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DDS affects most yuppie dads in Mumbai and other cities of the world. These dads want to retire at 40 after racing up the organisation’s hierarchy like Formula One drivers.
They are self-driven, with clearly-defined objectives, but unfortunately have not included their families in their grand plans.
They work 24/7, 14 hours a day, and believe that work — and focus — sharpen the mind. So, if they spend quality time of 60 to 120 minutes at home, including 1,440 minutes on a Sunday, they believe they have made a sound emotional investment in the family.
So, a dad will typically buy a Harry Potter toy, a Spiderman DVD, or a remote-controlled chopper, for his three-year-old kid on a Sunday and feel nice about it.
On other days, where he gets 60 to 120 minutes, he’ll try to bring the kid up to speed on his new-fangled toys.
Well, this is not exactly how it happens, but the family plot is similar. Unfortunately, the storyline is now getting more complicated.
First, kids don’t know anything about quality time; they only understand quantity time. The more dads play with them, the happier they are.
A 20-minute walk in Mumbai’s greenest open space, with a pug in tow, may not make a big difference to a kid. Rather, it’s about the time dad has at his disposal. To make a kid smile, he may need to think of one-hour perambulations with lots of pit stops.
The kid just wants the dad around — without his time-management skills. Significantly, if dads haven’t realised it yet, they have made dinks (double income no kids) passé.
The new nuclear units on the block are dimks (dad’s income and mom’s kids). These units have a dad who rakes in the mega moolah; a mom who has given up her job to look after a kid; and a kid who craves for dad’s time.
Since dimks are just about surfacing in Mumbai’s suburbs, dads haven’t sensed the dangers yet.
Years from now, as these kids grow up in a world where Brand India is ubiquitous, they will conveniently forget their dads, and thank their moms, when they receive Pulitzers, Man Bookers, and such other global awards.
In this mom-branded world, dads will be the highly-competitive supply chains. Even today, if you are an early-morning walker, you’ll notice 7am moms, mothers who drop their tots to school regularly.
And, if you are back home by 6pm, you’ll see McMoms, mothers who take their kids, and kids’ friends, to fast-food outlets.
You will also find am-to-pm moms, moms who manage kids round the clock even as they leave dads to scrounge for quality time.
An article in USA Today, onDecember 11, about dads and kids, shows that dads are now realising the gravity of the problem.
“Their situation reflects the conflicts that arebecoming increasingly common in workplaces across the nation, asfathers press for more family time and something other than a traditional career path.
As dads demand paternity leave, flexible work schedules, telecommuting and other new benefits, they’ve ignited what workday specialists are calling the Daddy Wars,” says the article.
Although Mumbai hasn’t reached the ‘daddy-wars’ stage yet, dads are getting there. If they don’t, doctors will soon add DDS to the list of urban ailments.
“In Mumbai, DDS is a civic problem,” a dad told me. “Improve road traffic, build flyovers, and I’ll be able to treble my quality time at home. Improve airport infrastructure, and I’ll spend less time hovering over the city.”
Till then, kids will have to learn to be patient.
In Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novel, One Hundred Years in Solitude, Melquiades (a gypsy) creates magic by arousing kids’ curiosity with novelties like ice and magnets every time he visits the village of Macondo.
It is the kind of curiosity that’s missing from urban kids’ lives. It is the true story of urban solitude, where magical relationships between dads and kids are slowly burning out.
However, the story of solitude has also a flip side. For many career-focused dads, it is also the alchemy of success.
Email: vinaykamat@dnaindia.net