Fatherly care and motherly love

EVERY morning, as I drive past the quiet residential stretch just before the sun rises, I spot a familiar figure — a tall, broad-shouldered, turbaned Sikh well past his fifties. Yet what strikes me every time is not just his towering presence, but the tender bundle he holds in his arms — a baby, perhaps no older than three months. Clad in soft woollens, sleeping peacefully or cooing, the child rests in his grandfather’s lap as if it’s the safest place in the world.

For weeks, I noticed him gently rocking the baby on a wooden bench outside his home, whispering unheard lullabies, often tapping the infant’s back like a skilled dholak player with utmost softness. One chilly morning, something in the serene image pulled at my heartstrings more than usual. I stopped my car, rolled down the window, and smiled. He smiled back, eyes twinkling with pride. “My daughter had to return to work early,” he said in his crisp Punjabi-accented English. “So I am on duty now… but this is my promotion, from father to grandfather.” That morning, I saw what (grand)fatherly care truly meant — not a grand gesture, but quiet, consistent devotion.

A few months ago, I was on the golf course with retired defence officers. We were discussing the outbreak of India-Pakistan hostilities. Most of them were talking about finishing things “once and for all.” Nationalism was running high, and tempers were flaring. Yet a colonel stayed unusually quiet. He wasn’t even swinging properly, eyes glued to his phone.

“You seem distracted?” I asked casually. “My son is posted on the LoC,” he replied without raising his eyes. “I’m waiting for a message — just to know he’s alright.” The entire group fell silent.

It’s easy to chant slogans, pass judgments, demand action when the battle is distant, impersonal. But everything changes when it’s your own. When your own child is on the battlefront, war is no longer a noble abstraction; it’s a huge personal risk. That day, I realised: fatherly care doesn’t always come in a physical form. Sometimes, it’s a silent prayer behind a rigid face, a hopeful glance at a blinking screen, and a heart pacing faster than any device could measure.

And what of mothers? I have seen them too. At railway stations and airports — hugging their sons in uniform, or returning from foreign lands, holding their faces for just a second longer. Their question? Always the same: “Beta, khana khaya (did you eat)?”

They may know that their sons are fighting atop glaciers and along borders, have flown away from the nest to earn their livelihood, but they still worry about whether they have eaten well. That’s the tenderness of motherly love — simple, rooted in care, consistent.

The pride of a grandfather, the silence of a soldier’s father, the doting mothers who enquire about chapatis instead of gunfire — they have taught me the real meaning of care. Love, after all, is not loud. It simply stays.

Musings