My Dad

We were three sisters, raised by a grandmother and servants, who served in loco parentis, my mother being deceased and my father being a workaholic.

Taking the advice of a friend who had suffered a miserable childhood under the dominance of a stepmother, he had refused to marry again, saving us from a similar, if archetypal, fairy-tale experience.

An extremely busy man, was my father. When not building up the business in Bombay, he was traveling to Germany or to the States to get a few more photographic agencies.

It was fortunate that he had servants, without whose unstinting devotion, he would not have managed to raise three young girls, let alone run the household. He was so oblivious to the quotidian life of his own house, that I doubt he knew the name of one of our teachers, leave alone which standard we were in. Monthly school report cards were forwarded to the office, where his aide-de-camp, Choksiuncle, duly signed at the bottom with little scrutiny, justly giving more consideration to the hundreds of chalans and invoices on his desk. This suited me just fine, as how would I explain to my father the pathetic grades, or the lowly class rank of 12? To add to my miserable academic performance, was the familiar, accompanying note apropos conduct:

Should talk less and study more. Very Talkative. Capable of a better grade. Can do more if she applied herself.

Of course, there was not much he could say to me, being ‘Matric Fail’ himself. A high-school dropout, he competed with a friend every year for the lowest rank in the class. Years later, he met up with Kishorebhai, playing golf at the Willingdon Club and exchanging stories about their miserable grades. Even if he was not the most shining example of an exemplar student, methinks he did pretty well in the long run. I am sure he would have approved of Mark Twain’s quote: I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.

He got his start in life with the help of his older brother Ambalal, or A.J., who started working first in Africa at the age of 17 and later in Bombay. He convinced the rest of the family to leave the village and they moved into an apartment in Byculla and then Gamdevi, finding it difficult to pay the monthly rent of Rs. 23. But A.J was an extremely enterprising man, an entrepreneur with an astute sense of business. With my dad (P.J.) by his side, they started earning well. By the 1930s, A.J. thought it necessary to branch out into the world, securing some small, unknown, camera agencies like Canon and Fuji.

With one suitcase and not more than five sentences in English, he set my father up behind a big desk in the Big Apple.

An elderly, avuncular gentleman by the name of Walter took my dad under his wing, taught him more than a smattering of English, the ways of American life, and told him that with a name like Pushbutton, he wouldn’t get very far. But, my father argued, his name was Purshottam - and it meant the Most Superior of Men. But I guess if a Harish can become Harry, a Samir can become Sammy, and Krishna can become Kris... then Purshottam/Pushbutton can become Peter.

Had my dad still kept those ‘small’ camera agencies, I would be writing this blog from my fifteen-bedroom vacation mansion in Lake Como...a mansion that would be right next door to George...as in Clooney, not Lopez.

Fast-forwarding few decades later and to my childhood, Dad would often go on extended business trips. Whether these trips coincided with the cyclical monthly phases of three females, one will never know. Not that we minded. We were well nurtured at home: a grandmother for love, servants to clean the house, a dhobi for the laundry, a cook to supply the necessary victuals, and as for money, it appeared in the form of an accountant, or mehtaji, from the office, to hand out the salary to the servants and give Ba the household allowance.

My dad’s main business, in the early days, was primarily with the German Democratic Republic, or East Germany. A few days before he left, he would ask us for our list. The list was an integral part of my dad’s routine for preparing for his travel. He was as eager to bring us stuff as we were to receive it. While Vishnu was busy packing his suitcase, the three of us would be at our desks compiling The List. Being the reader and the artist in the family, Nina would ask for books and art supplies. Varsha’s list would be the longest, sunglasses heading the list, followed by an assortment of accessories and make-up items, all dedicated to her habitual preening and primping at the Temple of Vanitas. Much to Ba’s objection, he would bring her back posters of four long-haired ‘vaghras’ - posters she would pin up on her cupboard, blow kisses and coo “I love you Paul’ every night, before going to bed. And that confounded music! Ba would cover her ears with her hands and while the traditional, puerile eye-roll had not yet been invented, we would ignore Dad’s lamentation of “Who is crying?” and “Why are they in so much pain?” Amongst us there were arguments galore as one of us favored Cliff Richard and the other two sided with Elvis.

I would ask for Caran D’Ache color pencils and lots of Toblerone chocolate. Some addictions go back several years. What started out as a small childish delight for this heavenly confection, soon became a desire, escalated to a habit, burgeoned into an addiction, and which currently has become an expensive nightmare for my husband.

Generous to a fault, my father did not limit his largesse to the family. He once lent a lakh of rupees to a man sitting next to him on the plane...no IOU, no chitti, no agreement, legal or otherwise...just a verbal promise and infinite trust in a fellow passenger. The list of people he lent money to was longer than the list of people who returned the money after he died.

Had the bloody swines who borrowed all that money rightfully returned it, I would be writing this blog on my private jet flying to that vacation home in Lake Como...yes, the one next to GC.

Money was not the only thing he dished out. He was like the Godfather of our huge, extended family (a given, considering we are Indian) - solving marital problems, counseling troubled youth, dispensing business advice and reuniting squabbling relatives. He was never too busy for anyone...be it a plumber or the managing director of a corporation. (Btw...the plumber was the only one who voluntarily came forth to return the loan my father had given him.)

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Psychologists nowadays stress the importance of touch and of the constant, verbal reaffirmations of love. My father rarely hugged us or even said I love you. He didn’t have to. It showed every time he looked at me, every time he talked to me, every time he talked about me. He demonstrated it in a myriad ways, making my case to those psychologists that while they can keep their Behavioral-Studies certificates on the wall, they can keep their psychotherapy babble to themselves.


Any man can be a father. It takes someone special to be a dad. Author Unknown