I am writing this from Istanbul. The last time I was here was 14 years ago with my parents. A year later, my father died unexpectedly. Though I’ve travelled extensively since, I never found the courage to come back. Time, eventually, does its work. This week, I finally returned to Istanbul with my younger daughter and husband before she leaves for university.
It is impossible to be here and not think of my father. He found Istanbul endlessly fascinating. As I revisit places we explored together, I find myself urging my daughter to be curious. To travel not just to eat, shop and be entertained, but to understand the forces that shape a city, to learn its history, engage with its culture and ask questions. These are lessons I learnt from my father. And it struck me that fathers leave behind far more than memories. They shape the way we see the world and our place in it. Which is perhaps why, standing in a city my father loved, I found myself thinking about fatherhood itself.
My father’s father and his uncles were authoritarian men. Their children feared them — there was neither opportunity nor desire to be close. This was the era of men returning home in their suits, handing their briefcases to their wives, and after dinner withdrawing into a quiet corner to read or ruminate. Fathers decided their children’s futures: education, profession, marriage. Affection was not in the job description.
Things had improved only slightly by the time I was born. My father was, in many ways, an exception among the fathers of his generation. My friends’ fathers were distant, aloof, rarely affectionate — though I’m sure not lacking in love or concern. They were figures to be respected, and, on occasion, feared. My father, on the other hand, was often a friend, though he didn’t hesitate to correct us when we took a misstep. Good-natured, always gentle and full of joy, he had a thorough understanding of child (and perhaps human) psychology, along with a feverish enthusiasm for knowledge and the arts: literature, art, music, cinema. I never had to open an encyclopaedia in his presence. There was no Google when I was growing up, but he knew everything about everything.
My friends were surprised by our relationship and his ease with children — not just his own, but everybody else’s. Their interactions with their fathers were largely confined to practical matters, academic performance and discipline. With my dad, they could share everything. Take his advice on personal matters. They never felt judged. And because he had a fantastic sense of humour, they would sit around and laugh with him in a way they couldn’t at home. Their own fathers often didn’t know what grade they were in or what subjects they enjoyed — but were always present when the report card arrived, to express disappointment or delight, the latter conveyed with much restraint. My father was not just my parent. He was, for many of us, proof that a father could also be a person you actually wanted to spend time with, share books and secrets with, confide in and lean on when life let you down.
Men who are raising Gen Z and Gen Alpha are far more open to taking on responsibilities that extend beyond signing off school fees. My husband was never great at storytelling or feeding a toddler, but he did tuck the girls into bed – even if his bedtime stories were so bizarre, the characters so cheerfully mixed up, that they’d end up laughing instead of sleeping. He is far more easy-going with our daughters, and a lot more accepting of their occasional teenage snark than fathers of previous generations would have tolerated. And yet, look around any parent-teacher meeting, or the waiting area at the paediatrician’s, and you still see mostly mothers. Too many fathers still think of involvement as babysitting. It is your own child. It is not babysitting. Working mothers plan the lunch boxes, arrange the swimming lessons, track the school terms. Fathers of this generation know the parent-child relationship matters. They want to be involved. They’re just not always willing to do the unglamorous work that involvement actually requires.
But then there is a younger father I know whose children are closer to him than to their mother. He gets them ready for school, occasionally cooks for them, goes over the school lessons over the weekend and is emotionally available to them. This friend grew up with a father who worked overseas – they met about twice a year. He knows exactly what he missed, and he has decided quite deliberately, that his children never will. I know yet another father, married to my friend. In his thirties, he is devoted to his children and as involved in their upbringing as their mother.
I find it mystifying that we speak so much more readily about motherhood than fatherhood. Our cultural and religious imagination is filled with images of mothers and children: Yashoda and Krishna, Mother Mary and the infant Jesus. The father-child relationship has rarely occupied the same emotional space in our storytelling. Yet a good father can shape a child’s inner world just as profoundly.
Looking back, my dad understood something about fatherhood that most men of his generation never did. The qualities that made him unusual then — emotional openness, curiosity about his children, conversations and genuine involvement — are what younger fathers in India are at least beginning to recognise as worth having. Whether they do the work to get there is another matter entirely.
But the aspiration itself shows there’s a shift. A generation ago fathers were content with providing for the kids, now they want to have a relationship with them. As much as we know these designated days are at least in part marketing exercises, a day to celebrate fathers is welcome. Not because our fathers and husbands need another mug with ‘best dad ever’ printed on it, but because a father-child relationship is worth acknowledging. And celebrating.
Shunali Khullar Shroff is an author, essayist and podcaster based in Mumbai. The views expressed are personal
