It\\\'s not too late to love your father

Today is Father's Day. Children will show their respect and love to their fathers. Cards and gifts will be pouring into fathers' mailboxes. There will be festivals around the world, honouring fathers and celebrating fatherhood, paternal bonds, and the influence of fathers in society.
Coincidentally, maybe intentionally, United Nations has declared the same day of June 15 as "World Elder Abuse Awareness Day" to remind children and the social guardians that when a father grows old he is neglected and in some cases they are abominably abused. Elder abuse is now a global social issue with around 4.0 to 6.0 per cent of elderly people experiencing some form of maltreatment inside home and in society. The global population of people, aged 60 years and older, will more than double, from 542 million in 1995 to about 1.2 billion in 2025.
Fathers in our society are the most misunderstood persons. A father, to many of us who have been groomed in old days, is a person only to fear. When father was home there was a curfew imposed and when father was not around a freedom was declared. Fathers were always reserved. A grown-up child could hardly embrace his father closely enough to feel his heartbeats.
Abbé Prévost, a French author and novelist, wrote in his novel Manon Lescaut: "The heart of a father is the masterpiece of nature."
Father is like a banyan tree who always wants to shade his children from any harm. Children hide behind his branches, both literally and emotionally. Father is like a mountain that shields his children from the chill blowing from the north. Father is like a lion who watches guard day and night so no predator may dare to venture the abode where his children are sleeping. Father is like a green coconut that feels hard when you feel its exterior; but when you try to see what is inside you discover only sweet milk and soft meat. Father is a soft kernel inside a hard shell.
You never saw your father crying because there is a strong gate-valve in his tear duct that blocks his tears from releasing. A father also cries when pains are unbearable. If he has to cry he cries only inside a room with its door locked. He washes his faces lest nobody should see the stains on his cheeks left by his tears.
I am already an elderly. Sometimes I wonder how my own life would be like when I would be too old to fend for myself! I fancy that my sunset life would be wonderful only if I had a laptop, my Facebook account and a smart phone. I will not feel lonely when my only son would be busy taking care of his family and raising his children far, far away. I may not have the fortune to play with my grandchildren who are being raised in North America! Never mind! As long as I would get the online companionship offered by technology life hopefully will not be so boring.
Technology has promised us to let us do anything from anywhere with anyone. But, alas, it also drains us. We may feel overwhelmed and depleted by the kind of life technology makes possible. We may be free to work from anywhere, but we may also be prone to being lonely everywhere.
Fathers in Bangladesh, by and large, are way luckier than many of their counterparts in many countries in the West, where fathers are not as revered and not as cared by their children.
There are, of course, horror stories we hear in Bangladesh where an old father is kicked out from his house he built, a daughter-in-law finds her old father-in-law as a boring pest, where an early death of a father is like a welcome shower in a long drought for those who would inherit his properties and where, in most cases quite justifiably, an invalid father's peaceful death is a blessing for both the father and his children.
A son abroad is a badge of pride for a Bangladeshi father, even if the son passes a subhuman life labouring in a remote desert in the Middle East or in a desolate rubber plant in Malaysia. Money sent home gives his father a boost up the economic ladder. An old father in a middleclass family is proud of his children studying or working in a developed country. But no father is happy when he finds no offspring around calling him 'Baba' or dad now and then or showing needful or needless concerns at his old-aged frailties.
There are fathers who radiate pride and happiness when their children send them money. And there are fathers, too, who are wealthy but curse their children who cannot afford to send them money. There are at the same time golden fathers who know only to give to their children with least expectations that any of their children will ever give them back anything of material value; they are content with love and affection they receive through SMS. They cry in pleasure when they get simply a card from any of their children with only four words: "Papa, How are you?"
Don't always blame the children. There are families where a father regularly whips and tortures a son and kicks him out of his house. Such a father screams and yells. He showers only insults on his children. All his life, he is spiteful and vindictive to his children. But, these children when they grow up do not throw their father out of the house; rather they look after him when he grows old. The same son, when he grows up, who was beaten mercilessly by his father, nurses his paralysed father for months and even years. He baths his father, dresses him and spends time with him. Whatever happened in the past, he forgets and forgives his father.
In the whole Indo-Pak-Bangladesh subcontinent majority of adult children, who have been brought up with love and care, revere their old father and mother. Ironically, the majority of parents in our country does not or cannot afford to take care of their children they deserve.
There are, however, hundreds of cases in Bangladesh of old fathers and mothers abandoned on the streets. An old father or a mother is lucky if the children leave them in an old-age home meant for the poor and destitute instead of on the streets. When old age overtakes parents and grandparents, and their own turn comes to need support, they are treated with neglect and downright ingratitude; they are thrown on the mercy of streets.
On this day of "World Elder Abuse Awareness Day" we have some questions to ask ourselves. Shouldn't the helpless conditions of the elders prick the conscience of our nation? Shouldn't children be forced by law to support their elderly parents who brought them up? Shouldn't a portion of every private or public employee's salary be deducted every month for a "National Elders' Welfare Fund" the benefits of which may one day be enjoyed by any of the same contributing employees who may not find a child of his own at his bedside and be required to be placed in a sheltered home? If a child doesn't reciprocate the care that was given by his parents, shouldn't the nation stand by those who have grown old and helpless? Shouldn't a bill for "maintenance and welfare of parents and senior citizens" be passed in Bangladesh parliament providing punishment for abuses of the old and allowing a parent, in case he or she is abused, to revoke a will he or she had earlier made awarding properties to their child or children?
Fathers are universally hard with their sons and soft with their daughters. It's a learned behaviour passed on with the birth of each son -  to raise the son to be strong, tough, and the leader. But the daughter is soft and needs to be cosseted; her job is to tend the home and rear the children. A father is hard because he wants to prepare his son for the world - and the world is hard - he by his harsh behaviour is giving something crucial to his son to face the harsh reality of life.
Today's old father was once a young man who had spent his blood, sweat and tears for sending his children to schools, colleges and universities. He shunned his personal comfort to save money for his children's future. Once forceful and vibrant, he is gradually withering away. He is now an old man, helpless, and dismayed, his mouth ajar, and his eyes leaking isolated tears. He is too weak even to wear his socks on his own. Holding a book with his trembling fingers he flips a few pages to read and then gives up when he finds that he has no more the appetite for reading. He had his youths, he had his prides. He sometimes overlooks that he has aged; even now he tries to mix his grief with an awed pride, forgetting that all his prides are already behind him---somewhere back in the obscurity beyond his reach. He rushes to his forlorn bed to bundle himself up under a quilt in a vain attempt to disregard his worthlessness. He has reached an age where death no longer appears as a ghastly surprise. As he tries to slip into a slumber under the quilt he might murmurs: "Blessed are the dead that rain falls on".
It's not too late to love your father.
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