Saloni Meghani

Zubin Dubash submits himself to the call of the wild when away from work

Zubin Dubash's instincts often pull him in two different directions. His passion for wildlife beckons him to the outdoors and his love for children draws him home to his kids.

Sometimes, on family holidays, he gets the twain to meet. But the executive director of Indian Hotels suspects his daughters find coming for a wildlife holiday a bit monotonous, what with having to get up so early in the cold and rain and then having to endure endless waits to catch a sight of the animals.

And this is not the only issue on which the two apples of Mr Dubash's eye don't see eye to eye with him. On weekends, when he wears his baggy cargo shorts with many zips and pockets, Ayesha, his older daughter, prefers not to be seen with him at all.

"She thinks I am completely nuts to wear those clothes. They are rather embarrassed to go into Barista with a 44-year-old. They go in first and check if any of their friends are already there, so that they are not caught walking in with me!" he says. He is amused that his daughters — 15 and 12 — are at the age when they don't consider anything their father does 'hip' or 'cool'.

Mr Dubash shares a rare relationship with his daughters. "When the child is a toddler, you relate to him / her and behave as if you are also two years old. As they grow up, you talk with them and do things they would enjoy. It may make things difficult at times in terms of discipline. But when a child talks to you as a friend, you can’t whip out the rulebook and say, 'I’m your father'; you have to control yourself." says Dubash. When he does need to set the record straight, he sits them down and gives them what they call his 'man-to-man' conversations.

As a result, his children see him more as a friend than a parent. "Beyond a point, it's embarrassing for them to be seen as your friend. I started teasing Ayesha about boyfriends and advised her on how to get one. And since what I say can only be incorrect, she has, in fact, shied away from boys."

Mr Dubash can educate them on the birds and the bees, but he seems less optimistic about infecting them with his enthusiasm for other species. Even then, all his attempts have not been water off a duck's back. The family likes to go to Maldives for deep-sea diving. The last trip went off well, with younger daughter Aanya earning her diving licence after intensive training.

He is mighty proud of Aanya’s achievement, especially because he himself started with his head below surface level. "In the mid 1990s I went to Lakshadweep to learn diving for a lark. I did not take well to it in the beginning. Among all those learning with me, I took the longest. But it was so beautiful under water that I had to conquer my claustrophobia."

Once inside, the beauty of aquatic life took his breath away. "In those days the colours of the coral were spectacular. Even what you see on a 42-inch plasma television set comes nowhere close to the real thing," says the avid Discovery and National Geographic fan.

The last time he plunged into the deep he saw 50 sharks circling at close quarters. As he was at the deepest he had ever gone — 40 meters — he couldn't stay longer than three minutes. But there was enough time for a memorable and rare experience. The other underwater life to have caught his imagination includes barracudas, and turtles. "Turtles are shy and big, but quick underwater. It is difficult to catch them, though I chased and played with one."

As a token to his love for all things marine, he had an aquarium at home. "But one day my daughter asked me if we could fry one of the fish. So that did not work out." What did work out well was gifting a labrador to Aanya for her birthday. "Labradors are almost like human beings. They are very intelligent and very loving."

Mr Dubash finds many similarities between wildlife and human behaviour. "I witnessed a mini migration in Tanzania in January. Zebras were crossing a stream. Two or three of them would come forward and then back off. Every time, they moved a little further than the last. Then they finally broke through and went right across. This is pretty much the way human beings behave when they are testing the waters. When individuals bargain, they move back and forth to test the deal before they finally make it."

If he had to have the attributes of an animal, he would choose the life of the male lion. "It gets fed by the lionesses and does not have to do any work," he chuckles. But the tiger, he believes, is a lot more intelligent than the lion. "The tiger is a thinker. It is very sharp in the way it hunts. For instance, it moves against the breeze so that the prey does not catch its scent. As tigers live in the jungle where the monkeys make a racket and warn each other, they are poor daytime hunters. Their best chance comes in the dark of the night."

The tiger, he says, is his favourite animal by a long distance. Does he also have a favourite among his daughters? Mr Dubash says that he is often accused — unfairly — of being partial to the older one, Ayesha. "I am a big admirer of Ayesha. She is talented, creative and uses both sides of her brain, but she is not focused. I wish I could be like her, because I have seen things come easy to such people. But I see a lot of me in my younger one, Aanya. She has my dedication and perseverance. She is focused and performs much better at studies."

Determination is definitely an attribute that Aanya has inherited from her father. It is evident in the patience with which he spends hours waiting to catch the slightest movement from animals. "After about an hour or so of sitting and waiting in your jeep you may suddenly watch a lioness stand up and start stalking," he says. He says he was transfixed for half an hour when 5,000 wildebeest crossed a river in the Masai Mara.

"You get back the sense of the open when you are out in the wild. The plains, forests or mountains are so vast that you can see things in perspective. You realise your irrelevance."

When Mr Dubash has the means, he would like to retire and follow his natural calling full time. But, as of now, he finds it very difficult to let go of his precious ones at home. So, while much has always been made of the maternal instinct in the scheme of nature, here's to one super dad!

Uploaded on March 15, 2004