“What a change! Those days, if parents threw caution to the winds to expose their children to the ways of the world, parents these days are proving to be more timid than their kids.”
“How true, when I was eleven year-old, my mother had been to her parental home for her fourth confinement,” he continued. “Even as she delivered my third sister, the Godavari was in spate like never before, and the steamer service too was put on hold for want of safety. But underscoring the fact of life that someone would be around always to aid and abet the lawbreaking, there were boats in wait to ferry the willing on the sly, of course, for a premium. Though my father was law abiding otherwise, maybe driven by the impulse of espying the new arrival, risking our lives he ventured across the unruly river with me; why we were not even someway into that hazardous voyage, giving me scares the boat began to rock but my father’s imposing presence and his assurance that there were expert swimmers on board, just in case, turned my sense of scariness into a feeling of daring. But later in life, I always felt that he shouldn’t have ventured on that voyage putting our lives at risk; after all, he could’ve waited to espy the new arrival, but then that’s what he was, a fearless man till the very end. Well the way he faced premature death was bravado no less.”
“Isn’t it illustrative that the dividing line between daring and risking is wafer-thin?”
“Well, my father was innately bold,” he continued. “Oh, the way he ventured out whenever there was a burglary alert in the neighborhood! Why with a stick in my hand, I too wasn’t afraid to follow suit; it was his daring that might’ve percolated down into my childhood subconscious, enabling me to imbibe his credo in good measure. Although, he softened with age, he remained bold, and how tough he was with the in-laws of one of my sisters when they came up with their ludicrous post-wedding demands. As a matter of principle he didn’t want to yield and when they hinted at abandoning the bride then and there, he told them that he would ensure they took her along with them, and after that, it was left for them to harm her at their own peril. If anything, his stance then summed up the man in him, a la Alec Guinness in the Bridge on the River Kwai, and that called their bluff, and all was well in the end. If only the fathers of the afflicted brides can muster half of my dad’s courage, I’m sure dowry-deaths, like sati, would be a thing of the past.”