Falling apple

I watched my dad iron his clothes one by one. From the time I could remember, he has enjoyed ironing clothes. As he ironed there were two stacks forming on the bed, one had his clothes and the other had everyone else’s. That was really unacceptable to me. After all I was more like my dad, I thought. My clothes belong in the first stack. I protested, and in a very deliberate manner I moved my clothes from the generic pile to the other stack. I said “Like papa”.

I was probably eight when that happened. I have always wanted to be like my dad. He always seemed to have a very reasonable explanation for the things he did. When we were commended or punished it always came with a clear explanation. So I always tried real hard to be a lot like him. Starting from the mock episodes of shaving where I applied his shaving cream to my face and used a stick to scrape it off to the time when I started driving and copied every single driving style of his, it was always about doing it the way he did it.

Over the years I have lost that obsession. I guess moving away from home and living far away for several years probably did that to me. I assumed that the similarities might have waned off. On the contrary, when I pay attention to some of my mannerisms, as I grow older, I realize that I have become even more like my father. And this time I was not even trying. These similarities are hardly as superficial as the way I shave or drive but rather more to do with my mannerisms and approach to life. Even when I deal with day to day issues I come to the pleasant realization that most of it is a mirror image of his life.

Its funny how I have become more like him when I was trying the least. I guess the apple doesn’t really fall too far from the tree after all.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mathematics and I

I have had a long standing battle with mathematics. Sometimes I think a great part of where I am today is shaped by my dislike towards the subject. I sit here today and laugh at all the attempts I have made to avoid it like the plague and how it has hounded me all my life. A below average student in my early years, neither mathematics nor any other subject for that matter evoked such strong emotions in me. I was what you would call a free spirit not tied down by the little things such as studies. I would ignore all the subjects equally and there was no deep seated hate for any one subject. I hated them all without preference. Then eighth grade happened. I was never the competitive kind myself but in the eighth grade it was thrust upon me. I was trying to continue my indifference to education but it was not to be. For some reason without my even attempting anything in that direction I came to be in the top ten of the class. Suddenly there were adulations and everyone including my parent
Read more

Fragility of social order

I was browsing a Time magazine the other day and reading about Dafur and Africa in general and it got me wondering about the very basic things in life that we take for granted. I walk on the streets unaware that there is an underlying social order that stops from anybody walking up to me and slapping me. Nobody thinks of simply walking into my house one day and asking me to get out of the house so that he could live there. Nobody walks into my work place and tells me that I have lost my job and he is now going to work in my place. But this kind of atrocities happen in many parts of the world as we continue blissfully unaware that we are secure in a unspoken order that our society follows. In many a conversations people wonder why certain countries never make it out of their anarchy and chaos. More often then not most arguments hinge on that premise that if they cant help themselves then they don’t deserve any better. One of the most common statements I have encountered is that if India
Read more

You have been Trumped!

The phenomenon that is Trump is for all to see. Everybody waited with baited breath on that cold Tuesday night, each with their own small prayer. As the night grew darker some sobbed while some cheered and that is how Democracy works. Like the words of the fake president in "The American President" - "You gotta really want it". Democracy is a very humbling experience. It is the great equalizer between the high tower elites to the small man on main street. At the end of it all, it is the power of the voters that speak. You may or may not agree with it, but the power of democracy is in its ability to reshape history as dictated by the masses and not necessarily by conventional wisdom. Conventional wisdom states that Trump should have been out of the race about 16 months ago. For every atrocious thing that he has said, there are several examples of people who have fallen on the wayside for having said or done way less. But then conventional wisdom and Trump do not
Read more