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It is implied that the shlok above talks of the Father-Son relationship and not the Mother-Son's.
Mothers don't play with sons nor beat them up...they outsource these jobs to their husbands..."Choodandi veedu!" ("Arrey ho! Look at this chap!") says it all...it is a call to the husband to take his son away and treat him...meaning, punish him for whatever mischief he was doing like shooting arrows at the suji sieve hanging on the wall and making huge big holes in it...the punishment ranging from smacking to dumping him in the dustbin.
Mothers keep handsome relations with their sons till they eventually get married. Suddenly there is a big irreversible change...that other female spoils the entire show:
My father by and large stuck to the shlok above. He played with me till I turned rowdy at 5 and started teasing my sisters and playing on the roadside for half the day and dirtying my knickers (we never wore shirts at play). And I escaped being disciplined sternly by 13 when I left home and school for college life. Then on he was not exactly friendly but 'correct'.
My relations with Father got complicated because he was our headmaster. I always envied my friend Raghu, the local doctor's son, who never had to call his father, "Sir". Everyone in my class was calling their fathers: "Nanna". But my mother insisted that I call her husband: "Nanna Garu!" (Father, sir!). Eventually, when I grew up I stopped calling him "Nanna Garu!" but preferred to call him just: "Sir!" Even on his deathbed I recall calling him:
"Sir! Please turn this side...I have to take your temperature"
And Father never protested...the whole town called him: "Sir!" and he must have got used to it.
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Panchavarshani lalayet
Dasavarshani tadayet
Praptetu shodashe varshe
Putram mitravat acharet
Son should be played with for the first five years
And should be beaten up for the next ten years
His sixteenth year onwards
He should be treated as a friend
Mothers don't play with sons nor beat them up...they outsource these jobs to their husbands..."Choodandi veedu!" ("Arrey ho! Look at this chap!") says it all...it is a call to the husband to take his son away and treat him...meaning, punish him for whatever mischief he was doing like shooting arrows at the suji sieve hanging on the wall and making huge big holes in it...the punishment ranging from smacking to dumping him in the dustbin.
Mothers keep handsome relations with their sons till they eventually get married. Suddenly there is a big irreversible change...that other female spoils the entire show:
My father by and large stuck to the shlok above. He played with me till I turned rowdy at 5 and started teasing my sisters and playing on the roadside for half the day and dirtying my knickers (we never wore shirts at play). And I escaped being disciplined sternly by 13 when I left home and school for college life. Then on he was not exactly friendly but 'correct'.
My relations with Father got complicated because he was our headmaster. I always envied my friend Raghu, the local doctor's son, who never had to call his father, "Sir". Everyone in my class was calling their fathers: "Nanna". But my mother insisted that I call her husband: "Nanna Garu!" (Father, sir!). Eventually, when I grew up I stopped calling him "Nanna Garu!" but preferred to call him just: "Sir!" Even on his deathbed I recall calling him:
"Sir! Please turn this side...I have to take your temperature"
And Father never protested...the whole town called him: "Sir!" and he must have got used to it.
Well, every father is human and so has a skeleton or two in his cupboard, I guess. Some day or other, his son will come to know of it, and what his reaction would be is anyone's guess.
Father used to tell me that whenever Parashuram used to invade Ayodhya on his 21 missions to wipe out all kings, Raam's father, Dasharath, used to hide in his kitchen wearing bangles and saris. I don't know when Raam got to know of it and what precisely his reaction was. Certainly, Lakshman, being sterner and less human than Raam, must have resented his dad's chickening out.
Likewise, I don't know how Krishna reacted when he came to know that his dad had to catch a stray donkey's feet one dark midnight:
http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2011/01/donkeys-feet.html
I left home for my university studies and was staying at Vizagh in my MD uncle's house. And he was a declared genius, having won the coveted Swaminathan Gold Medal for Anatomy in a highly competitive exam in his second year MBBS. And he was dubious if I would disgrace him by failing in my B Sc (Hons) Physics in which he admitted me without my knowledge or consent.
When our final year results were due, I was enjoying my summer vacation at my father's place in Kovur, 500 km away. And one morning when I returned home from my daily visits to nearby Nellore on a hired pushbike, there was a commotion, short of jubilation, and my mom was ready with the paraphernalia required for removing my drishti (evil eye)...an old broom and some salt I guess.
Apparently Father just then received a postcard from my MD uncle (everyone wrote only postcards those days). It broke the news that not only did I pass my exam in first class but stood first in the university. And my uncle was more jubilant than everyone else, it appeared from the postcard, since I didn't let him down...rather.
That afternoon Father was in a very friendly mood...I was all of 18 then.
And revealed softly:
"I flunked in my physics lab exam in my Madras Christian College days and had to take a supplementary in September"
"I didn't know that you ever studied physics! I thought you did your BA in English"
"English was my Mains and Physics, Subsidiary"
"How did you fail? What was your experiment?"
"Tangent Galvanometer"
"Such a simple experiment! B = H tan theta!"
...I was gloating rowdily since I scored 90% in my labs just then...
"Yes, I knew my Tangent Galvanometer well but there was this incident"
"What incident?"
"I was allotted a bench on which the TG equipment was lying and set it up and was ready to take my readings when suddenly I was asked to shift to another bench and start all over again on the second setup that was lying there"
"But why?"
"Our principal's son, who was our classmate, was weak in lab and the demonstrator waited till I set up my TG. And THEN he allotted it to the prince's son, on my table"
"So that all he had to do was to pull out keys from the resistance box and take the ammeter readings"
"Precisely"
"But why did you FAIL? Was time too short for you to complete the experiment?"
"No...in my anger and confusion, I forgot to keep my coil in the magnetic meridian"
"Too bad...too bad...too bad"
Any other father would have kicked his son on his butt for putting on so much dog...
...Posted by Ishani
I left home for my university studies and was staying at Vizagh in my MD uncle's house. And he was a declared genius, having won the coveted Swaminathan Gold Medal for Anatomy in a highly competitive exam in his second year MBBS. And he was dubious if I would disgrace him by failing in my B Sc (Hons) Physics in which he admitted me without my knowledge or consent.
When our final year results were due, I was enjoying my summer vacation at my father's place in Kovur, 500 km away. And one morning when I returned home from my daily visits to nearby Nellore on a hired pushbike, there was a commotion, short of jubilation, and my mom was ready with the paraphernalia required for removing my drishti (evil eye)...an old broom and some salt I guess.
Apparently Father just then received a postcard from my MD uncle (everyone wrote only postcards those days). It broke the news that not only did I pass my exam in first class but stood first in the university. And my uncle was more jubilant than everyone else, it appeared from the postcard, since I didn't let him down...rather.
That afternoon Father was in a very friendly mood...I was all of 18 then.
And revealed softly:
"I flunked in my physics lab exam in my Madras Christian College days and had to take a supplementary in September"
"I didn't know that you ever studied physics! I thought you did your BA in English"
"English was my Mains and Physics, Subsidiary"
"How did you fail? What was your experiment?"
"Tangent Galvanometer"
"Such a simple experiment! B = H tan theta!"
...I was gloating rowdily since I scored 90% in my labs just then...
"Yes, I knew my Tangent Galvanometer well but there was this incident"
"What incident?"
"I was allotted a bench on which the TG equipment was lying and set it up and was ready to take my readings when suddenly I was asked to shift to another bench and start all over again on the second setup that was lying there"
"But why?"
"Our principal's son, who was our classmate, was weak in lab and the demonstrator waited till I set up my TG. And THEN he allotted it to the prince's son, on my table"
"So that all he had to do was to pull out keys from the resistance box and take the ammeter readings"
"Precisely"
"But why did you FAIL? Was time too short for you to complete the experiment?"
"No...in my anger and confusion, I forgot to keep my coil in the magnetic meridian"
"Too bad...too bad...too bad"
Any other father would have kicked his son on his butt for putting on so much dog...
...Posted by Ishani
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