Time flies. Too fast.

Dear S2,

This is my first blog post for you. In the time that I have managed to complete writing this, you already have a sister and are now 32 months old. As you can probably immediately realise (and even correlate), I am a somewhat laidback and lazy person.

It is going to be tough for me to organise my thoughts while writing this. The reasons for it are many

1) This post is long overdue. I should have written a few to you by now, but have not been able to do so. There are so many things I want to tell you.

2) There are so many things I just want to write down to remind me of your antics many years later.Apart from being a letter to you, this post is also a diary entry for me. Your mother, as usual, has been more organised and has already written a few dozen pages about you.

It is hard to describe how a father feels towards a son. It is an ever-changing cocktail ofjoy, responsibility, fear and pride in varying proportions mixed with love and sometimes even irritation. This description is bad literature and also pointless. Pointless because there are so many things that you will understand only when you become a father. I can write and try to explain this roller-coaster of feelings in a few pages. But, you will begin to understand this only when your child is born. That is what happened to me.

You fill me with love and take away all my worries.

You have taught so many things to me.

You have made me value my parents so much more. It is only now that I realise some of their sacrifices - not because I am doing anything of that sort for you, but because I am now placed in the right frame of mind. It is not that I have been a thankless child. Quite the opposite, actually.

You are growing too soon. I see your photos from the past two years and miss the younger you. I also rue the fact that the 2.5 year old will be replaced by a bumbling teenager and then by a young man. Such is life. No one can possibly miss the childhood of kids more than their parents - another something which I understand about my parents because of you.

A child is a big responsibility. I hope to live up to the responsibility and am so thankful for sharing yours with your mother. At the same time,  I worry for not being able to do as much as is required. It is probably the first time that I look at better-to-do friends and acquaintances with a tinge of jealousy as I want to give only the best to you. I regret leaving the UK and coming back because the UK would have been a better place for you.

A child is the catalyst which converts an adult into a mature adult. It is not a sudden process and it is far from over in my case, but I hope it will be by the time you are old enough to know the difference.