From helping you take your first step and playing those inane little games you would play with the girls in kindergarten to driving you down for matches and piano lessons and teaching you life’s greatest lessons, fathers do it all!
While many children consider their mothers to be their best friend and confidante, tomorrow being Father's Day, MetroPlus tries to decipher the kind of relationship children share with their daddy dearest.
Ayush Gupta, a student of engineering says: “My relationship with my father has changed over the years. When I was small, he was the one who taught me to ride a cycle, to swim and he helped me with my studies. When I got to high school and junior college, I would go to him mostly for money and sometimes for advice. Now, we are real buddies and spend time together over the weekends either playing golf or staying in and bonding over a drink.”
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Universally, a father's fundamental role has been to provide protect his children. According to Riddhi Mahtani, a young home-baker, “when it comes to daughters, the relationship shared with the father remains fairly similar throughout her life. A father will always be his daughter’s hero and she will always be daddy’s little girl.”
Fathers are usually the ones who motivate their children to pursue their talents and chase their dreams.
“Being a State-level hockey player himself, my dad was keen I took up the game too. But it didn’t stop there. He ensured he sent me for summer coaching for other sports too which is why today, I’m actually considering a career in the field of sports management,” says collegian Ashwin Chinappa.
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Being a single parent is difficult but there are fathers who have pulled it off with élan. Varun Mohan, a HR executive who lost his mother at the age of five says: “My father has always played a dual role at home. When we were still in school, he cared for us like our mother would. As we grew up, he has come to be our friend and my sister and I can talk to him about anything and everything.”
Some would think that it is the daughters who go to their fathers with all their worries and troubles but according to school counsellor Shireen Sait, “As boys grow older (into adulthood especially), they turn to their fathers when they make important decisions. From girlfriend woes to career counselling, young men often feel their old man knows best!”
A father’s love is like no other. Comforting, strong and sincere, a child always needs and wants it irrespective of distance and time. They add value to our lives but most importantly, fathers are usually the ones who don’t tell us how to live but live instead and let us watch them do it which is perhaps why English poet George Herbert asserted: “One father is more than a hundred schoolmasters”.