Bachwan

Living with Dad I get to hear all of his constant babbling, most of which makes no sense. Today he asked me to bring him all of his bachwan (kids). I said which ones, he said all of those little kids that I have. He asked "Where did they all go? They must be playing." Isn't that the cutest thing.

I'm not a parent, so I don't know what it must feel like to be reunited with your kids every evening after a long day at work. I just know that Rekha coming to Boitano on some random day makes all of our day. Can you imagine how dad used to feel as he headed home, knowing that at home awaited seven children. I mean that must been something.

I guess he still thinks of us as little bachwans. So precious.

Happy 39 Years Mom and Dad!

Mom and Dad never really celebrated their anniversary. Growing up, our gift to them was some sort of video production of us dancing to a Bollywood song that the older children orchestrated, and we would play it for them with a reaction of "good" or "thank you". I remember on a few occasions Dad would get Mom a sari or go into a jewelry store with the right intentions but walk out empty handed, shocked about how much gold had risen to. (Imagine his shock if he knew where it was today!).

I think it's great how supportive we are with Mom, all heading to Boitano to have dinner with her, getting her flowers, etc, but I wonder what she is going through internally on this day.

I hope that however she is feeling, Dad's constant asking of "Kunty" today, reminds her that the man that she's been married to for 39 years does/did love her.

Happy Anniversary Mom & Dad!

I can teach you

During his days in Calcutta, Dad sustained himself by tutoring rich kids. Because math and science came naturally to him, he was sought after by his classmates to tutor them in the subjects. The stories he told of his tutoring have become more stuff of legend. In his later years one of his favorite comebacks in any situation regardless of what was said was, "I can teach you." We all heard him say this to our teachers, the car mechanic, the grocery store clerk, even himself sometimes.

Dad and my forged signature

We could all remember the funny aspects of Dad like him yelling "Doooooorthy!!!!" at six a.m. and him leaving the bathroom door open whenever he would use the restroom, but there was one instance where Dad showed his true parental side towards me. I was in the eighth grade and I got a C- on a History test. Unfortunately for this class a parent signature was required for all tests under a C. This was the beginning of a new quarter and Dad just yelled at me for my previous report card so there was no way I was showing him a C-. I had no choice but to forge the signature. The next day my teacher looked at me and asked me "Who signed this?". She told me that I was going to talk about this issue with the Vice Principal the next day so I had to tell Dad about the test and his forged the signature. That day I went up to Dad's room to see him sitting there with his thick frame brown glasses sitting Indian style on his bed reading a some programming language book. I told him about the C- and forging the signature to obviously get yelled at, but he also told me that he would tell the principal that he signed the test so I would not have to go to Saturday School. Due to the lack of precision in the signature I was forced to confess to forgery and I was Saturday school bound. They called Dad and told them that I forged the signature and I talked to Dad on the phone while sitting in the office and in these words he said "You know what I am proud that you told the truth so now you have to face the consequences for your poor decision." Every other time I got in trouble before and after this issue his reaction to my problem was anger, but I still to this day wonder why his reaction was so calm and collected for the forged signature.

Lines

Dad was definitely reminiscent of his childhood, but rarely spoke of his parent's parenting. I don't know if this is only western thing to do, but I can't help to think back on some of the things dad did for us that had a profound impact on our lives. Because it is a well known fact that he ran away from his own home at a young age, its clear that his own parenting was largely figured out as he went along. I do think he experimented quite a bit (much to some of the elder Prasad's dismay), but you really hit home on a couple of things.

One of them was, everyday, regardless of the day, under any circumstance, we had to write a full page story. It was called "lines." I fondly recall turning the page of those KMart notebooks and twisting and turning every story I could think of to fill out a page. Sometimes, we'd write with really big handwriting. Others we'd paraphrase a book we read, or just write about our day. There was no excuses. Resistance was futile.

No discussion of my childhood is complete with out broaching the subject of lines. My father, being the engineer he was, lacked creativity but bore through each sentence looking for technical grammar or punctuation mistakes. He was militant about our hand writing, often making us rewrite any "lines" that were unsatisfactory. We'd then have to show him the rework.

He would have us read one another lines, make corrections for each other, then he would read them to ensure that we were writing well and also able to correct others work.

What was your favorite "lines" memory?