Call him FATHER or DAD or DADDY or PA or POPS or your OLD MAN… But never call him a DEVIL!!!
Recently, I read a Marathi essay on the topic “Father”… It brought tears to my eyes. I had never read something so beautiful yet so obvious before. The essay is what inspired this post.
We have always heard of “mother” being the most influential character in a person’s life but rarely do we attach an emotional importance with a father.
How often do we forget that our father is just as important in our life as our mother?
We come across countless quotes, poems, articles, odes, tributes, written for a mother. But when it comes to writing something for a father, the words always fall a little short.
While we do celebrate “Father’s day” with a lot of enthusiasm, we always envision a father being a persona of support and strength. We never envision him as a deity of love as we do for a mother.
For us, our father is a machine. He is one who pays for our pocket-money, our schooling, for our clothes, trips, entertainment and anything else we have taken fancy of. He is the one who never falls ill, instead pays for our medicines and hospital bills if something happens to us.
He provides for us, works himself to death so that we live a comfortable life; yet we think he does not have the right to get angry when we come home late at night.
When we are kids, most of us (if not all), have great respect for our fathers. As we grow older and the moment we step into our teenage years, our father suddenly changes into a monster who does not have any right to pry into our private life.
Either that, or we make fun of him. We get embarrassed to call him our Dad in front of our friends. In our teenage years, for us, he suddenly becomes an old man, a cartoon; instead of the superman we imagined him to be when we were kids.
We hardly ever understand what kind of a man he his. Beside being our Dad, we associate no personality with him. We forget even he has a personal life. Even he was a kid at some point of his life, even he was a teenager, even he was wild and un-ruly.
We begin seeing a father as a cruel, Hitler-type individual who curbs our freedom and burdens us with tons of rules, if we do something which he does not like.
What we fail to see is, the hurt in his eyes to see us going over the wrong way. What we fail to understand is, he considers our wrong-doings as his own personal failures. He may act strict. But deep down, his heart contains a love that is so vast, that it becomes inexpressible.
And we still fail to see him as a human-being, because the tears that he sheds are enclosed in his heart, the sorrow that he experiences is never allowed to reach towards you, the hurt that troubles him, he keeps it to himself.
A mother can cry her heart out and you know how much she loves you. But, a father has too keep his disappointments bottled up because he knows, he represents the strength of a house. And you……you just never know, of what stuff, this man is made up of……
How many of us, remember the father’s day or our father’s birthday or any other important day of his life???
How many of us bring him gifts because we really “feel” for him and not because its a tradition???
How many of us even try to do something for him just for the sake of it and not because we have to ask some favor from him???
We easily understand the importance of a mother. For us, she is an epitome of pure love, immense care and the most understanding person in our life. We think, that the presence of a father in our life is indispensable; so we take him for granted.
But, in reality, we hardly ever understand his importance unless he goes away from us.
A person who has lost his/her father, really knows, what value this man had in our lives.
Simply because, it has always been the basic human tendency of appreciating the rare and ignoring the obvious.
A father is such an obvious element in our lives, that his sacrifices, his grief, his troubles, usually go unnoticed.
Most of times, we think, that what our father does for us, is his job, his duty, so there isn’t anything great about it. But, if someone puts us in our father’s shoes and let us handle a wild and unruly kid like us, we will know, with what tremendous patience and grace, this man handled us. And he never asked for anything in return.
He will never ask for respect, or love, or care, or obedience. His feelings for us will be unconditional.
He will just ask for a little trust, a little trust in what he is doing for us; so that one day we ourselves turn into good responsible parents.
And he will be proud of us anyways. Each of us won’t become a big scientist, or a great artist, or an excellent singer. But, how much ever, ordinary we are, we will always be extra-ordinary in his life.
Even the smallest of our achievements is like a dream come true for him. An ‘B+’ grade, a 2 minute part in the school play, the first time you tried your hand at cooking by baking a burnt cake, the consolation prize in the local singing contest;……..for a father, this is what his life is made of….. memories of his kid’s happiness.
A father is an epitome of patience.
He patiently waits for the day, when his kids will acknowledge his presence in their lives.
Yet he expects nothing.
He is as unconditional as ever, even if we love him back or not!
“A father is always making his baby into a little woman. And when she is a woman, he turns her back again.” -Enid Bagnold
For a girl, her father is usually her hero. He is someone she can look up to. She loves to be a “Daddy’s little girl” forever. She envisions him as her protector, someone who will shield her from all misfortunes and hardships. She knows the special bond that they share. She sees her father’s un-shed tears and hidden sorrows.
She looks up to her father and longs to find a life-partner who will be similar to her Dad, so that she knows, her kids get a good father.
For a father, his daughter is not only his precious little baby but also the pride of his life. She is someone, whom he knows, will never distance him from her life. She is someone who will trust him blindly. He appreciates the love she has for him, because he knows she can be his daughter as well as his son, when he wants so.
Her unquestionable faith in him gives him the strength to be a good father that he is.
Let us appreciate our father for what he has been to us.
For how much ever he opposes us or disapproves of our doings, he does so only because he truly loves us. Only because, he never wants us to go wrong but learn our lessons with dignity and be a responsible citizen of this world.
“A truly rich man is the one whose children run into his arms when his hands are empty.”
