Glücklicher Vatertag, Appa and Baba.

Fathers and sons.

I am my father's son in many ways.

However, if I have to choose one trait that connects me to my father, it has to be curiosity. My greatest luck and gift that I was raised by a father who modeled curiosity every single day. The desire to tinker and to know better, the ability to delve into details and to figure a way out, and above all a conscientiousness that doesn't let you give up - these come from my Appa. If it were not for him, I don't think, my sister and I would have a role model for those traits - at least none as intensely emulatable as him. My father has taught me the value of persisting and bouncing back, of never letting adversity destroy your spirit or that ever-evolving personal self and identity. He has taught me how to keep a smile on my face and be aware that life is not necessarily fair unless you figure out how to be fair to others.

Every young person needs an alter ego reminder - a person who can seem similar but is distinct to you, a person you want, in the future, to be a bit like but not entirely a copy of.

To me, that person is Baba. Just as Appa modeled curiosity as a matter of daily life, Baba gave me confidence that intellectual curiosity is a strength and not a weakness. I only got introduced to him in my teenage years. Even though his son and I were classmates, I remember my relationship with the Mushrifs as starting through a conversation with Baba while riding on the local train back from Sunderbai Hall after a book festival. Little did I know that I’d end up falling in love with and marrying that man’s daughter. As a fellow bibliophile and someone who shares a voracious appetite for reading and writing, Baba helped fuel my intellectual curiosity. Baba has often enabled me by just being available and saying ' Persist, this too shall pass and if you ever need a fallback, you have us'. At many moments in life, those few words were all that I needed to keep walking ahead.

I am a father now, more acutely aware of my shortcomings than ever and as hopeful and optimistic as always that my son will be a much better human than I am. That, to me, feels like the essence of being a father - knowing that you are not infallible and that you are simply laying the path for future generations until you shall fade away in the bright rise of the legacy you leave behind.

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P.S: It is father's day today in Germany.