Understanding a father (or) woes of kids

 Journal pages ....

Our father is a scientist, of course not the white coated research type, because he has a degree in science. In professional life he had to work in environments bordering on a little research, engineering and of course the science which was at a higher level than his learning.

Here we have to pass to admire his tenacity and single minded concentration to gather additional knowledge from these disciplines. He spent more time with printed characters than with real characters living in the house. While steadily rising in the ladder of knowledge, he failed to recognize that he was equally receding from the nucleus of family affairs to such an extent that he had to be introduced to relatives during auspicious functions. That is if at all he chose to accompany us. The scientist in him failed to understand that “intensity wanes according to the inverse square law”.

Even an innocuous possession like a refrigerator gave him a chance to “braid us the kids and prepare us for the future”. Maybe he wanted us to be winning horses. This must have rubbed on us and hence we ended up using “braid” to mean pony tail or simply a young horse’s tail, metaphorically! Without bothering to know of our interest & level of understanding, he went on and on about Boyle’s, Charles’s laws , triple point and following it up with Carnot’s cycle to end with an lecture about the functioning of a refrigerator.We did not like any of this and particularly the Carnot cycle for valid reasons: All we wanted was to have cold drinks, an occasional ice cream kept in the freezer and a bicycle like the one our playmates had.

The urge to master engineering skills was raging like a storm in his mind. This directly impacted on our lives. Favourite toys which were still in working condition were stripped down, reassembled and in the process finding parts that should have gone inside are happily breathing fresh air on the assembly bench! To hide his dismay, he would often quote “Peter’s principles” or Murphy’s laws making us to wonder whether they are friends are enemies. Yet he was lovable, he replaced the now defunct toys with newer ones!

His dream to be a teacher had eluded him; yet kept the ambition burning and we felt the heat. From kindergarten to school final, our text books bore his indelible mark – explanatory notes written in miniaturized handwriting, that he practiced especially for us. As we grew up, this habit of his made us feel shy even to show our textbooks to friends. His weekly tests spoiled our appetite for any holiday!

The oral sessions were a ‘class’ act  in itself as he found many innovative ways to explain a simple concept, whatever the subject is. A bunch of sharpened pencils and a bound notebook was all he needed to create the class room atmosphere. In this aspect he was very magnanimous and lectured to any willing pair of ears of a neighbour’s son or street kids.

His overflowing flood of information, literally swamping, made us to gasp for a breather. There were many days when we felt that the classes he did not get to teach in a school were lucky! Commencing our higher education, we secretly jettisoned his way of study. Somehow he had sensed this departure and is still maintaining his stoic silence about it. We admire him for this.

During the early stages of our professional career, he came up with fertile and imaginative ideas urging us to take them forward. No doubt, if we had asked for help he would have even come with plans to execute them. This verve, never say don’t know and never say can’t do attitude endeared him to us and to feel sorry that he could not find these avenues for himself. We do not know whether he lacked self-confidence or was shackled in an economic quagmire, at that time.

He was a store of hobbies and unfortunately he chose to dump them all on our unwilling minds. Not to let anything go by easily, he tried to impress with us with the stamps, coins and artifacts collected by him or by him on behalf of us, till we finished our studies. Our continued lack of interest must have unsettled his plans and as a fallback measure, he has decided to pass them on to his grandchildren. A master in dreaming up plans, contingencies and counter contingencies! Even today, this aspect of him leaves us amazed.

He is a powerful search engine for lost or misplaced things. He finds time and energy to see the end of it, without bothering about the value of the item. Though this spoiled a chance to get a replacement, we sheepishly listened to his dictum “missing something is not great but the act of negligence is! What we did not understand was his readiness to offer this service to anyone, on demand.

We found him often taking to his roots - this is how he chose to call his hobby in gardening. It was a nightmare for us as we had to get educated on flora too. Even today, his passion for experimenting with plants has not shown any sign of diminishing. After every periodic visit, we felt the experience of living in the wild. Secretly we exchanged notes on this – “nobody ever need to worry about extinction of wild plants; they can look at them in our garden!”

Leisurely when we went through his knowledge assets, it was astonishing! The experience was like going through a handful of encyclopedia. The fact that this bibliophile had found time to gather such wide ranging knowledge and managing to retain all of them in memory brought home the truth – “yes, now we know the man, our father!”

With children on our laps, maybe we would like to clear these haunting questions from our minds. Whether during some stage of his professional life he had decided family is the prime focus overriding the many ambitious projects he wanted to pursue? Did he suffer pangs of guilt in letting go these dreams one by one? Did he ever regret thinking why he should care so much for the family? Why he never talked about these things?Fo r all his worth, why did not occur that his way of thinking is decades old and our priorities are different? We have no heart to even to whisper this thought to ourselves fearing his dismay.

He is a now an experienced scientist, engineer and of course a versatile know-all. We are now worried, with our fingers crossed tightly, about the influence he will have on his grand kids! It would have been better in our childhood and now of course for our children if only he should have earned those doctorates in science and engineering disciplines. With hindsight, we feel:  May be this could have allowed us to enjoy our childhood a little more!

He was pleasing to anybody only on his terms and odds were better if that person shared any one of his passion in life! When we truly understood him, short comings apart, he always found a reason to do anything that had something to teach him in return. Being what he is, even now he tries to teach us what he has learnt! This is the shortcomings part. On any scale he would not get placed near the top but in every scale he would be standing at the 3/4th mark. Willing or unwilling we continue to be his experimental lab.

To us he remains an enigmatic person and unless he speaks out his mind, the enigma will stay. But before stopping at this point, we gladly say “we love you dad”, just to keep him away from planning to pamper the grand children! Indomitable that he is, might just do that for the love of it!