Ludhiana businessman is a son to 10 fathers

LUDHIANA: We often hear heartrending tales of couples adopting abandoned children and three lives changing in one go. This story takes off into a slightly different direction as Ashok Kumar, a well-known businessman from city, would be adopting, this Father's Day, a father. This would take the number of his fathers to not one or two, but well over 10. Forgone by their blood relation, these old men are living at the old age home in Sarabha Nagar.
Ashok Kumar has been delightfully attending to the needs of several senior citizens in Red Cross Old Age Home. "I have never openly spoken about my activities here because when a son serves his father, he is not doing something unusual or great. He is just performing his duty and only trying to pay back a little of what he has received," says he, a father himself.
However, to the old men here, his efforts are more than 'dispensing of duty'; their own children failed to do that. Tortured, deserted, most senior citizens here have distressing tales to share. On the occasion of Father's Day, Ashok Kumar is adopting Jaidev Vashisht, a retired armyman, who is reeling under severe financial crisis right now. The old man has been here for almost a decade. He left his family when the house that he had built with his own hands had no room for him anymore. "I am a self-made man and would never beg for anything in life. To see someone our children's age extend help to us is sometimes hard to believe," he said. Ashok Kumar had last adopted Onkar Nath, a man in his late seventies, who died a week back.