14th May 2012

A Quiet Word in for the Fathers

You will find that if you really try to be a father, your child will meet you halfway. ~Robert Brault

Prologue:

From Mother Nature to Mother Goddess, we celebrate motherhood, as it should be. There is none so universal an icon of love and care as is the mother. From rodents to reptiles, from primates to a plumage rich avian, it is the mother of every species which carries the burden of parenthood. We wonder, admire and wax eloquent at this highest form of self-effacing love. There are more works on motherhood in fields of literature and visual arts than one can enumerate. Celluloid worldwide has captured more moving images of the mother-offspring bonding than movie critics could count. Finally, we all know our own mothers and love her, so there is no argument there.

It gets a little uneasy when we consider the paternal side to parenting. We tread with trepidation here in this most grey zone. Most fathers in the animal kingdom shirk the duties of fatherhood, and the human world is replete with inhuman instances of wayward dads. All this is frightening, and a lame premise to even attempt a treatise on the weaker parent.

But attempt we must, or the unsung fathers, millions of them from the beginning of creation, would never sleep in their graves. Fathers do play a part in bringing up a child, at least most of them do. So why not talk about it a little? After all, as said in the movie Honey I Blew up the Kid, “Fathers are fun. But mothers mean business.” Why not talk about the fun thing?

"It is much easier to become a father than to be one." -- Kent Nerburn

Act 1, Scene 1: [A hospital room. A female patient sleeps. A hapless gent is holding a newborn as if it is a brittle toy]

A little girl was born to a mother who was under sedation after her C-section for two days. The newborn girl was handed over to a totally nervous father who had not held an infant ever. The hospital nurses were of very little help. The dad held the delicate newborn in the crook of his arm, as the pediatrician showed, and walked around the small patient chamber, looking pleadingly at his still sedated wife. But she couldn’t help in her dazed sleep, inundated in wires of medical origin. He was afraid to sit on the sofa lest the child starts crying. He noticed constant and rhythmic movement kept the child happy. After two hours, he started humming a song to himself to dent the deafening silence in the room. The child seemed happy at the song. Her head was nestled next to where the dad’s heart is, and she dozed off contentedly to the steady tick tack of her father’s heart. For two days at a stretch, this “mothering” activity by the father continued, from feeding milk from a bottle to changing of nappies to helping her to break wind. The father learnt quickly as he did things for the first time. This was an “on the job training” if there ever was one. The recurrent song, a particularly melodious Rabindrasangeet, by then was a leit-motif to her first two days at life.

Fathers, like mothers, are not born. Men grow into fathers and fathering is a very important stage in their development.

-- David Gottesman

Act 1, Scene 2: [Three years later. An apartment. The same gent, now a bit older, is running around after a child, pleading her to finish her meal. The child is the infant from Scene 1, now grown.]

The girl child started her pre-school. They were now away from their home city, without a backup of relatives. At the same time, her mother took up a job to share the added expenses. It was a marketing job all six days a week, without a work from home option. They tried a crèche after school. The child could not adjust. The crèche expressed helplessness as she threw tantrums. He had an IT job, so he took the work from home option four days a week to take care of her when she came back from school. One day in the week she went grudgingly to crèche after school. Saturday was fun day for the little girl, because dad and daughter played at the park all evening. They ate out and played word games at home. There were story sessions and they religiously picked her mother from work at 8 pm.

In those weeks of mothering a little girl, the dad learnt to admire all mothers better than all literature or movies could teach him. The immediacy of caring for a little one, of carrying out vital functions like cooking, feeding, ablutions were greater teachers than “Do It Yourself” books. The ivory tower of traditional fatherhood, of being the provider and the occasional teacher, was shattered. In a fortunate reversal of roles, a father was learning to be a mother, and how! Only fathers know how difficult and alien it is to play mom to your children. Moms are born to multi-task. Dads aren’t. When your boss pings you, your girl is pleading for a bedtime story before she settles in to siesta. Off course the dad messed up more ways than one. Surely there were SOS calls to the mom for advice, step by excruciating step of basic child care had to be narrated to him. Many a times the daughter wailed “I wish mother was here instead of you!” This crushed the dad, but he became more resolute to succeed. Fathers, by definition, don’t make good mothers. But the spectre of an alien crèche made the dad-daughter duo try harder at their bonding, and slowly it all fell in place. When her vacation came around, he would take her to work, and she would sit next to him in a workstation and sketch pictures from her dad’s bedtime stories. On the drive back home, she would sleep nestled on his chest, as was her wont.

SOS calls stopped. The mom was confident that her hubby doesn’t need help. The last pinnacle of stereotypes was being busted. The dad started googling recipes meant for children. On weekends, he would turn out dishes the daughter relished. Cooking was a new medium, but he learnt quickly. The daughter’s appreciation was the incentive that goaded him on.

"It is admirable for a man to take his son fishing, but there is a special place in heaven for the father who takes his daughter shopping." -- John Sinor

Act 1, Scene 3: [Eight years after scene 1. An apartment. The same gent, now considerably older, is playing with dolls, under scrutiny of a rather strict eight year old girl. The girl is the infant from Scene 1, now grown into a little lady.]

Eight years have elapsed since that day, and the little big girl can’t go to sleep unless her head is rested against her dad’s left chest, listening to the steady tick tack of her dad’s heartbeat. He has to sing the same Rabindrasangeet as a lullaby. She bathes with her dad, and her special breakfasts have to be cooked up by him.

As his daughter grew, he learnt to see the world as a small girl would. The rough and tumble games of his own childhood got replaced by playing mother to dolls. He became a “keeper of secrets” for the girl. Two of them went shopping for her wardrobe replenishment. He learnt to explore, discover and then express the feminine side of his personality. A product of strict catholic all boys’ hostel, the learning curve was playing truant for the father. But he tried manfully to express the woman in him.

There's something like a line of gold thread running through a man's words when he talks to his daughter, and gradually over the years it gets to be long enough for you to pick up in your hands and weave into a cloth that feels like love itself. ~John Gregory Brown

Act 1, Scene 4: [Eight years after scene 1. An apartment. The same gent, now considerably older, is clapping appreciatively as the little lady hands over a greetings card and chocolates to a lady. The little girl is the infant from Scene 1, now grown into a little lady. The lady is the patient from Scene 1. The greetings card says, “Happy Mother’s Day”.]

And he is trying. Still. Brownie points for fathers who try, shall we? Shall we remember the unsung fathers, a day after Mother’s Day?

“thousands at his bidding speed,

And post o'er land and ocean without rest; They also serve who only stand and wait.” - John Milton

Epilogue:

Mothers are the champions who are among these speeding thousands and they rest not. Fathers also serve in their own quite way, shirking the limelight and facilitating the mothers. Let us remember their contribution in our lives. Please?

Mother's School of Management

Memoirs in the Making


On a chilly January morning, I met Arunabha Ghose and Krishnendu Sengupta, in that order. They wanted me on board. It was an SOS. They wanted someone to perform what Hercules had done eons ago – clean up the Aegean Stable that goes by the name Documentation – Connectiva. Their choice – yours truly. Ex-Accenture, Ex-Ushacomm, Ex-Presidency, Ex-St. Josephs, Ex-et al. None of them were sure I could do much. But they took a shot in the dark. It was a move borne out of desperation. The time – 30 days. The mandate – put a derailed locomotive back on track.

I was unsure myself. I did not know what to expect. I have experience of situations where any change in the status quo is viewed with suspicion, and new leaders are received with hostility. I thought I will give it a shot, and blissfully sink back to my world of impersonal freelance.

I met the people – the team. I was surprised pleasantly to find a bunch of talented youngsters yearning to declare to the world they deserve a place under the Sun. They were tired of the brickbats, but were yet infused with the undaunted spirit of the youth which bounces back from impossible situations. They were a hurt lot, both from within the team and from without. They were bruised, battered, shorn of self-respect; but they were still-loving, still trusting, still youthful. Most importantly, they welcomed me with a disarming warmth that told me we were family. That’s when I decided I would be attempting something far more noble than what my corporate mandate was – I would be lifting people’s lives.

I was involved initially in my tenure as an outsider, with a consultant’s hat on, to streamline processes of management and planning, and to prepare vision documents. On the 22nd evening I was invested with a new responsibility – being the single point contact for deliverables aimed at 25th – 29th January. It was pretty simple arithmetic. The time = 4 working days; The deliverable = unknown number of documents (later turned out to be 32); My domain/product knowledge = zilch.

I took up the challenge because by that time the team members were my brothers and sisters, and I was their ubiquitous, ever-avuncular Jayanta da. I knew what they were capable of. I had faith on them as they had on me.

We are presently two days away from the deadline. We have frozen the requirement. We have cleaned the bottlenecks. We have a plan in place, shared transparently with all team members, and met it steadfastly at each step. We have a frail girl voluntarily coming to work from Barrackpore, an one hour train-ride away, on a national holiday. We have a girl with an ailing mother and an infant at home, zipping away till 9:30 pm each night smilingly. We have a resident guru silently canceling his long overdue honeymoon and spending his time, quoting him, “eating, drinking, living documentation”. We have a proverbial jumping jack and declared “black sheep” of the team not leaving his seat for hours on end – having heartburn because the late night car drop came 10 minutes too early for him to close his daily deliverable target. We have a shy girl with the self-imposed “outsider” tag chasing down contact points for Knowledge Transfer till they relent out of her sheer perseverance.

In a word, my friends, we have “ownership” in the team.

Everybody has noticed it. It is being discussed in hushed whispers in closed huddles across the organization that there is something about the droopy documentation team that has changed. Where there was rubber, there is now steel. Where there was meekness, there is now pluck. Where there was despondence, there is now hope.

What changed? What gives?

I can take an informed guess. It is the most socially acceptable four-letter word the world has ever known. It is, umm, shall I say that in the ruthless corporate, jargon-banter environment? Well, let’s face it – it is L-O-V-E.

Unfashionable, the cynics would say. Naïve, the management maestros point out. Quite unoriginal, the gasbags with verbal gimmickry who make wondrous presentations in hushed boardrooms on the other side of the globe, would contend. But honestly, if the world is still moving on its slightly tilted axis, it is only because love still gets you the most value for investment. But it has to be uncompromising, relentless, selfless, unflinching and unconditional. You can’t give up on love, as much as you can give up on your children. Try it at home, on the streets or at the workplace. You’ll know what I mean.

The team responded to love as an infant does. An infant always knows whom to trust unwaveringly. The team gathered around me and reciprocated the love I had for them, many times over. They were not essentially bad, as they were made out to be. They were radar-less and unloved. With love, with nurture, the buds bloomed in an untimely spring. Once the petals were out and the fragrance was air-borne, no hail could stop them. They lost their shackles – micro-management was out. But they were stuck to their workstations and churned out deliverables to glory, deep into the chilly nights. They had unearthed something deep inside themselves which is far more primeval and compelling than what any financial reward or job insecurity can achieve – pride in the self.

They worked out of love and they worked out of pride. Few armies in the world can be beaten, if they are infused with these two adrenaline rushers. The Azad Hind Fauz lost the battle, but they were never beaten. Saurav’s Team India lost the world cup final, but their spirit remains unchallenged in the arena of sports. This team might falter, but now they have developed a self propulsion that will make them rise from the ashes.

Which management school teaches these concepts? Well, I call it my Mother’s School of Management. As a seven year old in my second grade, I had only red in my report cards. I was born with bad eyes, genetic myopia they call it, and could not see the board unless I stood next to it. I was tall for my class, so I was relegated to the back benches. You could say I was batting blind. My dad was a super achiever in all senses of the term, and saw his son as a projection of his success story. He verbally castrated me, disowning me. He was in HR, what was then called Personnel Management in the Industrial sector. where he was a Director – Personnel. “Your Daddy is a Big Man” – people told poor tiny near-blind me. I was dismissed from his presence. I see that incident as the youngest sacking based on performance. I was retrenched from my father’s esteem. Well, I was not without a “job” for too long. I got hired real soon! My mom took me in – unconditionally. She said those magic words in that magic October eve, two days before my 8th birthday – “Son, I’ll love you irrespective of what you do or don’t do. But don’t give up before you’ve given it your best shot.”

I was too young then, to know the meaning of pride or shame or confidence. But I responded to raw love – love of a mother for her son. I put everything into it, cajoling my teacher to allow me a front row seat – not because I wanted my studies to catapult me to be a BIG MAN like my Baba was. Far from that. I just wanted my Ma to be happy. I was desperate to reciprocate the love she gave me. The only currency I had for payback was my report card. I came first in the final term, and was promoted. My father was the first to be at the parent teacher meet, and he preened at me. Oh, I made him so proud, he said, just being the Leo he was. My mother had those placid, lustrous Virgo eyes and she looked at me from a distance, far from the accolades she always despised. She had neither pride nor disdain in her eyes – she had love. She could not bring herself to either understand the teacher’s praise or engage in a conversation – for she did not have much English. She needn’t bother, for she was unconcerned at my achievement – she was happy that I tried. Till this day, and she is 75 now, she does not claim any credit for her son’s turnaround. She just loves me unconditionally in whatever I do or don’t do. She just wants me to maximize my potential, that I always give a cent percent. I almost never disappoint her. Not reciprocating her faith in me is too big a price to pay.

A celebrated “mother” for whom I worked as a part-time-volunteer for 3 years, an European nun by the name of Mother Teresa, once said at a prayer meeting I attended at Mother House, AJC Bose Road – “If you judge people, you have no time to love them.” How can I forget the twisted arms of Bapi the Leper at Prem Dan (Park Circus) reaching out eagerly to touch me, his “brother”? How can I forget the 6 year old Mira the Orphan at Sishu Bhavan (AJC Bose Road) bawling as I wept when she was being adopted by a childless European couple – for all the family she ever knew was me, her “uncle”. The school for children of prostitutes at St. Georges (Bowbazar) compound floor where I taught from my class 9th to my 3rd year in college, the platform children at Sealdah station studying at Sister Cyril’s platform school – all of them filled me up with love – the unconditional love of a child for the parent, of a mother for the off spring.

What will a corporate hot spot achieve for me? It is zilch when I can turn back 20 years from now and know that I loved and was loved – without reservations. Let us not hanker for appraisals and appreciation in quantifiable entities. Let us not keep ourselves finite to the possibilities of turning out good documents or earning a fat pay check. Let us spread our wings and soar, a la Jonathan Livingstone Seagull, as we are involved in an Endeavour of far greater import than the cumulative rewards the world’s riches can bestow upon us – we are fostering human relationships. We are reaching out and touching lives. We shall never say the bottle is half empty. For us, the bottle is always half filled. We will never say you can’t. we will say, you can if you try hard enough. We will trust and not back-bite. We will perform and not play politics. We will stand up for each other and be counted.

I will soon move on as my life meanders through an erratic path, according to a Divine Strategem. But I leave behind a bunch of spirited young souls, now motivated and strong, maddened by love, who will state at each of their life’s bottlenecks, “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

Never forget. All things good and lasting are taught by our mothers. I call it Mother’s School of Management. You don’t have an admission test to enroll.

With love,

Jayanta Ray

1.15 am, 28th Jan, 2010.