They say by the time you understand your father was right you already have a son who thinks you are wrong. I don't know how true this will be. Well it sounded very strange that I have become a father. It took me time to adjust to both being called a father and also feel like a father. Unlike popular opinion I didn't have instant bonding with my kids.There were no tears welled up when I saw my son for the first time and held him in my hand. You can think of it as abnormal but for me it takes time to bond. When he was a day old I had to take him from the hospital ward to a floor below to a pediatrician to get him his first vaccination. Those 2-3 minutes when I was carrying him I started to change a bit. I was really nervous while holding him. One wrong move and I may cause damage to my then unnamed child. He was covered in clothes and winter clothing. But to add to the agony the doctor told me to unwrap him as we need to give him injection on his shoulder. Ohh that sight!! He was so small when I removed the winter clothing. Those tiny limbs and incessant cries. I got scared for a moment. Again I had to carry him for checking his weight. It was such a tense moment for me that one wrong grip and I might end up breaking or dislocating the bones of my son.Those 5 minutes were eternity to me. But they added a spark of bond between us which will grow to unlimited affection and care. I became comfortable holding my child and the barriers of hesitation, discomfort and trepidation were broken.
Now my son is 6 months old and it will not be me or my wife solely who will shape his personality. It will also be the society, the neighborhood, the media and the dear ones who will mold him. Keeping the discussion of his personality aside and lets see how much fatherhood changes a person. My whole life I was the youngest in my family who was the most taken care of. I used to be the one who had the liberty to be careless, to forget things, to fail(not always) and to be irresponsible sometimes. Nowadays it seems a long drawn struggle to have kids but back in the 80s and mid 90s it was normal in an Indian household to have 4-5 kids. The DINKS culture(Double Income and No kids) was not the "in" thing then. It means you could be the youngest one and not the only one in your family. You had the liberty of having siblings. More kids may bring abject poverty to a house but you never feel that.
The elders treat their younger one like kids and take care of them and prevent them from the might of parents in bad times. I was grown up in this kind of atmosphere where my sisters used to feed food to me from their plates if I was hungry. The absence of wealth somehow always unites people. But when you are in that time you don't feel the poverty. Only in hindsight you realize what struggle it must be for your father to feed a family of 6 with a meager salary.Yours and your father's generation is only separated by inflation. One of my seniors once told me now my daughter is a teenager and big enough to spend on her own, we are like ATMs for her. If I remember me or my sisters were not raised with "greed and grow" culture. My parents never had to bribe me to study. When you study in a school with fees of Rs 15 pm you don't have to apply rocket science to think of your family income. To a certain extent and at the risk of generalization and tad glorification my generation had a full idea of what money was and how hard it is to earn when you are seeing single earning parents.
This is not a struggle story of my generation. The above context was set to explain the conflict today's parents are undergoing and will be into. When I myself will order cold coffee twice a week or eat outside every weekend or a casual burger every other day how will my kid will understand the value of earning or saving? In the garb of giving a comfortable life to my kid I will end up spoiling him and by the time I realize he will be in his teenage and treating me and my wife like ATMs. This is only the financial aspect of parenting and I always feel financial problems are the easiest problem and blessing in disguise. As those problems will motivate you to yearn for more. Bigger problems of parenting which still give me chills upon contemplating are shaping his personality, teaching him etiquette, public presentation, becoming the best version of myself.
This is a 24X7 job and you can't relax. The notion I will be true to myself and behave who I am will not work. if you wake up at 12PM you are not entitled to scold your kid for waking up late. If you are inebriated every weekend your kid will not think twice before having his first drink at a tender age. Yes, tender age. When you are laughing your ass off on obscene jokes watching your favorite stand up comic you can't preach to your kid to have morals and discourage obscenities. If you do that one day or another he will call out your hypocrisy. You can't call your friends and be abusive in front of him. Kids just follow us. These are just some of the trivial things that came on top of my mind as I started to think of parenting. When I look back I feel so good how wonderful my parents were that I never felt the compulsion to resort to abuse to stamp my authority in a discussion or on a person. I never had to go mad about making money to attain happiness. Though parents never come up with a manual that this is how kids should be raised, they definitely provide a good ecosystem. Things just rub to you.
My parents never had to preach me good values or good code of conduct or behaving with women nicely. They lived those teachings. They imbibed in them. I only needed to follow their behavior. I had to just be their replica. They never taught me to read Ramayan or Mahabharat or watch spiritual shows to attain sanskaras. It was just that good content was being telecasted when I used to watch TV or read books or comics. Their actions spoke louder than their words. I don't know if I will be a parent like them or I can be a good parent. But one thing is certain that fatherhood or parenthood changes a person completely. I will make an earnest attempt to replicate my parents or if there is some other way in raising a good child I will do my best to follow that.
