Disclaimer: My dad was not a millionaire. He was not famous. He was not a philanthropist. He was not perfect. Neither were his kids. He is just simply ‘My dad’!
I am writing this on Father’s day of 2021. My dad would have turned 85 yesterday if he had not passed away last year. I guess sometimes we realize a lot about a person after they have left us rather than when they are with us. So the past year has been spent a lot on reflecting my dad’s life, reminiscing the ways he has influenced my life positively. His nuggets of wisdom and practical approach to life has and is helping me to celebrate life through the storms and victories as they hurl at you! For Fathers out there, both new and experienced, you might find some savvy tips to raise your children, despite the fact that my brother and I didn’t completely turn out to be the ‘picture perfect’ children that our dad might have imagined us to become! If you are still feeling brave, read on…..
LIFE LESSON 1: THAT THAT DAY, THAT THAT WORK
One of the parents during a 3rd grade parent-teachers meeting asked my dad “How does your daughter get 1st rank and ace the class?” Well this was the answer he gave that curious lady, ‘I ask her to do that that day, that that work’. I know though it sounds rhyming it is not all that great English grammatically. But it works practically even if you give it a 70% effort! I’ve tried to follow this golden rule all the way to my doctoral degrees and later on as a business entrepreneur and hope someday to take it to a 100% efficiency. I am still perfecting the art of completing my tasks and to do lists that very day it was assigned. Still working on it …..
LIFE LESSON 2: DO IT AFRAID BUT GIVE IT YOUR BEST SHOT!
WHAT IS FEAR? This was the title of the English Prose lesson which daddy taught me under the shade of a coconut tree which stood in front of my home. I don’t remember if it was 1st or 2nd grade but it was sort of my first memories of dad personal tutoring me. What started in primary school as a prose lesson, infused this practical lesson of doing things even when you are afraid of them. Not only doing them but doing them to the best of your ability. Sort of like giving it your best shot even though you are trembling inside. Despite all this pep talk from dad, I used to feel inadequate and petrified before exams in school. “Go give it your best shot. Doesn’t matter if you fail! (Ah, what a relief to just hear those words!) All that matters is that your gave it your best. Don’t worry about the results”, was the specific advice he gave me when I woke up late one morning on the Physics exam day, not having revised anything of what I have been studying every day. I luckily did not fail that day as I expected but surprised both my dad and myself with a 90% in a mid-term physics exam in 9th grade. Well, Lesson No. 1 actually helped in this success story.
LIFE LESSON 3: SPIC & SPAN
Who would wake up at 4 am to dust off shelves and clean the kitchen counter? My dad did! With a little multicolored feathery duster in hand he would go around the house dusting and happily cleaning and wiping the vases and shelves in the house. Though we kids were deep in sleep my mom wasn’t very happy with the noise and especially the dust that she was allergic to. I vaguely remember her pulling the bedsheets over her head with a grudging murmur and a mumbling that definitely didn’t sound like she was thankful for all the cleaning that was getting done even before she woke up! Well, it didn’t stop my dad …… he wanted the house and the environment around the house including the road to be clean and neat. When he cooks you will hardly find the peeled onion skins or unwanted parts of the veggies on the counter top because he cleans as he cuts. I would always argue if we can clean at the end when the entire cooking is done. Oh no! That was a no, no! It has be neat and tidy in case someone enters the kitchen while he was cooking was his argument.
LIFE LESSON 4: DIGNITY OF LABOR
Even as a medical student before I scooted off to college, I had to go out to sweep the veranda and street outside the gate. ‘Dignity of Labor’ he would call it after some American President’s moral. If I didn’t sweep, he would do it, though in those times it was belittling for a man to sweep outdoors. Sometimes I had to deliver some of the goods for his business to local vendors in my bicycle before I hit the school, all dressed in uniform way ahead of school time. Though I did not particularly like running errands before school, the glee on his face when I came back to report that the task was accomplished was worth it.
LIFE LESSON 5: PLAN FOR ADVERSITY PRIOR TO ONE
He bought be a small motorized 2 wheeler when I was in medschool. When it was given to me it came with the following mechanical training. I had to know not only how to just ride the bike but know the mechanics of how it worked. I took a practical training on cleaning the carborater by the blowing the dust, soaking it in petrol, lighting it on fire and then fitting it back in before I kick started the engine if it didnt start. Though I didn’t feel interested in the session, I should confess it came in handy a couple of times when I was stranded on the road with no mechanic nearby. He even imagined that I would be sleepy driving this moped when I was returning after my night duties in the wee hours on the beach road and advised me to pull over to the side of road, get some water from the nearby tea shop, wash my face and then when I am fully awake to get back on for the ride home. Unbelievable! If any guy was troubling me on the road or following me in his bike, he advised me to call the nearest stranger loudly as possible “Uncle, how are you” and pretend I know that stranger. Didn’t think much of it but it worked the only time I was in troubled by a guy on a lonely road.
LIFE LESSON 6: FREEDOM WITH ACCOUNTABILITY
I knew I could take independent decisions even as a teenager but I was always accountable for my actions to dad. I knew that if I wanted to go with my friends to the beach after college I could go and dad would understand. I wasn’t afraid to do things without dad’s permission but I had in inbred in me to know my limits. I always knew the line which I could not cross without daddy being cross. I am still grateful for all the liberty and freedom, though it came with strings attached. A sense of independence yet dependence subconsciously. Don’t know how he hardwired that into me somehow.
LIFE LESSON 7: ONE DAY AT A TIME
There have been rough times when his business wasn’t doing well but I don’t remember a time or a single day I went hungry to bed. Even if it is was the last hundred rupee note in his purse, he never worried about the next day but would do everything in his capacity to make that day happy for all of us in the family. When my worried mom would ask him at night, “What about tomorrow?”, “ We will see that tomorrow dear”, came the prompt reply.
LIFE LESSON 8: AN EARLY START TO DAUNTING TASKS
I had an adult ladies cycle to learn bicycling in 2nd grade. Nothing like the fancy training- wheel-bicycle, I had bought for my son in the United States . I could only learn half-pedal cycling as my feet could not reach a full circle on the pedal sitting on the high seat. I still remember that the cycle also had only right sided brake (sudden brake) and every time I braked my tummy would bump into the handle bar and would hurt badly. Well, nothing stopped my dad in making me proficient in bicycling so much so one day he took me to the hospital after a dog had bitten me and I had to pedal all the way. He made sure he showed me the route and the landmarks on the way. Little did I know the next day I was given the hospital out-patient card to have the rest of the 14 injections around my belly button, cycling all the way to the hospital by myself. What was he thinking? However, this incidence would build the confidence as an adult to go to an emergency room in the middle of the night with a 3 year old son in a foreign country driving through the empty icy roads of Iowa some 30 years later. Did I mention I was put in a type writer class in 5th grade when they allowed you to write the exam only in 10th grade. I was typing 60 words per minute without a single mistake 5 years before the eligibility for the exam, much to the envy of all the adults in my type writing class. As I type these blogs I am so thankful that my fingers can type as fast as I think. Thanks dad.
LIFE LESSON 9: PRESENCE OF MIND
I woke up at 4 am for a critical exam in medical school with a lot of study portions to cover before 7 am. Lo and behold the electricity went out and my heart literally sank. But Dad was a man of instant solutions! Within 10 minute, I had a flash light tightly wound around a metal wire that was hanging from the door or roof, I don’t remember as a spot light on my textbook. I had no trouble reading all that I had planned to, that morning. Dad was a great handyman, very creative with things lying around the house, always rearranging things for better comfort to meet our needs, that we didn’t even know we had as kids. Many a days I would walk into the house and wonder if I entered the wrong house as he would have re-arranged the entire living room – the couch, book shelf , center table, the vases would have exchanged the plastic flowers in them, the picture of Jesus would be adorned differently. Oh my!
LIFE LESSON 10: LESSONS FROM THE CHAI WALA
Very rarely I used to wake up with my dad and bicycle with him to buy milk at Aavin milk depot at 4 am. Dad was always an early to bed-early to rise kind of person. He wound the woolen muffler tightly around my ears and nose, lest I catch a cold from the early morning dew. As we pass by tea shops he would say, “ We think we are the first ones to rise up so early to get milk. Look at this guy who has opened the shop and serving people with hot tea at 4 am. He must have got up at 3 am boiled milk, made chai, cleaned the shop before he opened it to the pubic’. This habit of watching people, noticing their good qualities and adding one by one to my port folio and incorporating it into my being to become a better version of me was taught by great dad. I remember him always reiterating a story of a swan bird that can exclusively sucked just the milk and leave out the water. 10 good qualities from 10 different people when you imbibe in your life, you automatically become a better version of yourself. Isn’t it?
LIFE LESSON 11: NOTHING BUT THE BEST
Would you believe if I told you my dad made me repeat UKG twice just because there was no admission in first grade ? Just because the school was a reputed convent school where I studied all the way to 12th grade later on. He always worked with the end in mind. The finished product was his goal and didn’t really mind the perils or the long routes he had to take.
I remember him helping me draft and practice my speech for the school assembly probably when I was in high school. The umpteen times I had to revise the drafts and the zillion times I had to read it loud with the exact tone and modulation he had in mind – it was challenging, as he was relentless in his standards. He has served in the American Consulate and has an American as his God mother who taught him English. My dad’s English was impeccable and his handwriting even at 84 when he passed away was better than anyone I know. Today the training serves me well now as I speak to thousands of students across many nations. It made me fearless to talk in an auditorium full of learned scholars in a US University during my PhD defense. When I heard my professors commending me for my voice modulation, grammatically correct sentences, fluency in English, showing thumbs up from their seats even during my first seminar as a young grad student (yeah doing it afraid), I had only one person to thank. My dad.
LIFE LESSON 12: A WILL POWER THAT CAN MOVE MOUNTAINS
If I know one man who had the grit to face life as it storms in your face, it was my dad. Life hit him hard, after he resigned from a great job at the American Consulate but I never heard him complain or whine about the great life he would have had if he had stayed on the job. He was ready to pull up his sleeves, get in the dirt and toil his way through in life starting his own business, toughing it out in the toughest situations, while not compromising on the education of both his children. His greatest dream was to make a doctor and an engineer which he accomplished though he himself did not complete college.
LIFE LESSON 13: SIMPLIFY & CONQUER
Dad was a genius. He knew how to make complex things simple by breaking it down. It started with Math tables – he would make us by-heart 4 rows for any given math table, then upto 8 and repeat all 8 and work all the way up to 20 rows. And then say it reverse. While I struggled with 2 – 20 tables, my dad could recite ¼ and ½ table in Tamil. You can even make him tell it even when he was asleep. He would have been a great engineer if only he had the right support. The same analogy of simplifying applied to sweeping the floor to his spic and span standard. One square at a time. One tile at a time. One row at a time till the whole floor is spotless!
I remember struggling with a painting competition where I had to draw on a big canvas from a small sized original picture. My dad drew his squares on the small picture and on the big canvas and asked me to focus only on drawing one square at a time. It was amazing how the whole drawing became instantly easy and won me a 3rd place in an interschool competition.
LIFE LESSON 14: PREPARING FOR THE WORST CASE SCENARIO
He was preparing me for a job even when I was in 5th grade in the event of a mishap to him as he married in his late 30’s. When I could type he said to me “Well, you can always become a typist or a secretary and earn your living and take care of the family”. He always wanted us to be independent and believed that a hostel life would make us kids independent. He put my brother when he was 17 in the Indian Air Force and put me in hostel in the final year medicine even though my college was within an hour drive from home. He trained us to live life without the coziness of being under the protected wings of parents. He used to mention a Robin bird that used to peck its younger one out of the nest when it was time to enable it to fly. Where did he learn all this stuff I wonder in an age of no internet? It felt uncomfortable but I believe it built in the resilience in me to live independently in a foreign country through all ups and downs in live. In fact, this was the caption he gave for a cartoon I colored in kinder garden – two teddy bears on a see-saw, one up and the other down. He entitled it “Life is full of ups and downs” – How true!
LIFE LESSON 15: AGE IS ONLY A NUMBER
If you saw a 75 year old man on Chennai Arcot road in a moped breezing through traffic, it was probably my dad. I visited him one day when he was in his 80’s to find out that he had just demolished his house and was starting on a new building project to renovate our old house! I was shocked. Soon by the end of the year, I stepped into a brand new apartment he built to meet his comforts and needs where he welcomed me with a beaming accomplished smile! A few weeks before his death, he asked me to call his bank and as I was searching for the telephone number on Google, and he loudly recalled the two numbers from his memory. One Christmas while my nieces were giving a dance performance he joined them with his walking stick in one hand. He defied age with just pure will power and the grace of God. At 82 he called me on phone to get my mom’s recipe to make mint chutney at home. He never lost his zeal for life, be it food or dance or a new project or enjoying music with a joyful clapping of hands like a kid.
LIFE LESSON 16: IT’S OKAY! IT’S GOING TO BE ALRIGHT
What started out to be a happy bicycle ride with my dad and brother on their individual bikes, didn’t feel so happy after all when our bikes got entangled and all of us fell on the road piling up on top of each other. Guess who was at the bottom of the triple sandwich? Just as I could feel the crushing of my bones, I heard a confident voice say, “It’s okay. It’s going to be alright’. I can’t tell you how many times in life when I was caught off guard or at the bottom of the pit , or sometimes hardly breathing , sometimes suffocating, I very clearly hear the echo of this voice ringing to my ears. “Its okay. Its going to be alright”. I get up, dust myself off, pull myself out of the pit not to where I just fell off from but to a higher platform. Hard core grit! I learned it from dad.
LIFE LESSON 17: HELP IN NEED
Dad decided not to get married till his late 30’s, as he was taking care of his sisters children who were abandoned by their father. He opened our house for several months to relatives and friends in difficult situations who were temporarily evacuated from their rental homes. This was during a time when he was financially struggling as well. Dad never sent anyone empty stomach if they visited him. You just can’t escape with any excuse whatsoever! If you are visiting my dad, please have your stomach empty and your taste buds fired up for a great treat from his exceptional cooking. The joy of cooking multiplied by his big heart to entertain anyone who visits him is a sight to watch and relish.
LIFE LESSON 18: JESUS IS WITH ME ALWAYS
He prayed as a kid a specific prayer to get an American sponsor for his education and got that answered. It changed his life and ours. Next, I saw him draw close to God when my mom was diagnosed with cancer. He quit being a chain smoker instantly and prayed so fervently for her. He always honored his promise to her to buy a saree for her, every birthday. It was just not the saree but his comments when she wore that simple cotton saree and came in front of us , would make any woman feel like she was wearing the most expensive silk saree on earth and she was the queen. I have heard him pray for all our relatives and friends, even for grandpa even though it was decades since he left us. He loved his dad very much till the end and fondly remembered him long after he was gone. I saw him do life with Jesus by His side even though we kids couldn’t not be with him at times.
LIFE LESSON 19: FEARLESS IN THE FACE OF DEATH
Even when he suffered his 3rd heart attack and was gasping for air, while they temporarily unhooked him from the oxygen cyclinder to transport in an ambulance, I saw no fear in his eyes. He was ready to go if God’s appointed time had come. All I saw was a sense of a satisfied life. In fact, when the ambulance attenders were trying to shift him to the van, he offered to scoot over to help them shift him, though he was so weak. “Take me anywhere. Jesus is with me” was his profound proclamation in the last days.
LIFE LESSON 20: AMIABLE CONVERSATIONS & PERSONALITY
As a kid I could sit through long conversations with friends and families and enjoy the way dad kept the conversations going throwing in things that would trigger people to laugh. Sometimes his nephews would tease him and he would take it in stride and play along. Kept in touch with his college friends even in his 80’s. Never seen him wear a shirt unpressed or untucked. Always dressed himself well to church with a leather belt on, a powdered face and moisturized skin, so much so at 84 he had a wrinkle free face! The only thing that wrinkled his face was, if we didn’t take care of our feet with a moisturizer.
LIFE LESSON 21: HOW TO SWIM
Both of us kids would stand at the edge of the pool screaming without jumping into the water when he used to take us to Marina swimming pool on hot summer afternoons on our bicycles. When I eventually learned swimming he taught me how to let go and let the water carry you. Not to strive too hard or struggle to emerge out of the waters gasping for breath. He taught me keep myself steady amidst turbulence created by splashy swimmers nearby. He taught me to take advantage of the buoyancy of water and understand its dynamics to cut through waters effortlessly with least resistance with closed fingers and strong kicking feet with an unbent knee as I strived to reach the other end of the pool.
Even today as I swim, every time I reach the end of the pool effortlessly I invariably see stronger people emerge beside me puffing and panting. And I remember my dad for his swim lessons have not only helped me through crowded pools with tough men and women but to navigate the waters of life in an arena called world, handling rough turbulences that come your way, kicking through life and finding the path of least resistance by holding onto faith in God and emerging alive and victorious for the Glory of God, only because of the wisdom handed over by tough training lessons from a genius I call, ‘my dad’.
He may not have died a millionaire but he is smarter than a million dads I’ve come across.
He was not a philanthropist but everyone who attended his funeral testified that he changed their life for the better.
He was not perfect. Yes he was a human but he always tried becoming better tomorrow than he was today.
He was not famous. But now, after knowing him a little better, I guess you would agree that he actually is!