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.
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