My Father's Daughter

To me, 'Mother's Day' and 'Father's Day have always been made-up holidays. (I feel the same way about Valentine's Day, by the way.) It's difficult not to mentally roll my eyes when I see the hoopla surrounding them these days, and here in the US, there are enough people who call them 'Hallmark Holidays', as in, 'a genius of a marketing idea by a company that makes greeting cards'. I'm sure it is. But I seem to have become more tolerant of these specific days as years go by. If people feel the need to have specially marked days to celebrate their parents, who am I to quibble? It is not for me, and neither my husband or I feel that way about it, but let people who enjoy it, celebrate it - to each his own, and all that.  

So when R, my colleague from office, asked me to also write a personal piece for Father's Day for the office intranet magazine, I was flabbergasted. Me? Write about my father? Really? And she thought that was a good idea? After having heard me on the subject? But she was insistent I do it. And dashed persistent as well. So I sat down and muttering under my breath, decided to write one of my patently tongue-in-cheek articles spoofing Elizabeth Barrett Browning's How do I love thee? (Sonnet 43: Sonnets from the Portuguese) And I did. Only, when I finished writing, I realised it wasn't that much of a spoof after all. Quirky, maybe. Definitely different from the outpourings of love I read from my other colleagues, some of which really touched me by their emotional content. But somewhere in between spoofing the whole idea, and actually writing it down, my article had morphed into something that had a heart.  

My father (Circa 1962/63)

So for what it's worth, here it is in its entirety on Father's Day (and yes, I appreciate the irony), unedited and raw. 

Why do I love my father? Let me count the ways: 

• He taught me to write – by not helping with my work. I had to put forth my own ideas and organise it, and he would offer suggestions for improvement. Then I had to rewrite it until he thought it was good enough. (I was in Std. I at the time.) 
• He taught me to appreciate the beauty of language and how to use it. Our house was filled with books, from Shakespeare to Wodehouse, and no book was out of bounds or age-inappropriate as long as I could read it.  
•  He shaped my choices – in books, movies, and music to the extent that my newly-wedded husband must have felt a bit like Dharmendra did in Chupke Chupke, when his wife quoted her ‘jijaji’ for everything!  
• He taught me to work with my hands and like it; to take apart almost anything, and to put it back together again. So, today, if I can change a spare tyre, or replace electric outlets, or tile a floor, without thinking too much about it, it is because he taught me that the ability to do something was not divided by gender.
• He allowed me to chart my own path at a time when the only possible choices for students were Medicine or Engineering. (He braved the many admonishing remarks of the clan for ‘spoiling his daughter by allowing her to choose English Literature as a subject when she had the marks to get into a professional course.’) And when, in later years, I said I wished he had forced me to take Engineering after all (I must have been the only Indian of my generation who said that!), he forbore to smack me on the head. 
• He took me to see Every. Single. Amitabh Bachchan. Movie. that released between 1975 (when I ‘discovered’ AB) and 1985, even when he thought that my liking for AB bordered on the fanatic. 
• He taught me to be fiercely independent, to cope with everything that life could (and did) throw at me. And then promptly yelled at me when my ‘independence’ got in the way of his plans for me. In his defence, I was 19, and in a bid to run away from my hometown, had applied for any and every job a graduate could get. When he pointed out that most of those jobs were hardly career-making ones, I pointed out, in my grandiose 19-year-old ‘I know everything’ manner, that ‘there is dignity in labour’. He snorted exasperatedly.    
• He modelled right from wrong – by example. We may have got lectures on other things (and we got plenty!), but never on morality. Some things were just not done! No excuses. 
• He taught me to be meticulously neat and organised and responsible (and impatient with others who were/are less so). 
• He is my father, and he shaped who I am today. (My mother disclaims all responsibility for the way I turned out!)

My parents on their wedding day

(I have never seen him with a moustache.)

I am very much like him – gregarious, opinionated, with a quicksilver temper, apt to call a spade a shovel... it’s no wonder we butted heads growing up. Our arguments flared, quick and loud, and deflated just as quickly, much to the consternation of bystanders who looked for the nearest bomb shelter whilst it was going on. It was all ‘sound and fury signifying nothing’ but we went at hammer and tongs, neither giving an inch, and forgot it all a few minutes later. 

Despite everything however, my siblings and I had a relatively stable and happy childhood. It can't have been easy with a single income and four children, but I can safely say we were never deprived. It was neither of my parents’ policy to give us everything we wanted when we wanted it, but between my father and my mother, they taught us to differentiate ‘want’ from ‘need’ and to prioritise them.  It is a lesson that has always served me well.

My father is now prone to more anxiety than ever, and hovers over me like an anxious hen with one chick, frantic because I once proposed to take the night train alone to visit my brother when I was in India. When I pointed out that I had just travelled from the US on my own, he quickly declaimed, ‘This is India!’ as if that should provide me with a valid reason to be chaperoned everywhere I go. I snorted exasperatedly, but keeping in mind the many times he forbore to smack me down for some idiotic know-it-all remark I made when I was young, I forbore to point out that I had lived more than half my life in India, and that my street creds are still impeccable – I still use public transport or walk wherever I need to go, and have travelled  quite frequently by Bombay’s commuter rail, and have lived to tell the tale. No matter. My father was too busy telling me (in triplicate) how unsafe it is to travel anywhere alone today. I shook my head and allowed him to call my brother to make an 8-hour train journey to my hometown so he could escort me back to his house. Some battles are better off not being fought. Because today, the man who taught me how to be independent is frailer than I would like to see him, forced into a sedentary life that conflicts with his active mind and will. 

He will turn 80 next month, and I feel a bit sad that I will not be there to celebrate a milestone birthday with him. My siblings and their spouses will be there though, and perhaps one or more of his grandchildren, and I will content myself with wishing him a 'Happy Birthday' over the phone. 

I do not get to see him as often as I wish, and this is perhaps the only time I will ever say – not directly to him (because that will embarrass both him and me) - but he knows what he means to me.  I love him and am proud to call myself his daughter.