My father was never subtle about it. While other lessons of childhood arrived quietly, absorbed through watching, this one came with words. Clear, repeated, unhesitating words: you must always study. Always. No one can take away your knowledge.
He said it when things were easy. He said it when things were not. And the thing about growing up with a phrase like that is that eventually, you stop hearing it as instruction and start hearing it as identity. Learning wasn't something we did for school, or for a certificate, or to please him. It was simply who I became. Learning evolved to an everlasting love for reading.
"He didn't just say it. He showed up to work when showing up was hard, because he understood, in his bones, that the alternative was far harder."
He knew with a clarity that only comes from experience, that navigating a world where opportunity is scarce and the people who endure are the ones who never stopped preparing, never stopped learning, never allowed themselves the luxury of thinking they already knew enough.
So, he studied. Alongside us, sometimes. He worked hard in rooms where working hard was not always rewarded as it should have been. And he kept going. Not because it was easy, but because he had already decided, long before we were old enough to understand the decision, that this was the only way worth living. That decision, once made, changes everything. He made it early. He made it loud. And he made it in front of us, every day, so that we would one day make it too.
There is a particular kind of love in that. Not the soft, wordless kind. The kind that looks you in the eye and says, the world will ask more of you than it should, and you must be ready. .
I vividly remember going to many a bookfair, be it in a mall or at the Durban Harbor excitedly picking books to my heart’s content. I recall being subscribed to monthly book subscriptions from a very young age. With the “keep learning” mantra, the love for books and reading became an innate pleasure for me.
So, this Father’s Day, I say thank you to my dad for igniting a passion inside me that I can now build on and share with the world as an extension of me.
Wishing all father's and father figures a wonderful celebration this 21 June 2026!
Aruna - Curator - Proud Daughter
Pepper - CQO
Paw Approved by association!🐾 (not a fan of her grand dad but if mamma is a fan then okay she will go with the flow)