I was in Bangalore KGA airport, awaiting my flight back to Pune, earlier today. The airport was filled with ads for a shopping festival for Father’s Day : ‘My Dad, my Hero’. There are discounts to buy your dad stuff. The ‘stuff’ my 79 year old dad would really like to have - his partner of 51 years - I am helpless to give him. 
As I walked away from him, into the departure gate, he looked forlorn, lonely, lost. Eyes moist, but determined not to break down, lest it impede my will to leave. For the first time in the 3 weeks since Amma left us suddenly, he is going to be mostly alone. Yes, my brother lives close by and my aunt lives in the same apartment complex, yet, for much of his time, he will be alone. 
Appa, like Amma was, is a very simple person. A man whose life revolved around keeping Amma and us, happy, ensuring, there was not just bread on the table, but butter, cheese and marmalade. Providing for my brother and me, the best education money and hardwork could provide. 
Along the way, he taught himself spoken English (he was educated in Tamil medium) by reading every book he could lay his hands on as he figured, that to grow his career in an MNC, language was his big barrier. In his job, he reinvented himself as a Total Quality Management expert, reading every book on the topic he could lay his hands on, with little formal training. He used to be an aggressive short tempered young man he says, and my brother recollects. But by the time I came along ( I was born when Appa was 37, 9 years after their marriage ) he had worked on his temper through meditation and become so even tempered, I have had a hard time believing he used to be otherwise. After Appa retired, he dedicated a decade of his life, learning the intricacies of technical based trading ( with mixed outcomes, admittedly), again reading voraciously on the topic and trying to implement it. In the last 18 months, Appa has become a bonafide Health nut - learning more about nutrition than most nutritionists, and has lost 15 kgs of weight and reversed his diabetes completely. The one thing I have seen about Appa is that anything he takes on, he gives himself to with resolute mental strength and with completeness. 
Today, on Father’s day, Appa took to the first tentative steps to reconstruct his life without Amma. He signed up as a volunteer at the Satya Sai Baba, super specialty hospital, where he plans to go a few times a week. Anybody that knows Appa, that he is actually an intellectual, and that volunteering is way out his comfort zone. But knowing Appa, he will surprise us yet again, by giving volunteering all he has to give, and emerging as a fervent advocate of volunteering. While all of us around Amma have struggled in the past few weeks, Appa, has been the beacon I have learnt to look up to. 
He is vulnerable, I can see. He is emotional I can see. Lost sometimes, like when I called this evening and he was wondering what he should tell the cook to cook. Forlorn too, like when I saw him at the airport. And yet, his iron will to pull through, to come out strong, is bigger than any of this. He stands taller than ever in my eyes. My gentle, yet strong dad. My dad, my hero.