Having an Engineer for a Dad means......

The LIGHT can sometimes strike you in an unexpected moment and everything makes sense from then on….

One morning, sometime between brushing my teeth and walking towards my cup of tea – it HIT me! The simplicity of it, the beauty of it and the futility of the rest….

The futility of dividing the human race into religions, castes, creeds, colours and what-not. After all, deep down inside we’re all skeletal structures – a bag of bones that moves with flesh around, aren’t we??! Okkkkkk… that sounds a bit gross, but then I had just discovered the TRUTH of life and i could finally fathom things

There was really & truly just ONE way to filter humanity into 2 categories – and i had discovered it! Eurekaaaaaaa!!!!!!

(Deep, profound breath)

There are just 2 kinds of people on this planet:

1) Children of Engineers

2) Children of Non-Engineers

There it is! Simple as it can be and profound as it can get….. 

When you have an engineer for a dad you grow up pretty much being the “good assistant” to daddy – handing over screwdrivers, pliers, nose-pliers, spanners while he goes about his task, repairing or fixing something in the house. You might just be a 5 year old, dragging a teddy bear in one hand, but you know the different tools and you know how to spot it in a drawer full of assorted tools.

You also respect the word “screw”….. because it is a very useful and dignified word in the household!

Nothing that is spoilt is discarded – because it CAN & WILL be RECYCLED….  nails, boxes, pieces of wire, hangers, keys – everything could be useful in the future

Your “growing up lessons” might be deprived of getting acquainted with “community helpers” – the plumber, the mechanic, the electrician and the gas serviceman…. because none of them have been allowed to enter your household – after all dad’s never going to pay them for something he can do himself, and will just take an hour to finish! Now, you have to know that “just an hour” can come today, a week later or may be 6 months down the line …. Engineer dads can be busy “fixing” other stuff in the meanwhile

The weeks go by, as you wait for the dvd-player, the tap, the door handle or the car to get fixed.

But, in stark contrast – kids who have bankers, brokers or professors as fathers live in perfectly functional homes. The tap-leak got fixed on the first weekend, the faulty wiring gets replaced the same evening and the car is whirring smoothly and safely from destination A to destination C

Sometimes an engineer’s family will plead with “daddy dearest” to please finally get a new refrigerator (now that it’s already 14 years old and warranties no longer can be provided by the company, because the company itself shut down 2 years ago!)….. but “man of the house” is confident that he can get it running in a day’s time.  So the freezer continues to store ice-cream in milkshake form and the veggies stink as they rot in a day. No one is counting the cost of this running expenditure though.

When everyone has resigned to fate and accepted that their destiny of living in the 1800′s, and storing food at the neighbour’s, –  things decide to finally change.  You come back home on a lazy Sunday afternoon from a game of volleyball, joined by your friends who want to watch a film with you…… and your drawing room is transformed!!!!!

There’s dad with the refrigerator door on the floor, all the contents of your last 3 days’ meals scattered around and 4 different sets of tool boxes that he owns – lying open – there is serious WORK happening here. Dad has decided to buy the new refrigerator after all – but only after he repairs this. It will have better “resale” value

When the aforesaid incident happens – you have 2 options -

A)  you finally confess to your friends that you’re actually the adopted kid of the family

or

B) you walk calmly to your room and enjoy watching the film with your friends as planned. Everything in your home is “normal” and you are fine. You know you can’t disown your family at this crucial hour when they really need you……

(and your Ipod dock’s been behaving a little funny and rather than burn a hole in the pocket – …. uhhh you know what??!!)

Kids from non-engineer household will never realise the ecstasy of being in a situation with friends when you’re the only person who knows that the “earthing wire” is green, the joy of pulling off a “do-it-yourself” Ikea project or fixing the plumbing of a friend by replacing the washer! 

They might never have growing-up memories of dad designing a futuristic, solar powered car which will someday be reality nor have words like “load-bearing capacity” or  ”fulcrum” in their normal vocabulary

They might never learn that EPS is Expanded Polystyrene – which is actually just “thermocol”

They will never that kerosene can have at least 5 uses – as fuel, as thinner, as cleaning agent, as first-aid for mosquito bite and insect repellant

They would never dare use their car’s brake-oil as emergency medicine to stop a bleeding cut because no one told them that it helps coagulate blood and speed up clotting!

Having an engineer for a dad means your sense of humour gets refined over the years and you start enjoying life’s little jokes, and when it throws lemons at you – you make lemonade and you recycle the lemon-peels as dish cleaners

Having an engineer for a dad also means that you look for solutions without wasting time cribbing. oh.. that's as good as saying what i did in the earlier para!! oops ;-)

Now why would you want to discriminate against people on the basis of their Gods, their colour, their countries or the language they speak???????

Suhana