I grew up knowing my father as a strong person who could provide me support and quite acceptance. However, whether due to his or my own communication blocks, we could never really come to intimate terms. A quite mutual respect and admiration for each other was the closest thing I had in common with him.
Dad was inspired to study Gita early on when I had presented him Chinmaya's Gita as a birthday gift. Till then his interest was only in dramatics and he and my mother participated in the Kannada theater in Bombay. He joined our youth group for weekly forays to Powai Ashram and Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan for Swami Dayananda's lectures. We 10+ youngsters packed into his Ambassador and had a great time. He joined me in Rishikesh for 3 months during his vairagya period and had to be coaxed back to bombay by my mother and the rest of us. His streak of reclusiveness kept reoccuring but his attachment for family always brought him back.
