Srinagar, May 22 -- I've often thought about what it means to be a father. It's not a title you simply inherit; it's something you quietly become, moment by moment.

For me, that living truth took form in one man: my father, Syed Mehdi Mosvi.

His life wasn't about grand declarations or public praise. It was about small, steady acts that shaped the course of my family's future.

He trained as a mathematician, earning his degree from Amar Singh College, but his way of understanding the world went far beyond numbers.

For him, mathematics was a language of clarity in a life often clouded by uncertainty.

Like Pythagoras, who saw numbers as keys to universal truths, my father saw equations as metaphors for the challenges life throws at us: p...