Father's Day is celebrated mainly in the USA much the same way as Mother's Day and other holidays.
This year, I want to give a special tribute to my father, the late Nandubhai Christian, who was born on 18Jan1933 and died on 19May1984 after he dedicated his life to Christ on 01Aug1982. It was a fatal, tragic 'hit and run' road accident where he was hit by a drunk driver. I regret not joining him for a walk when he had asked me to, on the last day of his life - (had I known it was his last day on earth!). I was a 19yr teenager, crazy about learning to play a new song on my guitar: "Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and Son and Holy Ghost.." so I chose to play guitar over a walk with my Dad in the last hours of his life; but i have captured in my memory, Dad walking alone on the jogging field of Jamhuri High School, Nairobi, as i played the guitar and watched him walk from my bedroom window!
Dad was born in a humble home in a small village in India, called Navagam, in Gujarat State. Out of 13 kids, he was the only child that survived, so my grandparents loved him much. His childhood best friend, Narendra Bhatt, was so fond of him that he came from Kenya, Africa, in the late 60s- early 70s, to take Dad to be with him to teach Math and Physics in his school. it was sheer joy for Dad to reconnect with his other childhood friends; after he arrived in Kenya, he enjoyed many barbeques with uncle Bhatt and other childhood friends from India, that is later in Dagoretti suburbs of Nairobi, the green city in the sun.
His famous song lines were: "The Lord of love has come to me/I want to pass it on!" by Kurt Kaiser!
"I am so glad that Jesus set me free... Jesus is a soul man and I am sure sold on him, Jesus is a soul man, hallelujah,.."
"If I live well, praise the Lord, If I die well, praise the Lord, if I live or die my only cry will be, Jesus in me, praise the Lord!"
"One of These Days, I Am Going Home" was his favorite song, he sang often in the last years of his life.
Written in his own handwriting, on the back of a hymn book, are the words, "God is the great sphere whose center is everywhere but circumference nowhere. God is the sphere of infinite radius."
While Spring cleaning one day, I found an old diary where he had written: ds
2=gijdxidxj, i&j=i…n., he used to keep saying this out loud many times. He had a superb memory when it came to remembering the Math axioms and at the age of 3, he taught me: (a+b)= a2 + 2ab+ b2
And my cousin Ashok also helped me memorize as Dad taught him. I can tell you for certain that every time a new sidewalk was being plastered by a handyman, outside/inside the home, Dad would cherish writing/imprinting a Math equation on a fresh cement so it would be there longer. It was almost like he put his signature there.. (Smile)..from this, one would know this is where he lived.
Looking at nature, he admired rose flowers so much that in his Dagoretti home, he had 40 flowers blooming each day in the front yard, he even named our home in India, "Gulab Kunj" meaning Rose pot.
From observing such things, his belief in God, his love for nature, and his passion for Math are evident. You will enjoy reading these anecdotes. He understood Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity which very few have grasped till today.
Handsome-looking, Mathematician, Physicist, weightlifter, scientist, Believer in Christ, intelligent, and with the strength of a horse plus love for the family, Pa had it all under his belt. He was positive to the extent that he would carry a motorbike up the hill when it had a mechanical issue and he would say to me, "Bubblee, every day the bike carries us, it is our turn today to carry the bike, up the hill that is!" hey, why not! Great thinking, Dad!
He was married to our mother, Germana (a nurse by profession)-- they lived a simple life with 4 children, Dinker (Dinu), Kundan, Rajni, and me, being the youngest. Early in their marriage, they seemed to have settled their differences well; for their own space and time, he enjoyed doing Maths, while Mom enjoyed watching movies and they seemed to have a pretty good understanding to let each enjoy their fields of joy. They had a good marriage and I am thankful to God for that.
He had faith and love for God, but in early life, he was not that serious about it. He grew up in a Methodist denomination in India in his early life but after coming to Kenya, he attended Nairobi Baptist Church, particularly the 8:30 am Youth service. He was introduced to Nairobi Baptist Church by his god-fearing colleague who also happened to be his neighbor, Rev. Norman Dodman. The dear Dodmans are special to us as Mr. Norman was a Chaplain at the Degoretti High School where Dad taught. Dad called him his role model. Many years later, Bharat chose Mr. Doman to preach at our wedding. His wife Jean Dodman was a music teacher and taught me to play piano. Before death, Dad became a member at the Baptist church and longed to serve as an usher but before he enjoyed his 1st serving assignment, scheduled for Sunday, May, 20th, 1984, a day before, he was ushered into heaven on a Saturday night (May, 19th, 1984). I remember him telling me: 'Keep reading Proverbs' - his favorite book in the Bible.
In his younger years, he was rather too passionate about Maths and Physics that even now I visualize him studying at night by a small candlelight in our home in Nadiad while completing his Master's degree in the 60s. You will enjoy a super hilarious incident that I am mentioning here. But before his death, his Bible became more of his passion; he loved reading the gospels more often.
Going back to the hilarious incident in Nadiad, India, in the 60s, on his way back from work one fine evening, his zeal for Math and equations led him surrounded by traffic jams and a crowd of people, right on the tarmac highway. For a few days, he had been struggling to solve a hard equation and just as he rode the bike, the answer popped into his head, and instantly, he stopped, stooped down, and started writing the equation on the tarmac road(!), unaware of the traffic jam that his actions would cause! There was an uproar, but he requested even the police to please be patient with him until he got the answer! writing all on the tarmac road with a chalk that he generally carried in his pocket! so, as his equation balanced on the tarmac road, he breathed in a sigh of accomplishment, and upon raising his head he saw the people and traffic, they all smiled, laughed, and admired him for his Math craze!
I remember Dad taking my brother Rajoo and me for fresh veggie shopping in the evenings. Being the youngest, I would be in the front and my brother would be in the back seat as Dad rode the bicycle. I was hardly 4 or 5 years old. While returning, one twilight, my leg got trapped in the front wheel of the bike but I was strong enough not to let Daddy be disturbed. I didn't want to stop him riding as it was getting late, and took as much pain as I could; I was so thin and even though my tiny leg was squeezed and about to bleed, I was quiet. Some passerby stopped and brought Dad's attention to the front wheel and my leg. My Dad got down, saw, and was surprised at my high pain tolerance and my so brave spirit at that age. Only as they tried to pull my leg out, and it started bleeding, I started crying profusely. humbly I am thankful to God for giving me the strength to handle pain, and to persevere; even now many folks mistakenly question why I 'enjoy' pain in life. well, it is not that you 'enjoy' but you trust God to carry you through as even the pain is supposed to work out for your good! Thanks, Dad!
His job took him away from us in our childhood, so part of our lives we grew up without him. Later on, at the age of 15, I was the first one to reconnect with Dad and Mom and we had meaningful five years together that we enjoyed.
Dad knew he could bank on me to do the most difficult task, be it getting a blank paper from a huge pile of scratch papers or looking for a lid of a milk can in the early wee hours of dawn for his trip to the village during my childhood days in India. Dad also laughed at me when I would come up with silly ideas like "A girl in my grade 1 passed with only 1 number but I passed with 27 numbers!" (me, not knowing then that number 1 is the smartest..) When he taught higher Math in a school I was hardly 3, and I was taken to KG class; I disliked going to that school just because they would make us go to sleep at the hour when we should be playing, and also because my brother and sister were in a nearby school with other neighborhood kids; I felt being excluded from the neighborhood fun games... hahaha kids' thinking at that age! I remember fussing every day in my school uniform and how my Dad would persuade me by buying freshly roasted peanuts (my favorite till today) to make me agree to go to school happily then taking me and leaving me on the lower floor of the school building where KG class met and yet, later on I would run to the top floor in my Dad's higher class.. but I would be taken back to my class. :(
In my childhood, Dad used to take my sister Kundan, my brother Rajoo, and me to the farmhouse every other weekend; our eldest brother Dinker (Dinu) lived on the farmhouse with our grandma. I loved climbing trees in our backyard farm. once, I climbed so high that I had difficulty coming down and just couldn't come down even when everyone kept persuading me for a long time. Dad finally said, "I will catch you, just throw yourself down." wow! that was it! I trusted him so much, I actually closed my eyes and jumped right into my dad's arms. I won't forget that incident. Dad made it easy for me to trust God no matter what the height or depth, I can jump right back into the safe arms of my Heavenly Father and He will catch me, and won't let me fall or let go of me.
At one time when, due to having broken his leg in a road accident, my brother Rajoo had a plaster (cast) on that leg for 6 months. During harvesting season, every Saturday, Dad would put him in a basket, lift it to his head, and carry him to the farms. We all enjoyed it when we brought home a bumper crop, piled up in our living room at the farmhouse, he would throw me on top of it with joy to what God had blessed us with. I remember him helping my Grandma make curds and buttermilk manually, in a huge clay-pot, that required a lot of strenuous work.
In my growing years when hooligans in the 'hood in India, tried to bully and name-call me as I was young, during his visit, my Dad's just one roar of a lion or even his presence used to send every hooligan behind closed doors. No one dared come out. That was my Dad that I miss so dearly today as I am going through one of the worst periods of my life but I am reminded to be able to trust an even bigger Heavenly Father who has assigned angels for my rescue without fail.
Back in Nairobi, Africa, Dad loved to cook for us and sing to us too. In those days, there were no radios in the cars, so during the Christmas season, my sister and I became his 'live Christmas carol singers' all the way from home to church or to town and back home to Dagoretti, a beautiful Nairobi suburb - was what he called his heaven on earth. Dad taught my sister and me to ride the motor scooter and drive the car too; not only that, on my 1st Christmas with my parents in Nairobi, our car faced mechanical issues, so Dad took me to his friends' Auto shop in Kirinyaga Road and got Carburetor brushes that needed to be changed. Then as he opened the carburetor he taught me the mechanism and why the generator was not charging the battery. I had fun working on a car with Dad on that Christmas day; later on, we went to our dear Scottish family friends for Christmas dinner. These were beautiful moments in the green deep valleys of the Dagoretti area.
I have witnessed Dad love and respect God, and my Mom. As a nurse when she would be on night duty and he had cooked a delicious meal, he would drive 17 miles from Dagoretti/Waithaka all the way to Park Road Nursing Home, even at late night to give my mom a fresh taste of his cooking.
These are some more anecdotes that I would like to mention to encourage you.
His famous one-liner encouragement to everyone was: "You don't know what will happen in one minute; leave everything to God"!
In Nairobi, while tutoring a student in his home one day, the student's parent asked my dad if his God could bring a million Shillings; my Dad said, "Forget the money, my God brought rain down for me, and that only in my field." Then he narrated that years back, along with being a professor at the Anand Science College in India, he was an Agriculturist, too. He had many farms that he looked after during weekends, after working as a professor on the weekdays. One day, he had plowed and planted rice and was waiting for rain to come but there was no sign of rain. So he prayed and asked the Lord to send the rain. He joyfully narrated, "I saw only one black cloud came and rained only in my field!" What a faith!!! He witnessed Christ in his circle of friends and people knew him to be a believer Christian who professed faith in Christ. He loved to take me with him for theological discussions, as he could bank on me for many. LOL!
By the time I reconnected with him, I was a teenager, and I used to tell him to receive Jesus as his personal Savior but he couldn't relate to that spiritual jargon at first, as he was a good godly man and did his regular church activities without fail. But on 1 August 1982 while dropping my mom off for her morning shift at her hospital, they got trapped in a huge trouble caused by an attempted coup in Nairobi, the political disruption; a gun was aimed at his forehead, ordering him to surrender; he prayed and asked the Lord to save him, saying, "Lord Jesus, on one side there is death, on the other side, my daughters are waiting for me to take them to church so we can go and worship you, please save me so I can take them and go and worship you" yes, he wanted to go to church and worship. In a friction of a second, the gunman changed his mind and allowed my parents to go and flee for their lives!! bingo! As they ran for their lives to a nearby friend's home, it was now that my dad connected the saving faith in Christ. He knew that not only did God save him physically, but also eternally, and he received Christ as his personal Savior.
From that day on, he became passionate about living for Christ and witnessed even more. I remember the days when I was in those teen moods and he would sing songs for me, "No friend closer than Jesus, no friend will more love you than him!" because of that I was able to leave my rebel attitude and come to the foot of the Cross, fully!
Once he lifted a huge train wheel in India and assisted the railway workers; he was a weightlifter and the workers were not that strong. I remember as a child, my Dad would lift weights, with a rod, and my brother and I were on opposite sides, hanging, as he made the "snatch" while doing the exercise.
Not only that, on 1st day of every school year, his students would witness him bringing a hard coconut and cracking it open with just one blow of his open hand, and his students would be so impressed; the next day they would all bring one coconut each, the hard ones, to really check him out and he would break open each with just one blow; then he would say to them that he never misuses his strength but gives his heart to his students, reminding them he was in charge while they studied, and would expect them to do their best! Years later, after his death, one of his students shared with me that one day while at Jamhuri High School, in Nairobi, my Dad took his students for a lab assignment and after instructing them, left them to do some experiments. After some time he came back and asked them how did it go. The students replied, "It didn't work! We tried many things a couple of times to no avail." the student retold me saying, "I will never forget what your Dad taught us that day. He said, "No! you did learn, you learned what does not work; if what you tried does not work, something else will work. Never give up trying," look at Thomas Edison and his invention of superb incandescent bulb work after so many trials. Even though Dad was a professor in the early years of his career, he gave that up and chose teaching in the high school to help the young kids build a great foundation, I admire Dad for that.
He oversaw the hockey team practice and took them to tournaments. and you can believe this without a shadow of a doubt that before the games began, with all students at the center of the field, Dad would go right in the middle and pray before they started the game, this was his normal practice.
One story that I have found in a file, written in his own handwriting in the Gujarati language (our mother tongue); which am translating a few lines here. It was in the early 70s when he had gone climbing Ngong Hills in Ngong Karen area of Nairobi, Kenya, with a friend, and how he enjoyed climbing with weights in his hands, making a pathway in the wilderness, up the hills, with wild animals around and yet unafraid. En route he met the Masai tribe families who informed him of some of their customs, one of which was the criteria for marriage: if a man wanted to marry a girl, he had to go kill a lion and bring the lion's dead body, and then a bride will be given to the groom; so my Dad challenged them to bring a live lion instead of a dead one.. :) When he made it to the top of all the hills, he saw the only tallest buildings then in Nairobi; the KANU building (KICC) and Nairobi Hilton Hotel appeared like small toy cylinder-type jars put upside down. He wrote that when you see a big thing from a wider angle, or from a higher distance, it looks smaller, in the same way when we look at others' faults with a big heart, they look small; how great must God's vision and heart be to extend grace to us and let us get fresh start every day! Not that he overlooks but he allows grace to help us, accept our big faults as big as they are, and work the process.
On the evening he died, he had willingly given his helmet to my brother who was riding the bike; a drunk driver from somewhere drove recklessly and hit dad's bike from the back,(rear-ended); since Dad was a passenger, he got hit badly. A good Samaritan (Kikuyu) lady stopped and took them to the hospital where he was pronounced Brought in Dead,(BID). On his funeral day, all the people, students, friends, and folks that he wanted to share the gospel with, came and heard the gospel, which is the highlight and grand finale of Dad's spiritual life that I thank God for. "The Lord of love has come to me, I want to pass it on."
I am so glad my Dad has left a heritage and legacy of faith, bravery, boldness, challenge, the importance of studies, and hard work. I had the privilege to work with cars under his supervision as he taught me the mechanism of cars; repairing the parts and enjoying his teaching and meaningful time with him. I am thankful on this Fathers' Day for my Dad who loved God, and is in heaven; I hope to see him on the resurrection day and sing with him there as he sang with me here, " O what a wonderful day, the day I will never forget...Heaven came down and glory filled my soul, when at the cross my Savior made me whole, my sins were washed away and my night was turned to day...now I have hope that will surely endure, after the passing of time, I have a future in heaven for sure, there in those mansions sublime... it all because of that wonderful day" Yes, Dad! Go on singing and keep praising God, as one of your colleagues, unaware of your death, had the accident on the same evening, and in her after-death experience, she witnessed you going to heaven. When she was discharged and healed, she shared that experience with the world, 6 months after your passing away. I know you are in heaven rejoicing and I look forward to seeing you at the feet of Jesus!
copyright© by Kalpna Christian Sharma
