Remembering My Father - #4

To people who know him intimately, any discussion on my father is rather incomplete without talking about his passion for investments/finance. Thats one legacy he would have wanted us to cherish and follow even after his time. My father was a very shrewd investor, albeit very conservative. I am yet to meet a person who has mastered CD laddering to the extent he did. He took atmost care of "our" money as he would like to put it. I still remember him losing his temper at times when his accounts dint tally because we forgot to inform him of an expense we made. Even then he would end it up with a crisp - "Its all our money. And only one fourth of it is mine!" and this was when we were still mere schoolboys. When I left for college, he implemented this neat scheme where quarterly interest from one of his investments was diverted to a bank account in my college which I could withdraw at college. For all four years, thats how I paid my mess bill. His book keeping, as I flip through them today, is an outstanding work of art.

In hind sight, I feel, the retired life of my father should have filled him with mixed feelings. On one hand, I feel, he would have felt having reaped the dividends and returns of his toil and sweat. His "investments" - (me and my brother) - paying off. Being a typical father among his generation folks, I can say for sure, he was delighted at what me and my brother were doing with our lives - our graduation, coming to the US, Master's education, job, marriage and all the way down to my son ie his grandson. To a certain degree one can say, he has seen what one would have wanted him to see. In that sense, his investments paid off and he was there to see them getting paid off.
On the other hand, his health was not letting him enjoy the fruits of his labor fully. 2007 to 2009 are three years that no one in my family will forget. My mother did all she can - fighting with all her might to pull of a miracle and get my father's health back. My father, even with his health failing him, was optimistic to the last minute. My father is an open book who kept no secret of his feelings/emotions most of the time. True to that trait, I could feel him getting reflective on his life and confiding in us what he felt about his life many times. We did our best we could to cheer him up. However, I, for one, would have to live with the painful memory of not being able to be near by father during his ill-health and help him with what I could.

As a son, my father was this dutiful son to his parents - being by their side till the end, taking care of them and uplifting the family after his father retired. He had done his duties to his parents, that too commendably. His scorecard is also complete as a father as I just said. He has basically led a life of no debt.

With I and my brother, our father till the very end remained more a friend than a father. I should say, he more than respected our views and thoughts even when we were mere teenagers. I vividly remember the days when I use to come across investment info during the mid 90s in magazines and whenever I shared such info with him, he listened with utmost earnestness and even implemented my suggestions. Actually, he is the only person I have had who has never said no to anything I have to say. The morale boosting confidence I have often gotten from his unqualified support is something I will sorely miss for the rest of my life.

Dad, you have left really big shoes to fill. Now that I myself am a father, I fully realize how high a bar you have set. As I have told you many times during your last few days, my kid should feel fortunate if I were half as good a father as you had been. Wish me luck, Dad !

Remembering My Father - #3 - Values in Life

For the majority of the time I had spent with my father, I was either an infant, a school kid or an adolescent. Fate made sure that much of my early and late 20-s was spent separated from him. When I started realizing this fact, it was too late to make any sudden changes in my life and before I could react fully it was all over. Hence any values in life that my father tried to inculcate in us based on his life experiences fell in the ears of either a school boy and/or a teenager.

My father was a very energetic person in his hey days and was bit animated too in expressing his feelings - be it that of a colleague who pissed him off at office or a street vendor who dint agree to his bargain. Usually such outbursts would be punctuated by a moral value which he wanted us to remember/realize. True to our age, we received the moral value endings much the same way we enjoyed his animated stories - both in a lighter vein. We couldnt fully empathize with the morals even though it fell in our ears. But instances of such experiences in his life were numerous enough that those very same moral values he summed up actually got imbibed in our subconscious mind which, in hind sight, we were able to recollect and relate to our own life's experiences. Here are a few -

"Life is a balanced equation" - in other words, your balance sheet will be clean. I have heard him use this statement a lot. Even with my life so far, I can feel this being qualitatively true.

"Skills and talents are important. But no matter how talented you are, its worthy only if others recognize you as one" - I guess every one of us might have a story of his/her own to substantiate this. In fact, this aspect - recognition - is something, I guess, he dearly missed in his younger days and hence I could remember him walking the extra mile every possible time to make sure we dont feel that way, not even as school kids.

"Nothing comes for free in the world" - According to my father, money is an integral part of life. He despised being wasteful of anything. He earned his dough through toil and propped up his family after his father. So he wanted us to fall in line as well. But when we actually started doing it, we were living physically separated from him though I made vain attempts to explicitly tell him how much we agree with him at every possible occasion. I only hope he felt happier.

"Are you happy ?" - This was more of a rhetoric from him than a moral statement. And that too, I only remember my father asking me this often more towards the twilight of his life. Probably some realization from his own life and reflection on how he balanced his own happiness and pleasures against his life's duties and obligations. More than pointing at a value this question made me to introspect and ask similar questions about my life. Much to my chagrin, and probably to that of my father had he been alive, the answer I came up with most of the time was in the negative. And no body to blame other than "yours truly", I . In fact, I was so absorbed with life's push-and-pull I almost forgot to notice life's little happiness and signs of hope. I would have almost missed enjoying my kid's infancy because of my worries had it not been for my wife's repeated attempts to turn my attention. So I hope to use this simple yet profound question to steer my life going forward as well.

These are just samples. There are numerous other instances where I can feel his impact on my traits - most of them coming to me involuntarily and subconsciously. What else can one expect - my last name is "Hariharan" after all.

Remembering My Father - #2 - My Childhood

Being a father myself and trying hard to perform the paternal duties to my satisfaction, now I fully realize how high a standard my father had set for us in this regard.

During my child hood days, father was always this person whom we went to for getting anything we wanted - be it a notebook or chocolate. I dont remember him pampering me a lot (partly because I was the older kid). I vividly remember his strictness for various aspects of life - not wasting food, or for that matter, not wasting anything, having healthy reading habits and life style, being prudent when it comes to handling money. Being the truant school boys that we were, me and my brother provided him with ample chances to provoke his temper and there after enforce his principles upon us - right from being tardy in maintaining our bicycles to not switching off the lights after usage. But back then, that seemed perfectly normal. He just wants us to follow certain things in life. So what, No big deal. We, atleast I for one, literally had no clue as to what was getting imbibed into our subconscious mind because of our father's actions. And neither did we know that one day those very same qualities he was trying to grill into our minds would come to define who we are as well.

Whether it was a characteristic trait or a material possession that my father wanted his kids to have, he had only one of the following two reasons for that in his mind -

Either it is something he missed/lacked in himself and hence wanted to ensure we had it,

or, it is something he felt that is needed for our betterment based on his life experiences.

And all the while his goal was simple enough to state too - his kids should have a good childhood and life.

There are lot of instances that immediately flash in my memory which fall into either of the two reasonings I just mentioned. And trust me, not until recently did I fully understood or appreciated my father's intentions and thoughts behind many of his actions.

My father laid great emphasis on education and the need for having a well rounded curriculum. Looking back this is something where me and my brother gave him the least headache. Anything related to school, curriculum or extra currics will be immediately encouraged and adequately funded. But more than funding and encouragement, its the involvement and effort he put in that made the difference. When I visited my school during my college days to meet my teachers, I was pleasantly surprised when one of them enquired about how my father was doing and went on to mention to her colleague how my father was very much involved with our education. To be frank, that was the first incident from when I started realising what my father had indeed accomplished.

I still vividly remember the lengths to which he went to make us learn Hindi. Learning Hindi was something he couldnt achieve because of his family financial constraints. His naive but noble thought had been that Hindi will help us find better prospects outside of our state in India. He literally used to take me to the Hindi class in his bicycle. Since the class standard was bit high for a person of my age then, he wanted to make sure that he is complementing that with added coaching from his side. Though a stranger to Hindi, he would literally ask my teacher on what each book was and write that in English like "Prose", "Poetry", "Drama" etc. As part of one of the exams, we had to pass in a native language paper- Tamil. The syllabi for that included a considerable portion of a great tamil epic - "Vaali Vathai Padalam" for those who care. Typically thats something a college grad tries to master and I was just a sixth grader. My father took the onus to himself and in the weekends of the following six months taught me the entire stuff good enough to get me a good score let alone a passing score. Not only did he start setting standards for me as father, he also sowed seeds for interest in tamil literature in me.

His literary thurst also made him to take me to Kamban Vizha's which are literary discourses of the highest quality. Oblivious of the effects, I used to just accompany him but then I started enjoying whatever I could understand from that.

When it was time for me to attend a weeklong camp for Boy Scouts at a place some 200 km from my home, I was the only student who was not dropped off by his scout master but rather than by his father.

After my college, my father accompanied me on my first trip to Bangalore for my work. Not just that, he even came with me right upto the work place on my first day and started telling about me to my boss. I was like "Dad, please stop". My boss was in all big smiles on seeing my predicament. Even to this day, my ex-boss still remembers the incident in a lighter vein. However embarrassing it was to me then, now years after that, when I leave my son at his preschool and see him sitting with his friends, I can understand the feelings my father would have had on my first-day at work.

The above said are just a sample of what he did that I managed to recollect now. What stands out distinctively is not just his intentions but the extent to which he had spent his time and energy to get his kids a better childhood - be it good education or seeing them recognized and appreciated for their talents.

If you take into account the leverage I have had because of him, these are some feats which leave me wondering if I would ever be able to match up in kind for my kid. Tall orders, for sure.