I grew up with two very strong, kind, thoughtful and extremely loving father figures. One was my dad and the other was my maternal grandpa, my Nanaji. I can’t pen down everything that they did for us, but just picking up some small but significant memories from my memory lane.
Life had not been fair to both these people. For some known and unknown reasons these both men didn’t grow up with ideal father figures and yet they were epitome of love and kindness when they themselves stepped into this role.
My Nanaji was an embodiment of love and sacrifice, of kindness and thoughtfulness. He showered his fatherly love not only on his children and grandchildren but also upon his younger brothers, their children and grandchildren, friends’ children, neighbors, even on the employees of his restaurant.
He would go extra lengths to make us have that exotic fruit, that expensive dried fruit, those rare nuts etc. even if that took going from Nasik all the way to Bombay’s Crawford Market and getting heavy cloth bags filled with goodies.
He inculcated values in us so effortlessly that we never knew how unknowingly we were learning important life lessons from him.
I am pretty sure that there rarely might be a grandpa as loving and as caring as him and I am saying this not because he was my grandfather, but because I have seen some life now, observed other people’s grandparents, and I know that becoming a grandparent doesn’t require anything special but always and I mean always walking that extra mile for your grandchildren requires only a person like him to be one fabulous Nanaji!!
And my dad, he came from extremely humble, rather extremely difficult background and yet he always tried his best to make us happy.
Whenever we went picnicking to a water body, he would step down in the water first to check the depth of the water. He was the one who made sure that whenever we were traveling between Nasik and Mumbai in monsoons, he would stop the car and make us enjoy natural waterfalls seasonally created by rains. He always wanted us to stay close to nature and enjoy it.
He always taught me, my sister and my brother to fight back any form or injustice fearlessly. He would say always ask yourself “ At the most (or worst) what could happen?”, and face that situation. I am sure my siblings and I owe a lot of confidence building lessons to him.
I, my sister, my brother and cousins were extremely fortunate to have been raised and nurtured by my Nanaji and my dad. Today both of them are in Heaven and I hope they feel proud of all of us.
When I see and experience the fatherly love in my husband being showered upon my children that’s when I feel that this luckily is a never ending turn of events. When I see my children being loved and nurtured by their dad, I feel this is a successful continuation of what I have experienced and I feel an immense satisfaction in life.
Happy Father’s Day to all the dads and
grand-dads both here on the blue planet and up there in the blue Heaven!!