I am (not) my Father's Son/Daughter

                                                           I Am (Not) My Father’s Son/Daughter

Dom Moreas published his autobiography My Son’s Father. This was in the year 1969.  Today forty-three  years later,  to write one’s memoir with a title such as My Father’s (or Mother’s) Son or Daughter, Daughter-in-law or Son-in-law is to expose oneself to public odium and scandal especially if that father or mother were to be reasonably high in the public and political hierarchy. The links with the hallowed family member will be under critical scrutiny if the autobiographer dares to do well in any walk of life- even if it were remotely connected to the family senior’s profession. If your father or mother has risen up to a respectable  position in society, it is best to grind your nose in the mud and never raise your head lest your ascent, however  infinitesimal it may be, shall be attributed to the clout you enjoy as the  offspring of  illustrious parent(s).

Gone are the times when I could proudly speak about my parentage. The only inhibiting factor to acknowledge my proud lineage in those days was that I might fail to live up to my inheritance. My father had risen up in life through the ranks on his merit, honesty and commitment to work. At school, I was always under pressure to prove my father’s intelligence rather than my own. No doubt, the latter would have been effortless to achieve. It was the same story in college, where to get admission in a top ranking college was a proof of my inheritance of my father’s genes. To do well in studies, to get a scholarship to go abroad for a doctoral degree, to get back to a decent teaching job in a good university were the normal expectations considering the lineage I came from. No one raised his/her little finger to blue pencil my credentials nor damned me with faint praise when I succeeded. But had I failed, heavens would have fallen on me because I had no noblesse oblige to honour my father’s accomplishments. The laws of inheritance in my earlier years included intellectual, spiritual and moral qualities that propelled one to be ‘strong in will and to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield’ till I reached the destination  expected of me  on account of my paternal credentials. Those were the years when hero-worshipping was a part of growing up.

Times have changed. Today such upward movement is unthinkable for the younger generation if the parents are in reasonably good positions. If a secretary’s son gets into the civil services, there will be snide comments that he got it because of his father. If a professor’s daughter gets into university position or gets a university scholarship, it will be parental influence that had swung it for her. If a cricketer’s progeny makes to U-19 team, the predictable sneer will be that he is his father’s son. The rising Bollywood stars are simply the faces launched by the shining parental stars. Today the new generation cannot dream of becoming someone in his /her own right or might without being pushed up the ladder.  If anyone dares to venture forth to make a niche for himself- far removed from the profession of his parents – he will come under the watchful vigilance of hero-baiters who will feel justifiably scandalized over the young man’s temerity to blaze his own trail. It is their obligatory prerogative to trace the young hero’s genealogy to establish that he is guilty of shining in parental feathers. If-(God forbid)-the parent is a targeted personality, then the need to scan all possible underhand links that catapulted the young man to the fore will be the national priority for our hero baiters till such time he proved his innocence against all secondary charges of corruption, deceit and fraudulence. His primary sin is that he is his father’s son. If the intention is to damage a person’s reputation, the best course is to open the scumgate- with or without evidence. It was Sir Winston Churchill who said: “‘a lie gets halfway around the world before truth has a chance to get its pants on.’  It’s true like Humpty Dumpty’s fall, ‘all the king's horses and all the king's men/ Cannot put Humpty-dumpty together again! ‘

What options are there for the next generation of young men and women if they have a decent lineage? Not many. They can go West in search of greener pastures, unaffected by the  blue blood in their veins or simply lie low, with heads held down like ‘many a flower born to blush unseen and waste its sweetness on the desert air.’