O J's Corner : Reflections

Father’s Day

Years ago I read an article in the Readers’ Digest about what the author remembered most about his father.

The family members were returning from the city after shopping. It had turned dark and they had to drive along a foresty patch. They could see a lot of glow-worms in the bushes. The children rushed towards the spot where their father also joined them. He helped them collect the fire-flies in a jar, which they carried home and frolicked with the twinkling beings.

A small incident has got etched in the hearts and minds of younglings. The gesture may be puny, but the impact is prominent.

I remember my father in our village home making coir ropes for us to be used as swings during Onam time every year. He did not have the confidence to use the coir ropes we could purchase from the store. He thought such ropes were not strong enough to carry our weights and these might break. All of us children had a gala time on the home-made swing for about a fortnight.

I don’t know what my son regards me for most. But I remember he had filled up his best-friend column in the school notebook with his father’s name. I think that is the best tribute I can get as father.

My father and I were walking back home in the dark one day when I was a kid. There was a house strutting the road from which a mongrel puppy rushed under my feet. As a matter of quick reflex I stamped on the bitumenised road. The puppy got scared and started bawling. The householder, a father figure, age-wise, came out and thrashed me verbally for no fault of mine.

I could not forget this incident whenever I chanced to see this fellow afterwards. During his old age he was milk and honey in his behaviour towards me. Even as he breathed his last, the memory lingered on. That is the other side of Father’s Day memories.

Great Malayalam literary critic M Krishnan Nair had written in his column about the ill-treatment he had received from his father who was a cop. He would not call the old man father, but only progenitor. Sad state of affairs in a family.

Father’s Day is celebrated on the third Sunday of June. This year it falls on June 18.
Let us leave a trajectory of fond memories for the children.

Humour, typically, has been the language when we remember about our father. The guy always teased, cracked a joke, found lots of ways to make us laugh and never missed an opportunity to embarrass us in front of our friends.

Rarely would he have said he loved us, but the children felt the warmth in his glance, care and protection which carried us through thick and thin.

Fathers Day is an opportunity to improve a relationship, reconnect if it is ruptured and say “thank you” for all the good things he had provided us.