Yaar-Papa (Buddy Father)... How times change!

Yaar-Papa... That's how my son addresses me. He has been doing so for sometime but somehow I only noticed it a few days back. "Yaar" in Hindi is generally used for someone who is a bosom friend (langotiya yaar sounds better) and "Papa" should wield respect and a guarded distance. That truly sounds like an oxymoron, surely Yaar & Papa seem contradictory.

Forget calling my Father Yaar-Papa, I wouldn't dare even uttering the "Yaar" word in front of him as he considered it sadak chhap (language of the ruffians), all of which was forbidden to be used. I would barely see my Father once a week, sometimes even once a month when he would go off on extended business tours. He had a large family to feed and five younger siblings to get married off while I was being brought up by my Aunts. There was absolutely no way of getting any closer to my Father. So, when I heard my son calling me Yaar-Papa, it made me thinking. While everyone keeps talking about "generation-gaps" and "changing times", I understood the true meaning of it only then.

Firstly, me & my wife, without any fuss, always agreed on having one child. So when he/she was about to be born and everyone asked me what I wanted, I would truthfully say I wanted a boy as I was already living with two women (my Mother and Wife) and  had no intention to be the only Martian being hounded by three Venusians. Maybe at the back of my mind was my own distanced relationship with my Father and I wanted to give to my son what I couldn't get from my Father. Right from the time he was born, my intention was put to action when I refused to buy a pram and rather carry him in a baby-carrier holding him close to my chest.

Over the 13 years that followed, we did everything that friends do together. We played first with toys then moved up to PC games, GameBoy, PS2, Wii, PSP, PS3 - competing, cheating and fighting. We went together  for movies starting with Dunston Checks in & Home Alone to Finding Nemo & The Incredibles to Spiderman & Harry Potter and now to Aashiqui 2 as teenage sets in. We played cricket in the apartment gallery and went for shopping together, playing hide-and-seek in the super market aisles. Today we compete by supporting different IPL teams and have our share of face-offs whenever our teams clash. We arm-wrestle, clang our glasses with a "Cheers" on occasions, me with Scotch and he with Coke. Till now he has denied having a girl friend whenever I have asked, I am sure he would tell me himself when he has one or two or more. We listen to music together although these days he has started introducing me to new singers. I made him drink coffee first time at Starbucks and now he takes me there as I watch him gulping the venti sized one.

Indeed times have changed and indeed there is a huge behavioural change we are witnessing yet the word "generation gap" seems  a contradiction when I realize that it has in effect brought the father-son duo closer to such an extent that the relationship has quietly bordered onto being more of a friendship. While it stays the key duty of the parent to instil values and provide guidance to the offspring, doing so more as a friend than authoritative figures surely has its merits.

Yaar-Papas are here to stay...