Happy Father’s Day, Dad!

Krishna Sharma

Writer Krishna Sharma

Dads are absurd beings when it comes to writing about them. Because you do not find them at home that often, you do not interact with them for as much as you do with moms. And because they hardly show their emotions like moms do, you miss a lot of opportunities when you want to have a candid talk with them.

At least that was the case with my father for as long as he was with us. As high school headmaster he was often away from home on weekdays. And on weekends and holidays he was either at the farmland with other workers or with uncles and villagers discussing and working on the road extension project, and the likes.

I do not have a lot of childhood memories with him since he was gone on a kind of ‘banprasth ashram’ (a Hindu tradition of leaving home for self discovery after raising and settling the family) when I was 12. He returned home after about two and a half decades of his stormy life abroad. He had calmed down a lot when he returned. And he lived the rest of his life with his mother of a hundred plus years and his other-half before he breathed his last peacefully in 2018.

Although he was gone for so long, his good works were left to be remembered during those times he was absent from home and the community. The village in the plains of west Nepal where we had migrated in late seventies from the hills was less developed than where we came from. It had a very narrow road because of the encroachment from row houses on each side. It was also a barn for their cattle. During the rainy season, the road would be simply unwalkable. Dad tried convincing the indigenous Tharu villagers about the widening of the road so that the two bullock carts from opposite directions could easily pass without a hitch and the neighborhood would look nicer and spacious. But they would not buzz. The panchayat was called to endorse the idea. The road was extended in the presence of a local police and the cattle were banned to be kept on the road. The villagers were forced to make the barn of their own behind their houses.

Krishna Sharma with his father

I remember villagers cursing dad. But that lasted only for a while. As he managed to sway them the following Spring to bring sand and stones from the nearby Rohini River and pour on the road, the road looked much cleaner and walk-able even during monsoon. When ‘master jee’ (a nick name the villagers had given to him out of respect) had become a household name in the village, dad was not there.

When he returned, the road he had left was blacktopped. Mom said, even until a few days before he died, she saw him enjoying cycling on the road with one hand on the handle and the other waving at the villagers.

Happy Father’s Day, Dad!