My Father---Revealing An Untold Reality (Part -01)

It is a harsh but true fact that life is an arena where you meet too many people. It is without any doubt a stage where you go through mixed feelings and emotions that are sometimes pleasant and many a time harsh. During our childhood, we are most impressed by our parents as they are the ones who are the closest to us. It is they who shape our emotional make-up and when we grow up, we are reminded time and again by our elders about the striking resemblance we bear to our parents either in terms of physical appearance or in respect of behavior.

This is what has always happened with me too. Whenever I meet my relatives, they make it a point to remind me that I'm a lookalike of my father and to speak the truth, I have always taken pride in that. You'll also acknowledge the fact that during childhood, everyone regards their father as their role-model. I still cherish the memories of my childhood when my father was my hero. I used to wait for him excitedly when I was told by my mother that it was time for him to come back home. I would run towards the wooden window next to the main door of our house and standing there for a long time, I used to look out expecting my father to arrive any time.

Now when I go back home from my workplace, I find my son doing the same--waiting for me at the door with nothing but love in his eyes. Now I realize that my father must have felt the same way whenever he reached the home and found me awaiting him.

As I grew up and started going to school, the change began to occur. Now father had turned into a bit hard-liner who made sure that I didn't go astray. The memory of being scolded and reprimanded by him times without number is still alive in my mind but whenever he took me to task, it was not without a reason. Let me tell you all about an incident of my school days. If my memory doesn't go awry, I must have been studying in standard second at that time. Those were the days when I had turned into a mischievous kid, being pampered as I was. Now I can't say for sure as to how I fell into bad company. My father must have known about all my ways as now I do about the behaviour of my son. I'm sure now that he kept ignoring my mistakes considering them to be the mischief of a growing child. Maybe he gave me a chance believing that I needed to learn by committing mistakes. But I must have made it very difficult for him to cope with all the nonsense I had started to do.

This incident is about my bunking the school for about 3 to 4 days at a stretch. I had come under the influence of a boy who didn't like attending the classes and he must have needed company which I provided to him. That was something which I shouldn't have done as it enraged my father to such an extent that I was thrashed badly when one day I had returned home in the evening after having been away from the school all day long.

The kind of thrashing I received from my father that evening still makes me shiver at night. It is by far the most stringent physical punishment I have got in my life but it did work wonders for me. Thereafter I never dared to do the same again as I had come to know that my father wouldn't tolerate that.

Time passed by and I became a college going teenager. Now I had become mature enough to understand what was right for me and what was wrong. I took admission in Govt. Degree College Sanjauli (Shimla) in the year 1997 and developed a taste for English language, thanks to the highly talented teachers I got a chance to be taught by there. My father at that time had got transferred to a far-off place and it took him about 10 hours to commute between home and his workplace. That's why he had to stay at the place of his posting for many days together and he would return home at the most once in a month.

This was the time when I once again began to lose the right path. I owe that bad phase of my life to the absence of my father from home. Had he been at home to guide me, I would never have made the similar mistake. In a way, I came to be dazzled by spell the city-life had cast upon me. I again started to bunk classes thinking that it was a common practice in college days. I came to realize the gravity of the blunder I was making at a time when one day I found my name amongst those whose names were struck-off from the college rolls due to continuous absence from the classes. It was like a bolt from the blue for me as I had never imagined in the wildest of my dreams that the things would come to such a pass. The nightmare came when I was told by my class-teacher that I had to come along with my father for taking re-admission. It was indeed the last thing that I could've imagined because I knew my father wouldn't tolerate such a big blunder on my part.

I thought of all the excuses that I could devise to evade the wrath of my father. For a number of days, I couldn't dare to call up my father to tell him about the blunder I had made.

To Be Continued:

This is a story being written by me and I'm going to post it here as I continue to write it. It is about the influence of my father upon my life.

Pics taken from: www.pexels.com

Follow me on:

https://www.facebook.com/devkant.sharma

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPwLvn_7hURhTDnJWuQAQyg?view_as=subscriber