OF FATHERS AND DAUGHTERS....

 

So Father’s Day has come and gone. And with it a great many posts and pictures of fathers being appreciated, valued for the contributions that they had made in the lives of their families. I saw a lot of it this time. Definitely a lot more than in the recent past.

And clichéd as it sounds, here’s my two cents, or as we Indians put it, my two pice(spelling?) bit.

My father’s interactions, leave alone conversations, with us was minimal. I guess that was how it was. Back in the day. Gosh that makes me sound old, ancient even; a line I thought I would never be using…

But dads in my ‘era’ didn’t speak much and I think most of my friends and family would agree to that. His work being what it was kept him away from us most days of the year, sometimes months and it was left to my mother to keep us all in line. Which she did, still does, splendidly… J

There are two things I remember most vividly about my father though. His absolute horrendous style of cooking and the nightly prayer routine before dinner time.

He would love to experiment with the kitchen when he was home and more often than not, our plates would be piled with samples of his ‘cooking’. All of which of course we had to munch down. Whether we liked it or not. Not in most cases. Ultimately though, you had to finish whatever was on your plate.

He also made it a point to read the Bible to us every day before dinner whenever he was home and after that he would pray. Long and hard. Prayers that would often turn his steaming delicacies to cold, very debatable dishes. But still we had to eat.

Pray and eat. Or rather finish whatever and however much was on our plates.

So what is the point you ask? Sound advice for life now that I look back.

~ Pray first.
~ Finish what’s on your plate. Whether you like it or not.

 Or as I would like to put it,

~ Put God first.
~ And always finish the task that has been given to you, whether (many times) you may like it or not.

I must admit that I do not, have not always followed well in my father’s footsteps. More often than not, I have allowed the busy-ness of each day to crowd into and take away the time that belongs to God.

And I have also looked at the tasks, the daily chores that are my responsibility to lie incomplete, unfinished, many times resentful of what had been heaped on to my ‘plate’.

In that, I am a far cry, a faint shadow of what my father (and mother) lived and practised daily. My father, without a doubt, was not without his failings but in this aspect I fear I lag far behind him. I procrastinate, I whinge and complain and I seek to do things in my own strength and then complain some more because I cannot complete the task that has been mine to bring to a completion.

One last thing. One of the most striking images I have of my father (apart from him being in uniform), is of a bare back, burnt to a crisp. My father loved hunting and fishing, especially mountain river fishing in the Teesta and I remember one of the many sunny afternoons where he would come back home, his back riddled with sun burns.

It taught me that sometimes in life you just need to fish. Chill out. Relax. Enjoy the best and simple pleasures that a day can bring. Somewhere in the past few years, I think I have forgotten how to do that.

Just lie under the afternoon sky and bake. There are not too many days when we can do that.

And last but not the least. Why do I write like this? Because my father can no longer can. Read or comprehend since his mind is lost in the labyrinths of dementia.

In the phone calls that I make, through the echoes of transmitting waves I hear a man cry asking for his daughter. He forgets that I am grown now, married, with children. Settled in a city far from where he’s at.

“Really?” he asks. It is hard, incomprehensible even, for him to understand on the bad days. In his mind, I am still his little girl. Judie.

And that,I feel, is not such a bad thing after all.

Happy Father’s Day Papa.