The truth about dads and moms...

                                                                
The reason for the lack of posts recently and the root-cause of this post, rest solely on the shoulders of my wonderful dad. While visiting me, he realized that his daughter, upon her ascendancy to adulthood, has forgotten some of his teachings.

Thus he decided to refurbish his currently-rusted and recently- underused parenting skills.

One of his missions was to get me to pray mom-ishtyle. My rituals include a quick word with God whenever life starts acting-up and heart-felt thanks when life behaves. My mom's everyday prayers are not simply light-the-lamps-bow-and-pray routine. They are elaborate and extensive (not to mention time-consuming). Dad wanted the whole nine yards, just like my mom does.

So, mostly to get my daughter to pray and less-ly to humor him, I set everything up. With my daughter sitting next to me on the mat, my dad and I started with a very old, very long Tamil prayer song. As we sung in perfect harmony, it brought back childhood memories rushing.

Time for some truth- I don't know the middle section of this song. Never got around learning it. As we approached that section, fearing scoldings of the forgotten times, I slowed down, then stopped to let my dad carry the song over.

To my utter surprise my dad stopped at the exact same stanza and looked at me expectantly. And then both of us broke into loud guffaws totally ludicrous for the solemn  prayer times!

That's when it registered that he never knew those stanzas too! And that my dear friends, is why I didn't learn them!