Global Parents’ Day Special

Parents: My First School of Humanity

Some lessons my parents taught me were understood only after I became a father — and fully felt after becoming a grandfather.

Image: Leonardo.ai

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At this stage of life, when I myself am a grandfather, writing about parents feels both beautiful and difficult. Beautiful because memories return warmly; difficult because one realises how much remained unsaid and ununderstood.

Now, at seventy-five, as a father, grandfather, and someone who has watched generations grow under the same roof, I often realise something strange — we understand our parents in layers.

As children, we love them. As adults, we question them. And much later in life, we finally begin to understand them.

I lost my father when I was only twenty-two. He had a sudden cardiac arrest. At that age, one believes he understands life. Looking back now, I realise I had understood only a fraction of the man he truly was.

My father was a remarkably patient man. I say “remarkably” because patience sounds simple until life repeatedly tests it. With eight children in a joint family setup, not so abundant resources, responsibilities stretching endlessly, and relatives with endless expectations, he still carried himself with calm dignity. I inherited some of that patience from him, though nowhere close to the amount he possessed naturally.

What amazes me even today is how emotionally open he was for his times. In those days, many parents maintained a visible distance from their children. Yet we could sit and play cards with him, joke with him, disagree with him, and most importantly, talk to him.

Communication was sacred in our home.

Father had introduced something that even today feels revolutionary to me. We siblings shared a notebook kept open to everyone in the family — even parents. Anyone could write grievances against anyone: a sibling, another family member, or even our parents themselves. But there was one rule — nobody would react immediately. Every Saturday after dinner, all nine of us would sit together and calmly discuss the week’s issues. Nine, because my eldest sister got married when I was just ~4 years old.

Today people attend workshops to learn communication. My father quietly practiced it decades ago at home.

There is another memory that captures Father’s genius even more vividly.

When we moved to our new home in early 1958, every room glowed with ordinary incandescent bulbs, the norm then. But Father had discovered tube lights, something quite new and modern at the time. The catch was simple and stark: a bulb cost roughly two rupees; a tube light cost twenty. For a family of our size, that gap was considerable.

So one Saturday, it became an agenda item during family meet.

It was collectively decided that every family member, children included, would contribute from their pocket money into a common fund. The goal: replace the bulbs, one room at a time, with tube lights. To keep everyone accountable, a fine system was introduced. Five paise for smaller lapses, not waking up on time, dawdling before school, listening to the radio past lights-out. Ten paise for graver offences , unfinished homework, or worse, a note from the teacher.

Nobody wanted to pay that ten paise fine.

We were allowed to impose a fine on father too…he would contribute 10 paise whenever he ate or even asked for something to eat that he was not allowed, like a ‘full papad’ or extra ghee on roti.

Within a year, six of the eight rooms had tube lights.

What Father had quietly done was extraordinary. He had turned a simple household upgrade into a lesson about collective responsibility, personal discipline, and the satisfaction of earning something together. We did not feel managed. We felt involved. Looking back, I realise this was not about the tube lights at all, it was about teaching eight children that a family functions best when everyone has both a stake and a role.

One of the biggest sacrifices I understood only later was financial. We were not poor, but not super rich either, but Father spent on our education, even on the daughters, far beyond what was comfortably affordable. I pointed out ‘daughters because, in those days, not many did it. He ensured I studied in the best school and later the best college possible. As children, we naturally accept such things. Only after we ourselves become parents, do we understand the real maths, permutations and combinations parents do to reach those decisions, the compromises, postponed comforts for self, and hidden financial stress parents absorb without making their children feel burdened.

One memory remains permanently etched in my heart.

A very close friend of mine from college - a girl -had passed away. I had spoken little about it, but somehow Father sensed the storm inside me. One day, without hesitation or awkwardness, he took me in his arms and gently initiated the conversation himself. In an era when fathers often avoided emotional subjects with sons, he chose empathy over silence.

That moment made me feel deeply safe and understood. It instilled in me lesson, sowed a seed, which blossomed into a tree when I interacted with my daughters and even to some extent with my granddaughters.

If there was one thing some of us siblings occasionally disliked, it was his tendency to forgive certain close relatives too easily, even when they were clearly wrong. At times we would get irritated seeing him accommodate behaviour that felt unfair. But he would simply say, “Family matters more than these small issues.”

Back then, we saw it as excessive softness. Today, I see emotional largeness.

Though I still feel he should have cared more for his health. He loved food immensely and often ignored what his body probably needed. Perhaps people who spend their lives caring for others rarely learn to care equally for themselves.

My mother, meanwhile, was the quiet strength of our home. She was our moral compass, our emotional anchor, and in her quiet way, our spiritual guide.” If Father created openness, she created warmth. She may not have spoken as much as him, but her presence gave the house an emotional balance. Looking back, I realise that while Father taught us how to express ourselves, Mother taught us how to hold relationships together gently.

After Father’s passing, another realisation slowly unfolded before me. I discovered how deeply respected and loved he truly was , not only by people his age, but by elders, youngsters, relatives, and acquaintances alike. Respect can come from position or authority. But genuine love earned across generations comes only from character.

Today, when I see my daughters and granddaughters speaking openly, sharing emotions without fear, and valuing relationships beyond ego, I often smile quietly.

Somewhere in their DNA lives a part of the man who taught seven children to sit together every Saturday and talk honestly.

And perhaps that is what parents truly leave behind , not wealth, not property, but ways of being human.

Writing this brought back voices, faces, laughter, and silences I had carefully folded away with time. For a little while today, I was not seventy-three again — I was simply a son.

Tagging Monika Mahadev and Smriti Pathak for this beautiful prompt for writing and also thanking Capt. Vinod Bhardwaj for drawing my attention to it.