Acting Grandfather in Florida

When I made my first trip to US to visit my son Pranav, I had toured most of the east-coast places with him, and had been to some of the great monuments of modern history, including the Guggenheim Museum at New York by F. L. Wright and Seagram building by Mies.

But when it came to the city-scape, almost all the cities had a discernible pattern, and barring the form of individual buildings, there was hardly any difference between one city & another. This similarity of appearance was more predominant in the suburbs than in the main cities, but that too was due to many of the old cities having a historical core, with dated buildings. All in all, I had my fill of the American cities. So after we did the east coast cities I was weary of visiting the west coast cities, though I was told that LA was one of the cities I must visit. I had seen enough, I said, and planned my return journey.

On the way back, little did I think of any more trips to USA. In the first place I was reluctant to make even the first trip, and did it mainly on the insistence of my son Pranav, and my wife, Sampada. After the trip, however, I realised that this was an experience worth having. I had generally known about USA, through literature and movies, but experiencing the spaces first hand definitely surpasses that. The experiential quality of space you visit physically is rich with all the senses - vision, touch, hearing & smell, while the images give you only a part of the experience, and that too has gone through a process of selection by the person who has shot that image in the first place.

But having a grandson changed all that. It was not the question now of visiting any place, it was only a matter of being where your grandson is. So if he is in Florida, you make a trip there, never mind the distance or the expenses. If Pranav had been a scientist working in a laboratory at the Antarctic we would have made a trip to Antarctic. The atmosphere of the place would only have made a change in the kind of preparation we would have made for the trip-a matter of logistics.

So what do you do when you first become a grandfather? It is actually very simple. When you become one, you get into the role automatically. The only difference in my case was that this was an american grandson and that put a lot of responsibility on his father. He had to be present at child-birth, and had to share the entire parenting process. I had not had any of this experience when I became father for the first time. In fact, as I remember, I was told to keep off, as childbirth and everything associated with it is a all-women affair in India.

So it should not come as a surprise that my son, who had become a father in the USA had gone through a training programme on parenting, and when I reached here, it was he who started giving me lectures on 'taking care of the baby'. Never knew he had it in him.