It wasn’t fashionable at the time. It wasn’t a trend that had swept the globe led by royal fathers and film and sports celebrities. Being a hands-on dad wasn’t even a term that he had heard of, but our father was one as far back as we can remember.

No, it was not because he wanted to give his wife the time and space to ‘fulfil herself’. Nor did he believe that his children needed to see him participate so that they grew up into well-rounded individuals. Father just enjoyed being with children and we were the closest ones on hand — and in those early years, adoring and pliable to boot!

But being a hands-on dad had its plus points and its minuses: The pluses were that early in the morning, when mother was not at her best, dad was full of energy and ideas. He was so pleased to have someone to share his pre-dawn wakefulness that he would hand over a glass of milk, made almost sinfully chocolatey — thanks to what mother called his ‘large hands’ and liberal use of ingredients and watch benignly as we gulped it down, eager to get to whatever was on his agenda at that time of day.

We would follow him into the garden and get into the spirit of whatever he had planned and dig up carrots, pluck tomatoes or tie little net bags around the bunches of grapes on his laden vine. A couple of hours later, we would be back inside, ready for a huge breakfast that Father would rustle up for us and for the other sleepyheads who had missed out on all our fun.

Father’s omelettes were legendary. He used plenty of butter, as many eggs as he thought were needed ‘to help us grow’, cheese to please and then beat up everything vigorously with a fork until the ingredients had no option but to puff up beautifully! Mother, of course, would sigh that he had used up a week’s ‘rations’ in one go, created a vegetable tsunami and left a trail of chopped onion and coriander all over the kitchen platform for her to clean – with traces of whipped egg appearing on the wall and kitchen cabinets for days afterward!

Father tutored us when we had problems in any subject and he was the one who attended PTA ‘meetings’ — those occasions when one of us had done something wrong and a parent’s intervention was required. He would arrive in full uniform and proceed to divert the principal’s attention with inquiries about her plants or her poultry and somehow our infractions were not discussed and we got away with a reprimand that went something like, ‘Your father is such a charming man; why can’t you be like him?’ We never quite understood what charm had to do with submitting our homework or projects on time and we resented comparisons — but that’s how Dad saved our skins!

We naturally couldn’t recall what father did for us as infants but as a grandfather he loved being hands-on with cleaning and feeding and burping, covering himself and his grandchild in a cloud of sweet-smelling talc when he was on nappy-change duty and putting his comfortable stomach to good use when he soothed colicky infants!

But taking a back seat was tough for our hands-on dad-cum-granddad. Well into his eighties, he would turn mattresses and shift sofas to create more space for the family. He would lift heavy suitcases and search for things in the loft, pretending he had no ill-effects from all the exertion. He would try to be everywhere at once — as he always had — with his finger in every pie, until we were forced to cry, ‘Hands off, Dad!’ and take over the show.

Cheryl Rao is a freelance journalist based in India.