I have been keeping this article since then. Now I am immortalizing it here.
Section 2 Lifestyle THURSDAY June 14 2001 The STAR (Malaysia) - by Pauline S
In The Power and Glory, Graham Greene wrote that "there is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in." Throughmy wistful child's eyes, nothing of this sort ever happened to me. Though Ihad glimpses of future for myself, they remained always that - mere glimpses. With a father like mine, life was a cycle thath began from home, encircled school but returned firmly abck to the home. We, my seven sisters and I, couldn't go anywhere that didný have the words "home"or "school" emblazonned on them.When I was in secondary school, for all that my father cared, the 70s could rage on minus his daughters. Father ruled the home roost with absolute power and school was the only place he permitted us to go.
It was a good thing he believed in education though, for school turned out to be the only place we could truly expand our consciousness of who we really were. It was the place where we really grew and developed. It was the incubator that nurtured our emotional, mental and social growth. We couldn't do that at home. At home, we existed as pale shadows of ourselves - shades that paled even more in the shelter of my fathers's presence.I guess that was one of the reasons why all of us resented our father so much when we were growing up. We wouldn't admit it poenly but there was this unspoken agreement between us that although we knew he was only doing his duty by us, none of us liked the way he discharged it.
For one thing, he was always harsh and unbending in his ways. Rules were rules. Directives were issued. Demands were stated. Obedience was expected. Deviation was punished. And, severely, mind you. Girls or no girls, the lashings that we got paralleled those my brother got. If you wanted to remain clear of the whip of a bamboo whittle, or of the zing of a tapioca stem or, and yes, the pain of a sudden stinging slap, then you leared early on that his rules were made not to be broken.Also, that when you walked around my father, you were always walking on eggshells. Always. Learning to keep out of his bad books was Lesson No. 1. Lesson No. 2, commit Lesson No. 1 to memory. Master both and you could then get on with your life, thank you very much.
Not surprisingly, in our own way, we made Father pay for his harsh manner. If anything, the minute he walked into a room, we would all leave it. If we saw him coming our way, we turned and headed the other. We spoke only when spoken to. We never raised our eyes to meet his. We learned total compliance. On his part, it was his loss that he never really knew who his daughters were except by name. He never understood our dreams and our desires. He didn't even know what were we learning from the very school he was sending us to. Neither did he understand it when we spoke English around him. Around him, none of us laugh out loud. Or lingered long. If caught, we hastily pulled our skirts over our knees and merely hoped that we wouldn't be singled out for some aberration or other.Todey, there are times when I wonder whether he knew the effect he had on us then. That, when we were with him, our manner was always cautious, contrived and guarded; our loyalty queationable and our acquiscience duty bound?
Yet, in all honesty, I must say this. His masterful ways were powerful force that shaped our young lives. He expected and demanded the best from each of us. It was always a terpidation that we could watch his familiar figure cycle into our school compound on report-card days. Woe betide if there was a fleck of red in our mark sheets. His ego wouldn't stand for it. His message was always crystal clear. Ïf I , an ordinary farmhand's son can make it in a foreign country, you can and ought to do far, far better."He believed too in the power of the written word and would brook no errors in format, language, grammar or neatness whenever he made us write a formal letter on his behalf. Because he could add up four figure sums in his head, he challanged us constantly to beat him at the mental games he created at whim.
On top of this, he not only expected us to take part in practically every competition held, we had to emerge the top thee winners in them. If we failed ot do so, he would never accept the excuse that someone else was better than us. His reasoning was that we hadn't put enough effort or tried hard enough. While he criticised every kink he saw in us, he still made us believe that there was no shame in trying over and over again. When we succeeded, he made us write our achievements to every opportune benefactor he could think of. His preserverance was so successful that all of us practically glided through school on meritorious awards and scholarships.
But living under the same roof as him was nothing less than stifling and as we grew older, his controlling ways became harder to bear. Therefore, (for me at least), the first time I actually saw the door into the future really opening for me was when I turned 20 and received and offer to enter varsity. I can still remember the surge of pure joy that eddied within me. I knew I was just a step away to finally beginning my own life - a life not shadowed or hounded by my father's presence. I would be slipping away from his grasp and the knowledge made me realise, with tears in my eyes, that my early years, shackled by the memory of Father's hold on me, were goingto finally and resolutely left behind me.
True to expectations, I had a great time in university! At long last, I felt free and unfettered. I was like Nelson Mandela - finally home after years of imprisonment. My university days were glorious ones. They spelled fatherless days that ran into one another, each offering me the fresh opportunity to be myself - my real self - unafraid and venturesome. I bloomed at university, excelling in the actualisation of the educated, cultivated woman that was me and finding the love of a man who went to become my husband.
As fate would have it, I never was to live at home ever again. Though went back to my hometown for brief periods of time, a page had turned in my life and there was no turning it back. And, each time I stepped into my father's house, I was the inevetable erosion of power he had over us. Though he tried at times to be his old, masterful self, it didn't work up a froth anymore nor did it create ripples of yesteryears. We were all grown women now. Women he was coming to grudgingly respects as individuals with minds and wills of their own making. Educated women, making strides into their careers in a way that left him standing at the sidelines, yet growing with pride.
With the wisdom and ability to forgive that come with age, I look back at my father and no longer see the fierce man I resented so much for ruling the first 19 years of my life with such iron hand. I see instead a man who, despite his traditional upbringing in a village in India, knew the worth of educating daughters. Given how easily a young girl can be led astray, I see niw why he believed that his heavy-handed will was what was needed to keep his girls focused, not only on the power of education and knowledge, but on value of housework, God's word, and disciplined spirit.
Funny thing though, I can't help noticing now that whenever a new door opens in my life, it is still tha shades of my father in me that dictate my approach to it. I have my father's intelligence, his affirmative attitude, his self-discipline, his preservering spirit, his attention to detail, his devotion to duty and his unflinching self-belief. The only thing I do differently is I temper my firmness with kindness. Perhaps that was a risk my father was not prepared to take. He did what he believed was the right thing to do and that is part of the reason why we are where we are today.
To an indomitable man like him, who will never read this article unless someone explains it to him, I wish to make it known that fathers like him only get real accolades much later in life - after children grow up and reflect on the truths they could not see when they were young. To him and all the other fathers who want only best for their children, Happy Father's Day.
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