A Father's Day remembrance

I was once asked what is the one lesson I have learned from my parents or other role models that I apply in my daily life. I was hard pressed initially. I suddenly wondered whether my early life was completely devoid of values or life lessons! Some of these lessons are so ingrained in you that they are second nature and you don't consciously apply them, reminding yourself where they came from. Nevertheless, after a bit of soul searching and reflection, I arrived at one such life lesson. It was from my father.

My dad once narrated this anecdote from his school days. It was way back when I was in my teens that I can't recollect what triggered this conversation. But, I would hazard a guess it had to do something with my grades! Anyway, the story goes that he was preparing for an exam in History (I think) which was based on a textbook full of (auto)biographies of historical luminaries from Gandhi to Galileo and Aristotle to Aurobindo.

Most of his peers realised this was an exam best mastered through rote learning. They devoured every single biography into their memories. Ask anything about any of them, and you could get a verbatim dump without missing even the punctuation. Now, I don't know if my dad was just lazy (probably was) or indeed a genius (again, probably was) to see through it. He was less motivated by the exam outcome and more interested in what he could takeaway from each of these greats.

As it turned out, the exam apparently took an unfavourable turn. Unfavourable, if you are a rote learner. The questions cut across the individual biographies, testing what patterns the students could extract from them. You cannot answer them by regurgitating an entire biography. You had to get to the bottom of each personality, imbibe the key lessons and patterns that cut across all of them. As history goes, one that can never be verified, this played right into my dad's hands and he aced the exam.

The point he was trying to stress with this story was that I should never settle for the obvious but strive to look for patterns, for there is always a bigger purpose or theme in the minutest of details. Putting it differently, never miss the woods for the trees.

In retrospect, this is one lesson that has stayed with me. Every time I spend too much time in detail, I have to pull myself back and understand the grand scheme behind what I am seeing or doing. Presented with any data, I instinctively look for a pattern or an underlying thesis, not least because patterns have a habit of repeating themselves. To this date, I get queasy if I don't get the overarching theme in any situation or if I can't define it to myself as a simple story. If you are a fan of the book Good Strategy/Bad Strategy, this is what Richard Rumelt calls "diagnosis".

I can't comment on whether this has served me for the good or not. I can only say that I wouldn't be me without this instinct. It is more than two decades since I lost the person who injected this instinct in me. It still lives on and it is more relevant now than ever.

More relevant now for me as I have been processing the recent events in the US, just like everyone else. I am encouraged by the global response and the symbolic changes in many spheres such as rebranding of Aunt Jemima or GitHub removing terminology such as "master" and "slave". However, I have been struggling with the question whether these changes are enough and whether they hit the root of the problem. I fear we may be missing the woods for the trees. Focusing on symbolic changes in the short term might blind us to the larger grassroot level changes we need to turn the tide.

Racism did not arrive yesterday. It has been passed down several generations. As a father of a nine year old, I know how big a role a parent plays in shaping early, and potentially long lasting, beliefs. Kids look for clues from us and rest of the society to form their opinion on what is acceptable and what is not. I firmly believe inclusion or the lack of it starts at home. A friend and parent living in the US highlighted how conservative or liberal values may get imprinted very early during childhood. In my own childhood, I constantly got signals that it is a woman's job to take care of household chores. As a father, I am very conscious about what I say or how I react to several topics, knowing that they may be forming a lasting impression on my daughter's outlook in the future.

On this Father's Day, just as I remember my father and the lessons he passed down to me, I am committing to educate myself, and in turn, inculcate inclusion into my daughter's upbringing. It is only such generational change that will bring lasting progress in our fight against racism.