Paras Ra­moutar

Fa­thers must have con­tin­u­ous di­a­logue with their chil­dren, and Fa­ther's Day must not be a one-day af­fair, ac­cord­ing to Imam Jameel Ous­man. He told the an­nu­al Fa­ther's Day cel­e­bra­tions at the Ed­in­burgh Hin­du Tem­ple on Sun­day: "We all live in a glob­al vil­lage and we live in an age of fast-pace-grow­ing tech­nol­o­gy, and com­mu­ni­cat­ing with our chil­dren is now done by tex­ting, Face­book, Twit­ter." Ous­man point­ed out that com­mu­ni­ca­tion on a one-to-one ba­sis with chil­dren was now be­com­ing a thing of the past.

"We are los­ing that fam­i­ly di­a­logue and dis­cus­sions to tech­nol­o­gy. As fa­thers, we must em­brace the op­por­tu­ni­ty to have di­a­logue with our chil­dren on a reg­u­lar ba­sis," he said. Ous­man said that a good fa­ther makes all the dif­fer­ence in a child's life as he was the pil­lar of strength, sup­port and dis­ci­pline.

"His work is end­less and, of­ten times thank­less. But in the end, it shows in the sound and well-ad­just­ed chil­dren he rais­es," he added. He point­ed out that traits of a great fa­ther in­clude be­ing, "a good dis­ci­pli­nar­i­an, dis­ap­prov­ing in a lov­ing man­ner, us­ing tough love to prove a point. "Oth­er traits are be­ing open-mind­ed, sup­port­ive, loy­al and re­spect­ful of your child's opin­ions and ac­tions, even though you may not agree with him or her," Spir­i­tu­al leader of the tem­ple, Pun­dit Ramesh Ti­wari, called on all fa­thers, "to come home to your re­spon­si­bil­i­ties." "Fa­thers must stop shirk­ing your spir­i­tu­al as­sign­ments, and get down to the task of se­ri­ous par­ent­ing. Let us use to­day's Fa­ther's Day as the chan­nel to­wards new fam­i­ly val­ues and ap­pre­ci­a­tion."