When dad is mom too

When Radhakrishnan Iyer, 55, a Shirdi-based hotelier, rushed to Mumbai to meet his daughters, he could sense something brewing. All his four daughters were present — even the eldest, Meenakshi Iyer, 29, had flown all the way from Delhi with her husband. And they were all waiting for him expectantly, a strange mix of hope and dread writ large on their faces.

Shraddha Iyer, 27, the second eldest, had fallen in love, and wanted to marry her boyfriend. The sisters had basically assembled to break it to their father. When Radhakrishnan heard the ‘scandalous’ news from them, he refused to speak a word. His silence left his daughters heartbroken.

Radhakrishnan had been, as the cliche goes, “both father and mother to them”. They had lost their mother 10 years ago to a fatal illness. Ever since, he had raised his daughters all by himself. He had never refused them anything. But this time, it was too much. He wasn’t ready to approve.

A few days later, however, Radhakrishnan broke his silence. He hugged Shraddha and gave his consent to the marriage, but on one condition: if she wanted to marry her lover, she could do so only after three years. He secretly hoped that Shraddha might change her mind during that period. The crisis had been defused, if only temporarily. The Iyer family had tears in their eyes that day. They had, after all, been through much together since Radhakrishnan’s wife passed away.

Why Dad keeps calling 
As Radhakrishnan knew well enough, single parenting is hard enough. But for a father to suddenly fill the gap created by the loss of the mother could be demanding in unexpected ways.

Naresh Sheth, Mumbai-based businessman, never worried much about his two children because his wife took good care of them. On an average, he would meet his kids twice a week — on Sundays, and over dinner on the odd weekday that he returned early from work. On most days, though, they would be asleep by the time he got home. And he would be asleep when they left for school. His wife was the communicator between him and his two children.

But when she passed away five years ago, the Sheths’ lives changed dramatically. Naresh began to call or message his children every two hours to know where they were and what they were doing. The son, Karan, 19 and daughter Karishma, 21, initially found their father’s new interest in their lives rather awkward. “They’d say ‘Dad, you don’t need to do this’. They soon realised soon that this was how things were going to be now on,” says Naresh.

“Nowadays there are night outs, parties to attend, strange dresses to wear. And I don’t understand this whole concept of ‘bringing in the birthday’ of their friend, for which they leave at odd hours,” adds Naresh, who’s been learning new things about his children ever since he actively started involving himself in their lives.

Today, the children keep him abreast of everything, from what they are eating to which friends they are visiting. He even knows whom Karan is dating. Naresh, on his part, now doesn’t return late, makes it a point to have meals with his children, and has stopped partying like he used to.

Help from boarding school
Sometimes, the sudden demise of a spouse is so traumatic, both for the newly single father and the children that a single dad has to seek outside help.

When Kuldeep Sharma, 55, a bank manager in Mumbai, lost his wife in 1995 to a car accident, the entire household went into depression. The grades of his children — daughters Deepshika and Deepika, and son Mandeep — began to suffer. Kuldeep tried his best to bring them back to normal. He even shifted houses, but nothing worked.

Finally, despite financial problems, he took a bank loan to send his daughters to a boarding school in Shimla. “My father took the right decision then. There were many things that my sister and I were to learn, from puberty to changes in the body, which only a mother could speak to us about. In the boarding school, we learnt about all this from seniors,” says Deepshikha.

The daughters are quite close to Kuldeep, but the typical father-son clash happens in the Sharma household too. “We sometimes bicker over small things, say, about his carelessness. And he, of course, doesn’t like to hear about it and storms off. It is here that a mother comes in, pacifies the two parties, and makes peace. But we don’t have that luxury. So after a few hours, both of us act as though nothing had happened,” says Kuldeep, about his relationship with his son.

According to K Jahgirdar, president of CRISP (Children’s Rights Initiative for Shared Parenting), there is no scientific research to show that fathers cannot take care of children. “In India it is universally believed that a child can be looked after only by the mother, but fathers can be very good parents too,” he says.

Because marriage failed
R Vijay, a Bangalore-based IT professional, separated from his wife when their daughter was 10, and he’s been looking after her ever since. “It’s necessary to constantly reassure your child that you are there for her, no matter what. When she was younger, there was nothing I would do that did not involve her,” he says.

This helped forge a deep emotional bond over the years. But it did involve sacrifices on Vijay’s part: “I would be up by 5am, make her breakfast, put out her uniform for her, prepare her lunch box, and get ready myself first so that I could help her get ready after that. I would drop her at school and then go to work much earlier than everyone else. I would do my calls and emails to Europe and the US while she went for her tuition in the evening. Over the weekends, we would go for long drives.”

Says Manoranjini Girish, a counselor who has advised many single dads, “When problems occur in a marriage, fathers worry if they’ll ever see their children again. Many find themselves in financial problems as the trauma leads to under-performance in their jobs.” In a certain case, a father even lost his job because he was traveling too frequently to the courts in the quest of shared parenting, she adds.

But Jahgirdar strikes a note of pragmatism. “As we change with the times, we also have to accept that one marriage in one lifetime may not work for everyone. We have to adapt accordingly.”
As for the Iyers, three years have passed since Shraddha asked her dad for permission to marry her boyfriend. Though Radhakrishnan had hoped she’d change her mind, she hasn’t. Her wedding is slated for February 5. And Radhakrishnan has never been a happier dad.