Shri Jagat Singh Bisht
(Master Teacher: Happiness & Well-Being, Laughter Yoga Master Trainer, Author, Blogger, Educator, and Speaker.)
Authored six books on happiness: Cultivating Happiness, Nirvana – The Highest Happiness, Meditate Like the Buddha, Mission Happiness, A Flourishing Life, and The Little Book of Happiness. He served in a bank for thirty-five years and has been propagating happiness and well-being among people for the past twenty years. He is on a mission – Mission Happiness!
🙌 Of Fathers and Sons: Reflections Under a Himalayan Sky🥰
✨By a Father who Still Learns Every Day✨
They say that the relationship between a father and a son is one of life’s most intricate riddles — simple on the surface, yet fathomless in its depths. I used to think it was mostly about who gets to control the television remote, or who finishes the last laddoo. But over the years, I have come to realise that it is much more than that — it is the quiet dialogue of two souls shaped by time, blood, and stardust.
I remember the nights when my son and I would lie on our backs in the open fields near our home in the sub-Himalayan foothills, gazing at the stars, pretending to identify constellations. He would ask impossible questions: “Papa, do you think the stars talk to each other?” And I, not wishing to puncture his wonder, would murmur, “Of course, beta — that’s why they twinkle.”
Those were our finest classrooms — no walls, no syllabus, no marks. Only curiosity and silence, interrupted now and then by the river gurgling nearby and a cricket chirping as if trying to join our conversation.
🐣Science and the Spark
Scientists tell us that my son and I share fifty per cent of our genes. That’s reassuring, though I often wonder which half is responsible for his sharp mind and which for his mischief. He has inherited my curiosity but thankfully his mother’s patience. Nature, in its infinite wisdom, ensures that no father ever sees his complete reflection in his son — only fragments, beautifully rearranged by destiny.
Genetics, however, is only the opening chapter. The real shaping happens through imitation — the silent apprenticeship of childhood. I would catch him, as a boy, walking behind me, trying to match his little footsteps with mine. Later, I found him copying the way I combed my hair (when I still had some), or how I raised my eyebrow when pretending to be serious. That’s when I understood — children don’t listen much to what we say, but they watch everything we do.
And so, a father must conduct himself like a public figure — constantly on display before a relentless audience of one.
🤔The Psychology of the Mirror
Psychologists say that the father-son relationship is the first laboratory of male identity — a subtle training ground for strength, sensitivity, and self-worth. The son learns how to win, how to lose, how to love, and how to repair things (sometimes including himself). The father learns how to let go, a lesson that begins the day his son learns to tie his own shoelaces and culminates when he decides to choose his own path.
In those early years, I tried to make him tough — like a young Richard Hadlee preparing for his spell against Sachin Tendulkar. We would play cricket, each of us living our fantasy: I, the wily veteran bowler; he, the fearless young prodigy. The bat was his sword, and I, with my ageing knees, his loyal opponent. On good days, I bowled him out and preened like a peacock. On better days, he hit me out of the park — and I cheered louder than anyone else.
Because, you see, a father is the only man who feels triumphant when he is defeated by his son.
🪐The Astrologer’s Whisper
If you were to ask an astrologer, he would tell you that our bond is written not in ink but in light — the light of distant stars. I was born under a Full Moon, he under a New Moon. Somewhere, a celestial poet must have smiled while scripting that — father and son, two halves of the same lunar coin.
He, impulsive and adventurous, his energy like the waxing moon. I, reflective and cautious, my thoughts like the calm of a full-moon night. Perhaps that’s why we understand each other so well — we are opposites that complete a cosmic circle.
The ancients believed that the Moon governs the mind. Maybe that’s why when he is restless, I sense it instantly, even across cities. And when I am low, he calls, somehow knowing it without a word being said. That’s the lunar telepathy of fatherhood.
🙉Upbringing, or the Art of Non-Interference
In the modern world, we fathers often oscillate between over-involvement and wise detachment. I’ve learned, over the years, that raising a son is not about moulding him in your image, but helping him discover his own. A father must stand like a tree — offering shade but not blocking the sunlight.
There were days I feared I was not doing enough — that my lectures on life were too long and my silences too many. But I realised later that it’s the silences that teach the most. When he fell and got up on his own, when he argued and then reasoned, when he went away to find his path — those were his real lessons, and I was merely the witness.
My better half, of course, has a different theory. According to her, all his good qualities come from her side — intelligence, looks, charm — while all his faults and laziness are pure paternal gifts. I used to argue, but I’ve stopped. A wise husband, like a good philosopher, never contradicts a well-formed theory.
☘️Reflections by the River
One summer afternoon, we sat by the river that had witnessed our lives quietly flow past it. He was now almost as tall as me, his voice deeper, his world much wider. We didn’t talk much — perhaps fathers and sons don’t need to, once they’ve reached a certain understanding. The river murmured, the breeze stirred the pines, and a faint mist hovered over the hills.
I wanted to tell him how proud I was, how much I had learned from him — but words felt inadequate, even intrusive. Instead, I skipped a pebble across the water. It danced three times before sinking. He smiled, picked up another pebble, and made it dance five. We laughed — and that laughter, light as mountain air, carried the entire vocabulary of love.
🌗Philosophy and the Passing of Time
Philosophers like Tolstoy and Wilson say that fatherhood is the continuation of consciousness — the handing over of not just genes, but values, wisdom, and wonder. A father, they say, lives twice — once in his own life and again in the life of his son.
Now, as I watch him stride into his own world — a world of decisions, challenges, and dreams — I find myself strangely at peace. I no longer need to guide him at every step. He has his own compass, perhaps tuned by the stars we once gazed at together.
And yet, there’s a quiet ache — the ache of time slipping by unnoticed. I often wish I had done more for my own father — said more, loved more, spent more time in his fading years. It is one regret that fathers carry silently — the awareness that one day their sons, too, will feel the same.
But perhaps that’s how the cycle of love and realisation continues. Each generation learns the value of the other only when it’s almost too late — and that, paradoxically, is what makes the love eternal.
🌍Beyond the Horizon
Today, my son and I don’t speak daily. Life has its rhythm, its distances, its busy drumbeats. But I know — and so does he — that if ever the clouds darken, one call will bridge it all.
I have no doubt that when I am gone, he will look up at the same stars we once counted and whisper a silent thank you. And I shall be somewhere up there, smiling, perhaps whispering back, “I am proud of you, beta.”
For love, like gravity, needs no language; it simply holds two souls in orbit forever.
✨Epilogue: The Eternal Game
Sometimes, in my dreams, we are back on that sunlit field — I, with my old cricket ball, and he, with his flashing bat. I bowl, he drives, and the ball sails high — into the sky, into time itself. I watch it disappear into light, and I realise:
Every father’s greatest joy is to see his son rise higher than the horizon of his own life.
And that, my friend, is the real Zen of fatherhood — not the art of motorcycle maintenance, but the art of heart maintenance — where love needs no repair, only understanding.
© Jagat Singh Bisht
Master Teacher: Happiness & Well-Being, Laughter Yoga Master Trainer, Author, Blogger, Educator, and Speaker
Founder
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Musings on My Birthday under the Harvest Moon💐☆ Shri Jagat Singh Bisht ☆
