Remembering N G Uke on his 88th Birthday.

Memories come flooding back on certain dates. Our calenders are reminders. There are specific dates when we remember people, incidents and events. We celebrate those particular days, we put aside some time to reminiscence and talk about our memories, on those specific days.

People in our life move on, some move away, and some go away from the world. All of them who matter, continue to live on in our memory. Although each person leaves an indelible mark on our lives, yet there are some who mean much more to us. A parent is one such entity to whom we owe our life. Then we owe our living, our way of living, our style, our philosophy, attitude, thoughts, beliefs and understanding of life and its situations, also to them

A parent willy nilly teaches us to eat, walk, sleep and everything else that is needed for us to step out into the world. They also mould everything else without any specific effort. We just grow into those moulds.

We all grow up in the shadow of the personality of our parents. A lot of thoughts get engrained on our minds.

My dad was one such giant of a man who left an absolutely indelible mark on me. The first mark that he left was that I was equal to everyone else. In my world and culture a girl is always treated as the inferior  sex. Even the great Manu who compiled rules of behaviour for Hindus has said that Dhol, chamar, pashu, nari, yeh sab tadaan ke adhikari. This means that the Dhol(percussion instrument), cobbler, animal and women  have the right to be beaten.

What can one then expect from a country where these rules of conduct were laid down?

There have been many social activists who tried to break free of these shackles. Leaders like Raja Ram Mohan Roy, and people from Brahmo Samaj of West Bengal tried to introduce the entity and then the equality of women. Raja Ram Mohan Roy managed to get Suttee abolished from India. Widow remarriage also was introduced and widows were allowed to at least live after the death of their husbands!

A lot of other social thinkers tried to remove the bane of Untouchability. Jyotiba Phule, Dr. B R Ambedkar were protoganists in this area. Practice of untouchability is an inhuman practice which only those who have faced this discrimination, can understand. One could be outstanding, be meritorious and yet face the wrath of the general public as one would be  branded as belonging to the Untouchable or Scheduled caste.

Life in India is not easy. One is not free. We are bound by too many do's and dont's.

In this kind of a society, I saw my father wage a lone battle. He tried to tell people that all people are equal. He always advised women to wear slacks.He said it was decent, easy to walk in and gave us freedom of movement. A saree is usually a very restrictive attire. Running to catch a bus, walking up stairs,walking down escalaters, a woman has to look after her saree or she can easily trip and fall. Now I see most youngsters have adopted this easy, smart,comfortable attire.

Daddy would always shake hands with everyone. He did not appreciate anyone touching his feet. That was another way of subjugation, he said. For dad everyone was equal to him. Women would often shy away from shaking hands, because in our culture women do not allow men other than their husbands to touch them. I say why do we have such thoughts? Why do we think of nothing but the worst? Can a man not be a human being and just a human being? Does he always have to have undesirable thoughts? Are these restrictive thoughts not engrained in the minds of women, making them people who cannot trust anyone?

Religion, beliefs, superstitions, get engrained in our minds from childhood. With our restrictive practices we confine the minds of children to our specific beliefs. We do not encourage questioning of any belief. We tell our children to simply obey what we tell them to do. A questioning child is seldom appreciated as we ourseles do not know the answers to many of our beliefs, We simply followed them blindly and expect our children to do the same. Here again my father encouraged questions, arguments, reasoning and debate. We were never asked to believe without understanding. Dad's motto was "Atta Deep bhava" or be your own light. This is from the teachings of Gautama the Buddha who had told his followers not to believe everything he said just because he had said it, but to believe it only if they understood and agreed with the thought.

My dad believed that we have only this one life. There was no past life and no future life. All that we have is this life. We live once and therefore need to live well. We are neither punished for the sins of a past life nor will we benefit by any acts of this life in the future. All punishments and rewards are what we experience in this very life. Live well, help people, be happy and always be willing to teach people.

The words lucky, fortunate and destiny were taboo in his presence. He said that the moment we start using  these words, we start believing in someone else being at an advantage and then we automatically lose hope and do not give our best efforts. We start believing in destiny and give up working towards achieving our goal. We would have already lost half the battle as we would go into that state where we would think of inequality and the dice being loaded in favour of someone else. Preconceived notions and regressive thoughts found no place in his life.

His thinking and teaching was much ahead of his times.

He was a  positive thinker who believed only in himself. He was a  person who had extreme compassion for everyone. He was  kind, considerate and extremely rational. He was a person who went out of his way to help anyone or everyone without any hope for even getting a thank you!

That my friends was my father. I always remember him with a lot of pride, affection and regard.