Remembering father

Father had been a figure who inspired awe in me - a strange mixture of respect and fear. Like a live electric wire. You don't go near it. You don't get too close because it may hurt you. It commands respect because you cannot ignore it, nor handle it sloppily. Father meant quite as much to me and more. He was very knowledgeable - the range of books that lined the shelf in his study attested to it. He was never seen to be doing nothing, never spent any time in idle chatter or indulged in any kind of indolence. If he was not hammering away on his typewriter, he was reading a book. Rarely was he at home, except for dinner and sleep. He ate out in the day and preferred a quick light meal and got on with his work.
The lack of closeness, the absence of intimacy, between father and me is rather remarkable, since the experience of my sisters is quite the contrary. So to say father was aloof and reserved would be quite off the mark, though I must certainly say that he was a man of few words. This is true, which seems quite paradoxical if you consider the fact that he spent his whole life among words doing nothing but writing.
He was a voracious reader of books. He kept a notebook in which he copied passages from the books he read which interested him a great deal. There were in it several quotations from authors as varied as the books themselves. He read history, biography, politics, novels, classics and even comics in lighter moods.
I kept myself out of his sight and got closer to mother and used her often to mediate with father. When it was time to get his signature on the report cards, I literally pushed mother to place it on his table and wait at the door for the inevitable reprimand, sharp and biting, followed by the signed report which would come flying at me, having been hurled by father in anger at my poor performance.
I don' remember having a jolly time with him until I became an adult, even then it was to me not an easy encounter with him. At the dining table, when sometimes we all ate together, father would relate interesting stories from his news beat. He was a good raconteur of short and funny anecdotes, which he loved to relate to family members.
Mother told me that once when I refused to go to school (I think I was in class 2 then), father was so upset and angry that he hit me. I hurt badly and ran a temperature probably out of fear. He later took me to a clinic and faced a reprimand from the family physician. Father never hit me again; he did not hit any one ever again. That was the first and the last time he got physical with his children. I would like to think, though I couldn't be sure, that my fear of people stemmed from this experience, and hurt my self-esteem. His reticence perhaps prevented him from coming close to an introvert like me, who preferred his own company.