DAILY DOSE By Bikram Vohra
When we were kids and we misbehaved my Mum would say, wait till your father gets home.
It was like the biggest threat going, the sharpest knife in the toolbox and we would then sit in delicious dread waiting for the Man to come home and set us right.It counted. Like it was a huge deal.
It has changed a bit now. Fathers have become dads, if you follow me.
Let’s take this scenario. Mum turns to kids and says, wait till your dad comes home.
Why, what’s he going to do?
We don’t have to wait, you can call him now, you have his mobile number, better still email him.
That a threat?
Those days calling Dad in office was only permitted if there was a catastrophe. You just did not call office.
Now Mum calls him seventeen times a day to pick up the laundry, buy liquid cleanser on the way back and don’t forget the multi-grain bread. They even argue on the phone.
Tough to shiver in anticipation if dad is trooping down the bread aisles.
Also, kids take you on. They don’t line up and salute any more.
Indolence: Yeah sure, whatever, let him come.
Indifference: what time is he coming?
Insouciance: Woo, scary, is that the best you can do, dad will too pooped to say anything and the cricket is on, he won’t care.
Also, there is so much togetherness now that the lines have gotten blurred. If Father gave an order you did not discuss its merits or lack of them. That was it. He was the distant figure in a big house with seventeen rooms and dozens of people in the larger family and when he came home you knew it.
There was an electricity in the house, people hopped.
Now, we get into the great debate…and dad is lucky if someone says hi and answers the doorbell.