Every Father’s Day, I find myself retracing a path that leads not to a grand destination, but to a small wooden table in a modest Indian home, dappled in the morning light, where the rustle of a newspaper once echoed the heartbeat of my childhood. It’s been forty-two years since I lost my father—my Babuji—and yet, the ache of his absence never dulls. It returns, tender and raw, each June, folding itself into the folds of memory like the creases on the pages he so dearly loved.

Babuji wasn’t the kind of father who thundered or demanded. His strength lay in the silences between his words, in the discipline of his routines, in the fierce, quiet love that never needed a declaration. And so, on this Father’s Day, as I write not just as a son but as a father myself, I want to honour him the only way I know how—through memory, through gratitude, and through words.

I was just a young student at the University of Delhi when he passed away—suddenly, without a farewell. His departure left a vacuum that neither time nor accomplishment could fill. But as the years rolled on, I realised that he had never truly left. He had merely moved from flesh to philosophy, from presence to principle, from voice to echo. He lived on in my habits, in my thoughts, in the way I approached the world—with curiosity, with conviction, and with compassion.

Growing up in our small home, a government quarter, mornings were sacred. They began not with an alarm clock, but with the sharp scent of freshly brewed chai and the satisfying thump of the newspaper landing at the doorstep. For most children, the newspaper might have been a grown-up artefact. For me, it was a battleground. I’d race to grab the sports page first—devouring every line about cricket and football and giggling at the comic strips. But Babuji, ever the philosopher and realist, would wait patiently with his cup of tea, his glasses perched low on his nose, until I had indulged my youthful whims. Then, he’d calmly slide the front page and the editorial section toward me with a half-smile and say, “Beta, the world is bigger than cricket and football.”

It was never an order. It was an invitation—to look up, to look out, to look beyond. At the time, I didn’t realise it. I thought we were just negotiating newspaper sections. But he was handing me the world.

I remember how he would sit beside me as I stumbled through editorials, the language often lofty, the ideas sometimes foreign. But he never let me give up. He’d explain a concept, offer context, and point out the beauty of a well-argued sentence. He’d underline a phrase, pause at a metaphor, and turn a news story into a lesson on ethics, economics, or empathy. “It’s not just about what happened,” he’d say gently, “it’s about why it happened, and how it’s written.”

Those mornings taught me more than any school ever could. They taught me to think—not just quickly, but deeply. They taught me to question—not to defy, but to understand. They taught me to write—not to impress, but to express.

And then, there were the books.

The summer after my Class X exams—when others my age were consumed by rest and idleness—Babuji had a different plan for me. One evening, he walked into the room, holding two books as if they were offerings at a sacred altar.

The first was Nana by Émile Zola. Looking back, it was a remarkably bold choice—especially for a 15-year-old boy still trying to make sense of the world and his place in it. Even by today’s standards, Nana remains an audacious, unflinching work, exploring the murky intersections of power, desire, and ruin. It was a world of decadence and despair, of beauty and betrayal. Through Nana’s rise and fall, I found myself transported to a world steeped in decadence and despair, where beauty was a currency and betrayal a language. She was not merely a courtesan navigating the gilded rot of the Second Empire—she was a force—unrelenting, unapologetic—a mirror reflecting the hypocrisy, corruption, and disillusionment of her time.

I remember the day Didi, my elder sister, raised her concern at the dinner table. She asked Babuji, “Isn’t this a bit too early for him? Shouldn’t he be reading something lighter?” But Babuji, as always, had a quiet confidence in his response. He looked at her, then at me, and said something that I’ve carried with me ever since: “He’s growing up. It’s the age when he should begin to understand, to differentiate between good and evil. I won’t always be there to guide him—he must learn to see for himself, to think for himself, and to make his own decisions.”

That moment marked the beginning of my intellectual independence. It was more than just about reading a book—it was about navigating the world on my own terms, accepting the complexities and contradictions that came with it. Babuji’s words have stayed with me, reminding me that knowledge and wisdom are not handed down—they are earned, through experience, reflection, and sometimes, through the hard lessons found in the pages of a daring book.

I remember Babuji asking over dinner, “What do you think of her power? And what does it say about ours?” He wasn’t quizzing me. He was inviting me to think deeper—to examine the illusions of control, the fragility of societal order, and the complexities of human agency. It was not just about Nana; it was about us, about the masks we wear and the forces we surrender to or try to wield.

That conversation stayed with me. It was my first true glimpse into literature as more than story—as a means of wrestling with contradictions, of entering lives beyond my own, of confronting the raw and tangled fabric of the human condition. Nana wasn’t just a novel I read. It was a world I stepped into—and never fully came back from.

The second book left me speechless: Das Kapital by Karl Marx. I remember the sheer physical weight of it, the way it seemed to stare back at me. “Don’t worry if you don’t understand everything,” Babuji reassured. “Just start. Let it disturb you, confuse you. That’s how thinking begins.” And so I did. Page by page, I stumbled through unfamiliar terms, dense arguments, and revolutionary ideas. It wasn’t easy—at times it felt like walking through a forest with no clear path. But Babuji was always there, not as a guide with answers, but as a fellow traveller, pausing with me to reflect, question, and wonder.

We would talk late into the evening—about labour and value, about justice and exploitation, about how class structures shape not just economies but entire ways of being. I was barely scratching the surface, of course, but he never made me feel that way. He engaged me as an equal, as someone whose thoughts mattered, even in their incompleteness. It wasn’t indoctrination—it was an invitation. An invitation to think for myself, to engage with the world’s great tensions and contradictions.

Through those dialogues, he gave me something far more enduring than ideology. He gave me a framework for questioning. A set of tools not just to read, but to interrogate. Not just to absorb, but to analyse, to challenge, and to grow. Das Kapital was not merely a book—it was a rite of passage into intellectual adulthood.

In retrospect, these were not just reading lessons. They were life lessons. Lessons that would prepare me for a career in banking, in consulting, in navigating complexity across continents. But even more than that, they helped me become a father myself—one who still tries to pass on the values of discernment, empathy, and intellectual honesty.

The real gift, though, wasn’t the what he taught me—it was the how. With patience. With faith. With love.

Babuji didn’t need to shout to be heard. His teachings came wrapped in subtlety. In the way he folded his newspaper. In the way he paused before answering a question. In the way he made me believe that even my half-formed teenage thoughts were worth discussing.

He made me believe that thinking mattered.

He made me believe I mattered.

And perhaps, that is the greatest legacy a father can leave behind.

As I sip my morning tea now, in a city far from the lanes of my childhood, living a life sculpted by experiences Babuji never got to witness, I still hear his voice. It echoes in the rustle of the morning news—digital now, but still sacred. It murmurs in the quiet footnotes of my thoughts, surfaces in the counsel I give my son, and gently anchors me in the humility with which I try to walk through the world.

Forty-two years. A lifetime. And yet, he walks beside me every day.

Babuji, I miss you more than words can convey. But I also feel you—in every word I write, in every question I ask, in every truth I try to uphold. You were my first teacher, my quiet hero, my guiding light. And though the world has changed in ways we could never have imagined, your lessons remain timeless.

On this Father’s Day, I honour you with the deepest gratitude. Not just for what you gave me, but for who you were.

Thank you, Babuji—for the newspapers, for the books, for the love. And above all, for believing in the boy I was, and in the man I could become.

To all the fathers, and to the sons who remember them—may your stories find their light.