About old posts, fathers, and other things

There was a post I put up more than three years ago titled How my world has changed, and I have got very few satisfactory (informative, thought-provoking…) comments on it yet, though it aimed to stimulate thinking in various different directions. Now that I have so many readers, I ask them once more: do please visit it, and reflect, and let me have the benefit of your reactions - after you have gone carefully through the comments already there.

As anyone who knows me (or at least has been following this blog closely for some time) will realize, fatherhood, and more broadly, parenting, is an issue that is perennially close to my heart. I also keep lamenting that of late so many parents – even if they know their real responsibilities, which is not a common thing in this country – delegate them by and large to servants, schools and tutors, imagining that spending money lavishly on their children is all they need to do. Worse still, countless children are growing up before my eyes thinking that that is indeed true, and the best parents are those who either scold all the time or indulge their every material whim – sometimes both together ( I have met a great many like that myself)!

Contrast this with the attitude of Barack Obama, whom I deeply admire as a father (look it up on the Net).  It so happens that this man is also the current President of the United States. Unlike so many fathers I know, he doesn’t claim he is too busy to take an active, sympathetic, helpful part in the growing up of his children; instead, he publicly laments that he has been an ‘imperfect’ father. And, writing from the White House, he also asserts that good parenting is fundamental to making a better society: we cannot hope for good results by foisting our failures as parents on either schools or the police or the church or the Net. Also, note that not once does he say that being a good parent means merely providing a comfortable and irresponsible childhood to his wards and ensuring that they ‘study hard’ in order to get a job. At the same time he (following in the breathtaking tradition supposedly set by Lincoln. As any sensible reader will understand, it doesn't matter one whit, of course, whether it was really Lincoln himself who wrote that letter) asserts that the task is infinitely more difficult, because the real goals are so infinitely harder to reach!

I should like some of my readers to assure me, after having read this post (and the links) very carefully, that their fathers did their job really well. A good father doesn't sermonize, snoop and boss; nor does he hold himself aloof: he is a friend who teaches by example - solving sums, telling stories, cleaning the toilet, playing games with his child. He doesn't molly-coddle, but he is always there when his child needs him. He has some genuine ideals (meaning those which he won't instantly desert the moment they get him into trouble). And he practises anything that he preaches, whether it is hard work or punctuality or not spreading malicious gossip. Remember also that they clearly said in the Aamir Khan starrer Rang de basanti that the least children can do is to find out how their fathers made their money before they decide whether to be proud or ashamed of such fathers! Leaking question papers for example, and awarding 'grace' marks for a consideration - is that okay as long as it pays for the childrens' frequent trips to the restaurant? Or prescribing quite unnecessary tests as a doctor, because the clinics pay commission on them? Or asking for 'cut money' in return for sanctioning building projects, as public engineers and administrators habitually do? Or simply sleeping at work, as so many dads do in this country? Why don't the kids go and look at them in the office sometimes?

Meanwhile, I am trying as a constant daily practice to ensure that I can respect and live up to such standards for my own daughter, because I have taught her already to be very critical of everybody, daddy included, and not to be ignorantly and easily proud…