vamoose away from that vicinity as he dissipates one of his slimy greasy ones. He is most active and animated during Saturday evenings, when he has this usual five hour skype chat with his best friend from across the globe, during which he downs a couple of drinks and display’s to them on camera what our mother has cooked. He then eats his food sitting in front of the computer looking into the webcam and intermittently commenting “Wow, it is tasty…. Wow, it is tasty”.

Ask them to describe ‘mother’ and they’d give you enough feed to write a 1000 page book.

For a child, the mother is everything, starting from bearing them in her tummy to giving them birth to feeding them from her breasts and to attending to their daily needs as they grow up, a mother is always around joined to the child with an imaginary umbilical cord.  She takes them to the park every day, plays with them, cleans their potty and helps them bathe, patiently tutor’s them through their daily homework and bakes their favourite cookies and cakes, whatever hour of the day it may be. A mother understands the kid best. I am sure, if my two and half year old son came to me and asked “vava won oop-oop-oop ba-na-na” I would have no clue of what he is saying, whilst his mother would instantly decipher that the kid wants to eat ‘Upma & Banana’ and although he’d not mentioned it, she’d know that the lad wants sugar too along with it.

Yes, a mother is a kid’s everything, and irrespective of whatever he thinks about himself, a father is just someone who is there somewhere in the background and more often than not, he is a pain in the ass. That’s how kids think, and that’s a fact.

The toddlers hate him because this man is their biggest enemy. He tries getting cosy with their mom and more often than not, fails. Ha ha ha again. Loser! He is a jealous guy and therefore hates kids in general. He slaps their bum and tosses them up in the air trying to intimidate and scare them. The little ones retaliate by defecating on his office bag, peeing on his favourite rocking chair, chewing on his original blackberry leather case and stashing away half eaten pazham poris and fruits in his favourite handmade leather shoes.

As the kids grow up, this man devices new ways to punish them and vent out his vengeance. He cuts allowances and imposes curfew on them resorting to silly excuses stating that he‘d spotted them wasting all the allowance money treating samosas and pani-puri to some silly girls at that unclean kiosk and that, he had found them loitering next to a paan-beedi shop outside that cinema which screened adult movies and then gets angry and deducts further when you question him back as to what exactly was he doing outside that cinema in the first place?

He spoils your meticulously planned outing with friends to watch the latest bollywood flick with his program to visit the planetarium. As you grow adolescent, all that you want to do is to be left alone with your GF in your own private and cosy room so that you can peacefully revise your subjects, but he forcefully drags you on boring visits to his factory shop floor and tries to teach you how a steam loco or a diesel generator works.

A father is also the person who unnecessarily meddles with the kid’s wardrobe and gets fussy if the kid deliberately tears up his jeans at the knees, wears motif bands and faded T shirts bearing pictures or symbols of his favourite rock band. He is always out of fashion and thinks that the only best coiffure that suits a boy is the crew cut.

As the kid grows, the father gets more unpopular, firstly when the lad demands for a motorbike on his sixteenth birthday and when he is denied on the simple pretense that the he has not come of age to own such a thing. Later, although he eventually buys him a bike after a couple of years, he messes up the lad’s life with unnecessary questions like “Where were you the whole night?”, “What have you planned to do with your life?”, “What profession would you like to take up?” and instructing “Now that you are dating, find a job, earn a living and get married” and all the other blah blah blah. Anyways, irrespective of how it reads in print, what the dad intends to say is “This is my house and my rules prevail. If you can’t follow them, get out of my house and fend for your own?”

Mother’s are so cool, they never question the kid. If the kid is stuck in rain, the dad would reprimand him for multiple reasons, firstly for not carrying along an umbrella, secondly for getting wet and then thirdly for spoiling his expensive shoes; a mother would just welcome her kid into her warm embrace, towel him up and curse the clouds for raining on that odd day when her son forgets to carry an umbrella. If ever there was a contest of popularity between parents, I am sure the mothers would win hands down.

Ask any kid, what he thinks about his dad, and most of them would, behind him, in a whispering voice say “Oh! That fussy old fashioned man, he is Hitler’s reincarnation” ask a man and he’d say, “My dad is the world’s greatest dad. He is my hero”

Isn’t it funny that you don’t realize how great a man your own dad is unless you have your own kids and get into the fuss of raising them as responsible social beings?

Suddenly you realize that:

all his life your old man has had only three pairs of shirts and two pairs of trousers, which he used to wear alternatively to work till it faded beyond all recognition and disintegrated while washing, while your mother had a vault full of jewellery and two cupboards full of silk saris from all over India and then for you he got the best cloths, whatever you asked for, which you eventually tore and mutilated to look trendy.

he had only one pair of sweater and a monkey cap, whilst you got new jackets every year and your mother’s suitcase under the bed was full of furred garments and shawls made out of exotic pashmina and embroidered with intricate needlework.

while at home, he was always in that ‘pingg chex’ lungi and that banyan you despised as ‘very country and malluafied’ and that how much you hate yourself now for passing on him that snide look as he sat there in the living room reading his newspaper as you got your trendy friends home.

little did you realize then, that all your hard rock music cassettes, that guitar which you hardly practiced on, those themed birthday parties and expensive gifts to your girlfriends were all funded by this country mallu dad, who sat there reading the newspaper in his ‘pingg mallu lungi’

And finally you realize that, if ever there was a contest of popularity between parents, the dad would lose, not because he wasn’t as good as your mom, but because he would have himself wanted his wife to win. That is what a true father is; He epitomises sacrifice. He is someone, who through his own unique means and style teaches his kids how to live life. Fathers are powerhouses of knowledge and wisdom.

A dad is like that three storied Library building in my alma mater, which had all the best books and which I must confess, I hardly visited. When it was freely available, I didn’t borrow any books, and when I started working, I ran helter skelter from one end to the other of the city checking out all the book stores looking for that one book. I am sure, most of my readers would relate to this. As for me, I didn’t have the library either, as my dad was mostly away working in the KSA.

Although my dad was mostly away, there are innumerable wonderful things that he did for me, some which I capitalized on and the others which I wasted away. Anyways, all of them I’ll never forget, and if I went on to list them all I would end up writing a book. These are just a few, which I can fit in here:

From a very young age I used to write letters to my dad and through his replies he used to encourage and mentor me a lot on my writing skills and it is solely his mentoring and genes that reflect through my pen now.

During his first visit to my college hostel, he got me a thick mattress, thicker than what would’ve been all of my roomies mattresses put together. He ensured that I had more than a good night’s sleep for all the four years that I was there.

In one of my letters I had wrote to him that I was taking part in an intra-collegiate football tournament through a team called ‘Bloody Vampires’ Although our participation was a mere joke and we lost all our matches miserably, he followed up our performance keenly through his letters and finally, through a friend of his, sent me a pair of original adidas football shoes, something that even my college team captain did not have then. He did the best he could, from a place some 3,500kms across the Arabian Sea. I was still a kid, and I failed him by not using it and letting our then college football captain to hijack my boots. My dad was kind. He forgave me.

When I was in the final year at college, he doubled my monthly allowance, just so that I could go around, visit places and enhance myself. Instead, I spent most of it to make phone calls to the Ladies Hostel, organize p* movie nights, buy booze and sleazy adult magazines. I am sure, if he read this blog post today, he’d be upset at me for breaking his trust, but being a great dad, he’d still forgive me.

My Daddy’s vacation breaks used to be around Christmas and every year as he visited, we made it a point to visit our hometown, Kannur. He is the eldest in his extended family and I must mention here, that he is a true dad, not only to me, but to all his siblings and cousins and their kids too. My daddy was not a rich dad, but whenever he visited, he made it a point that he brought gifts for one and all in his extended family. One of his trademark gifts was the exact same shirt and pant pieces that he got for all the kids including me. Come Christmas and we’d all be lined up walking to the CSI Church dressed in uniform. Whilst everyone, including I joked and made fun of his choice to gift the exact same cloth pieces to everyone, we kids failed to see his love and his effort to unite the family hidden behind that gift.  I think that’s how we are when we are immature and childish; we just don’t learn the lesson. I hope that like me, my cousins too realize that sooner than later and at least acknowledge it. My dad is indeed a great dad. Thanks Daddy for all the teachings and the many more to come.

My life is made up of innumerable such experiences gained from my dad and through the many father figures that have been part of my life since my childhood. Some taught me my job, whilst someone else taught me how to survive and excel in a corporate environment.

One such person, who is very close to my heart and whose contribution I will be ever indebted to, is my maternal uncle. I fondly call him ‘Maaman’ and I still remember the days that he took off from work, firstly to buy me a BSA SLR bicycle and then for that all important engineering admission interviews, which eventually landed me at the CREC and which by far was the first instance that changed my life. Later, while I was doing my Masters at CEPT, he fixed me up for summer training with the Indian Oil Corporation’s Project Department, which officially launched my career into Project Management. If it was left to me, I would’ve ended up doing some training with a local builder and by now would’ve been just wasting my life building some nondescript single digit storied buildings in and around Baroda. Thanks Maaman for saving my life.

And while writing a blog on fathers, how could I ever not include my father-in-law and Tara’s Pappa, who guided me through my initial days in the Middle East and watching whom I have learnt some of the best lessons on parenting. Pappa left us for heavenly abode on 19^th July 2007 and continues to guide me and protect our family from all evil. We are blessed to have your graceful shield around us, thanks Pappa. 

Last but not the least, how could I ever forget the guy on whose little shoulders my mother unofficially put the burden of my guardianship after just sharing with him a brief chat of ten odd minutes; my namesake, and my first ever roomie, who, with time grew into a guide and best friend for life. Jacob ‘Jee’ Varghese aka Negu is a father figure not only to me, but to all the CNCians.

He was also the guy who whilst in the final year grew a beard and donned an ochre mundu, which some mates thought he, did symbolically equating the fourth and final year of college life to that of the Sanyasa Ashrama – the fourth and final stage of human life as per the Hindu way of life. One fine day Jee shaved off his beard and disrobed himself off that ochre mundu. I think that was the day when he found his misplaced kit containing his four year old Godrej Shaving Round and the Arial sachet, after which I am sure he must’ve shaved off and eventually put the mundu for washing for first time, which the powerful detergent disintegrated into tatters trying to pull off the dirt.

Jokes apart, he has been a great friend and continues to be my source of weekly dose of enlightenment, entertainment and what not. It’s true, ‘You don’t have to read a book or have to go through the drudgery called life to learn all the right lessons, if you have a good friend who, with you shares all his learnings’ Thank you Jee and Happy Birthday to you today.

This one is dedicated to all the dads. Have a Happy Father’s Day. Enjoy!

Well, just another excuse for the mallu dad to down a couple of drinks! Ahh!!