He told me once..."Behind
every pretty girl there is a boyfriend who is fed up. So never give up!"
He brought me my first beer and said “You will drink anyway, even if I stop
you. My father stopped me too...But I did start drinking. So the first one, you
will drink with me because you will have to learn how to drink”. Every big
party he would tell me “It seems like there is too much blood in your alcohol
stream.” Then just before my marriage he told me “By all means marry, but always
remember it’s a bloody tough job. It’s the biggest test of being a man. We can
go to war and conquer nations but marriage is a different ball game my son!”
It’s difficult to explain in a
few hundred words what this person is or what he means to me but there are two
things that I can write in blood – Firstly, every son should have a father like
him and secondly, he is strongly responsible for whatever I am today. Superbly
charming, great storyteller, fantastic cricketer, brilliant singer, avid
reader, absolute believer of truth & honesty, hard worker with a never say
die attitude and fifty years ahead of his time. If all of this is not good
enough to measure the success of a person, I guess most of us will fail very
easily. After all, money is not the end of everything in life. Times were never
easy when I was growing up but he never gave up. Today if I have a life that
I am enjoying, I am not ashamed in accepting that it would have not been the same
if he would have thought or done things differently 20 years back. If I am ever born
again…I will for sure want to be born as his son.
Of all the great things that I
have tried to learn from him, the following stand out as most significant:
Always give your best, no matter
how difficult the situation is. Do not worry about how you will be evaluated
because that is the only thing that is not in your control. As long as you are
true to yourself...you have succeeded.
Never run after money because you
will never have enough of it. Look around and you will see so many people who
have so much less than what you have. Give as much as you can and somehow,
somewhere, someday you will get something in return. It may not be money but it
will be a lot of satisfaction or happiness.
Everyone will give you pain. The
idea of life is to figure out whose pain is worth it and you will always be
happy.
You will never be able to prove
if there is God, but you will always get opportunities to prove that within you
is somebody called you.
Forgive and forget. There are too many good things to remember.
