An alcoholic mill-wright wastes the money which his wife had painstakingly saved for their sons' higher education, after her death. But the sons, by hard work, educate themselves & also their sister to be a lady. But their father turns up with a slatternly wife just before his daughter's engagement to the village squire, threatening to disrupt, if he is not allowed into the family again. Soon afterwards, he falls into a weir & shouts for help, with the sons still within earshot. But the brothers delay, knowing that all their hard won decent lives will end if he lives.
His body was found six months later, after his daughter had married the squire. But the sons, though clergymen, are still guilt-ridden.
"Marali Mannige" by Shivarama Karanth (1941)
In this classic Kannada novel, Lakshmana, though married, becomes a wastrel & abandons his family, leaving them to fend for themselves as best as they could. His son Rama, with great difficulty & his mother's sacrifice, educates himself & gets a job as a hotel cashier. His father somehow gets to know this & starts frequenting it with his friends & leaving without paying. After sometime, Rama, realising that he has to pay his father's bills & deprive his mother of the money he is sending her, forbids the waiters from serving his father. His father, furious, kicks up a ruckus about "unfilial (!)" sons, & leaves.
As if an almost mirror image of the above, in "Bhitti" the autobiography of S.L.Bhyrappa, the author's father, is a village accountant by profession. But through sheer laziness, becomes a vagabond (author's own word) but expects to be supported by his son & calls the whole village to support him! It is almost a relief to his children when he passes away.
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