Happy Father's Day to ALL...

Happy Father's Day to ALL...

We did not have “Father’s Day” when I was growing up and then, few decades ago there was a push for it and I will advance two reasons for that...                  

1. 
To counter Mother’s Day. This is a male chauvinist promotion and the argument goes like this...                                                                                       “Why a Mother’s Day and no Father’s Day...?"                                    
Answer…  Firstly, Mothers, women in general were neglected throughout history and their loving, nurturing, selfless work had not been recognized by male led society… So Mother’s Day was paying the social deficit… So the male chauvinists wanted to advance the Father’s Day too… 
2. 
...And second, Father’s Day was promoted as a business opportunity…Just like Christmas and other Holy-days…it is an opportunity for business to sell goods and services…

But both reasons had their positive impact.                                                                   While promoting Father’s Day the male chauvinists promoted Mother’s Day in such a way that both became part of our societal values and we did not need any special recognition for mothers-women. Mother’s Day was on an equal footing with Father’s Day and both parents were valued as such. Also, it promoted the idea that fathers-males are part of the family and they have duties in the “loving and nurturing” domain...

Fathers became an integral part of the family unit...

Father’s Day promoted equality of genders… and that is fantastic… On the economic front of course it promoted business and that is not bad, in fact, it is good...But also it promoted gender equality by the slogans and greeting cards promoting fatherhood as part and parcel of the family unit…

Let fathers share the family unit...

I have no dispute with the outcome. In fact the result is beautiful…let there be sharing among the family unit. 
Let fathers also be loving and nurturing… and let fathers be allowed to demonstrate emotions too… 
That’s equality of genders and sharing of duties…
Let there be grandpas and grandmas; fathers and mothers and many, many children…                                                                                                         Happy Father’s Day to ALL…

Indeed so true...

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And a personal note...

I did not grow up with a father. I do not know much about growing up with a father…But the memories and the tales of my mother and family friends have shaped my vision and shaped my personality…My mother and all the rest insisted that I have taken after my father. Inwardly I did not agree with them, but I never expressed my views about it…Also, I felt guilty about it. As if taking after my father will diminish my love for my mother…So I was left with an ambivalent feeling and thorn between the love that could have been and the love that is… But I remember few episodes, albeit vaguely…   

My father was a composer and a choir master at the church…I remember he taking me to church to “sing” in the choir…I guess it was more a show off and preparing me for the future…The church was wonderful and the stained glass windows beautiful…The sun was struggling to penetrate into the church through the stained glass and had formed a column of dust and incense along the beam path…wonderful! I was amazed and mesmerized…I began jumping to catch the flying dust…people watched me and whisper about the choir master’s kid…My father told the choir members to calm me down and I stood beside him rigid and with no fun … I stood there besides my father fascinated by the column of dust and enchanted by the chants…

   

It was just after WW II, things were not as plenty as they are now…and I remember my father tying strings to a chair sitting against one of the walls to another chair on the opposite side. He bound his books with those strings…A complicated skill and a beautiful hobby…I still have few of these books. In them there are his compositions…old tunes…they are not popular now…also his arrangements of other melodies… people seldom listen to them and of course they do not know where they came from or who the composition belongs to…

My father played the mandolin…  I have seen pictures of him with his mandolin… I have never listened to it… But I am sure I have…after all I am in the pictures too, but I never remember listening to it. Now I have the old mandolin, cracked and broken into pieces, as a family heirloom…

My father was a tenor…He sang along and with his voice led the church choir…I never remember him singing… But my mother told us that once in a city…people recorder his voice… 

Recording on vinyl…Technology was not around yet…       

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I do not know what would have happened to me if he did not die when I was just five years old…But I am sure that I would not have met all of you…May be I would not have been a teacher…May be I would have been a monk…and chanted my way to heaven…

H.K.