He is my hero

For every girl her dad is a hero and I am no different. He was my hero just because he was my dad till this incident happened. But before narrating that incident I really want to say what he had been to the women in his family.

As a brother:

He grew up as a brother of two sisters in various rural areas. His dad was a station master and hence he did not stick to a place for long. His ambition, dream desire was to come to Madrass (now known as Chennai ).  After the demise of his father, when he had just completed PUC (equivalent to 12^th) he imprinted his feet in the lands of Chennai. He stayed in a bachelor’s room. He was a lot in touch with the film industry. Father and a group of friends had leased theaters, they were in touch with distributors. He had a lot of opportunities to go out of the line and get spoilt. He had people smoking, drinking and going beyond around him. He even had girls proposing (I have seen love letters which he had saved to show mom, just to make sure they were transparent.) But he did not do anything that would affect his sisters’ wedding. He still tells me just one thing ‘Do anything you want but keep your family in mind.’  

As a husband:

I really appreciate dad as a ‘husband’ most times. The way he treats and understands mom could make any girl envious of my mom. Dad holds a BCom degree with a lot of PG diploma courses, all self earned and paid. He was self made. He was from the country sides and did not have enough exposure to English. Where as, mom was rich enough to afford BA and MA in literature. Dad has never had even little bit of ego because mom has a degree higher than him. He was so supportive to mom that she is a vice principal of a school today. Mom had to go to school in the weekends at times, till night at times and those days dad would take care of my sister and I.  This might not sound so big to most people but it is. That shows how he treats mom equal to him. They both learn a lot from each other. He is very good in vocabulary as he reads 6 english news papers a day as a part of his profession. But he is weak in grammar which my mom helps him with. My mom learns professionalism from him. I would say a MAN qualifies to be considered as a soldier only if he is a good HUSBAND to his wife and treats her well.

As a father:

This is going to be the longest of all as I know him better as a dad. Every birthday he would ask me what gift I want and I will have nothing at all to say. Because he has got me all that I need understanding it without me asking for it.

He somehow found that I had something in me to write before I understood it myself. He motivated me to write to newspapers. When I say motivation I am not referring to just talking to me about writing to papers. He used to check all the three morning English news papers we subscribe for columns where I could write. He then would fold the column and paste it to my study desk. Initially I always saw and  ignored it but he did not get even a bit tired. He did that every day and slowly I started writing to papers because I pitied dad for his efforts. It was a photo caption contest conducted by IE and it was a 75 day long daily contest. First 2-3 never got the prize and I lost interest. But he did not get tired of it. He continued pinning the photo to desk. I wrote just for his sake and slowly the interest grew. I finally won the prize too.

The IE contest- first news paper entry

 From then on, dad pinned pages that called for articles and I wrote to them. Whenever I wrote to news papers he would wait in the morning for the paper more eager than me. He would search for my article and if its published he would wake me up with that good news. A lot of it got published and today I have an album full of news paper cuttings with my name on it to flaunt with. Only because I have him as my dad. 

I started to blog. I wrote stories, articles and all crap there. He used to patiently read each and every word written on my blog. He will even notice the changes I make to the layout of the page, however minute it might be. He discusses every article I write and give his view. I don’t know if every dad will do this but he has never bothered about the money he spends to motivate me. I wrote a manuscript which was just 10,000 words long. In spite of knowing well that it did not even fit the publishing requirement of most publishers I wished to send it. I just told him casually and the next day he had four copies of my manuscript printed, spiral bound and was couriered to 4 publishers. That’s one reason I wanted to make my next manuscript a real good one which is worth publishing and worthy of his efforts of sending.

I wanted to print visiting cards for my blog so that I can distribute it to people I meet. I had a bloggers meet the next day. I just told him how people give cards at such meets and how I wished I had one in the morning. Also I showed him the design I would love to have if I had one. That evening when he returned from office he surprised me with a bunch of cards printed.

I liked making short movies, just like EVERYONE else. He encouraged me making some meaningful short films but always made sure I was within the safe limits. One day we were planning to make a stop motion and suddenly in the evening I found something called White board animation. I called him and told him about that. I have no idea where he went and how he found it, he was back home in the night holding a white board. I just had a vague idea of making a white board animation but he made sure he did his part to make the dream clear in me. One of my short stories was made into a short film by a team of professionals. It was screened in AVM Preview theater and an interview of mine was published in deccan chronicle. It was my dream come true to see my interview as a blogger, a story-teller. He understood what it means to me and that night I got a framed copy as a gift from him.

If you have a dad like mine, no doubt you will fulfill all your dreams however silly or serious it is.

The incident:

I had spoken about this incident already in my blog but it doesn’t pain me to write about it again. That was a Sunday and we were returning after shopping a fast track watch for me. On our way back home, we stopped at a signal. It was a long signal and was a busy street too. I looked around and there was a female who had her clothes torn. She had not covered the top half of her body. She looked mentally challenged. There were so many people who passed by her in the platform; few men ogled at her breasts. I was completely irritated noticing the perverted look on two three men who passed by her. The way they were cheap and enjoyed the poor state of the female pained me a lot. I was a school student and I did not know how to react to this. I felt bad for the female, I wanted to do something but did not know what. The signal turned green and my father raised the accelerator. I felt delicate to discuss this with my dad but I felt so shaken that I wanted to tell someone. I reluctantly opened the topic to dad.

‘Dad did you see a female sitting in the platform near the signal?’ I asked.

‘No ma, why? Did you see someone you know?’ he asked. I was relieved that he did not look at her. I don’t know how to explain that feeling I had when I thought of my dad being a male and a female being topless near us. It was very uncomfortable for the first time that dad and I were from different genders.

‘There was a female, who I think is mentally challenged. Her clothes were torn and she did not cover herself properly, dad. She almost had nothing to wear on top.’ I stopped with that did not know how to tell him the way few men looked at her.

He did not even think before he said ‘Why didn’t you tell me? We could have got her a nighty or something.’

Maybe he did not buy clothes to cover up that female, to wipe of the nudity on her but his thought made me proud. I felt relieved that my dad’s not one among those who passed by that female taking advantage of her pathetic state.

That was when I saw a real soldier, a hero in my dad; for the first time, not because he was MY DAD but for who he was.

Dad, I love you.


My dad- Vasudevan

This post is a part of #Soldierforwomen in association with BlogAdda.com