‘The percipience of our lives shall be clear to all someday’

Harsha Rao, Jun 20, 2021, 9:46 AM IST

Fathers are fortunate for Sonora Smart Dodd lived and died before the end of the 20th century.

It was indubitable and certain for her to be ‘cancelled’ for her actions and efforts had she done what she did in the post-2010 age.

Dodd founded Father’s Day in 1910 to honour her American Civil War veteran father William Jackson Smart.

In an age when a word that characterises the capacity to damage an organism is used to subjectively label men and manliness, Dodd definitely had no chance, or more correctly, no platform.

It would be more concerning for Millenial ‘wokesters’ today to know that Dodd’s intention in founding the public holiday was a strong desire and need to equalise Mother’s Day, that was brought into existence in 1908, and recognise fathers’ contribution to family and children’s lives.

It may be an oft-heard and oft-read cliche that it is a tragedy and travesty of our generation that we need days celebrated for phenomenons that are hardwired in our nature.

Fatherhood, or being a parent, is a phenomenon and nothing primes us for it. We are ready and learning only after we become one.

Fatherhood does not bring a sense of responsibility but puts it in place, making its contours clear and visible.

It can never be a duty. Never, if every father had a plot of land, grew his and his family’s food on it and conducted his profession as a hobby.

Fatherhood is also not about inspiring or instilling. All attempts at it will mostly lead to undesirable consequences, at least partially.

Fatherhood is definitely support extended without precision; situations interpreted without patience; indulgences engaged without perfidy.

It is to comprehend that care is neither provided nor fulfiled but transcended and love is never shared or expressed but morphed.

However, the propensity of fatherhood will be overshadowed by the experiences of our industrial actuality.

Probably, it takes a woman, such as Dodd with an illustrious father, to be able to pass through the ‘glass sieve’ that lies atop every father following them as a pall and find the unseen sequence of scars.

The near catholic deprivation of the state of fatherhood is foreboding and a wasteful attempt if explained.

It is only as a father the writer of this piece hopes that the percipience of our lives shall be clear someday and uninsulted.

Until that day of deliverance, Happy Fathers’ Day.