Dad’s Day

Today is a day which celebrates three of my most favorite things in the world: father, music, and yoga. Yes, today, Sunday, June 21 is World Father’s Day, World Music Day and World Yoga Day. What a blessed day it is indeed. Yoga is a philosophy which I find delightful because it is a holistic healing system which addresses the core issues of life, namely health. It traverses the three realms of the physical, the mental and the spiritual. And music? Well, it is the honey on buttered toast.

Rain on a parched day. Sweet sun in the freezing winter and soothing shades of a leafy foliage on sizzling summers. My Dad happened to be a rare talent who had the gift of song and who was a Vedic scholar who knew the yogic philosophy quite literally like the back of his hand (Hatha Yoga). This day seems to be for those like him and the perfect day for me to pay him a tribute. A journalist and broadcaster (first with All India Radio and then Voice of America) he was also a writer of poems, short stories and novels and he was a classical musician who penned lyrics, composed tunes and sang them. I wrote a little ditty for Dad today,

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whom I miss terribly. Ode to Dad Born on fourteenth February

He was really a paragon of love Both fiery as a true blue royal

But gentle as a dove.

Caring, giving, daring, loving Generous to a fault

The thought that one day he’d not be here Brought everything to a halt.

They called him such a rare talent Who could write as well as sing

But not many know that he was a Vedic scholar And yoga too was his thing.

So on this day when the world is up

Celebrating it all true The question that I’d like to ask Is,

‘Daddy, where are you?’

(The writer is Editor, Features)