Daddy and his baby

It is said that a girl is closer to her father than to her mother. 

For a daughter, a mother is an epitome of discipline, whereas, a father is like her partner in crime! 

There is special bond that a girl shares with her father; after all, he is the first man in her life. And, she is always a little princess to him. 

From infant to toddler to pre-teen to teen, a father sees the apple of his eye grow up from a little baby to a pretty woman.
From a little girl in pony tails to an elegant lady in a saree

But what happens when the time to search for her groom arrives. Dads start having the feeling of losing their gorgeous little princess overnight to some stranger who may or may not keep his angel happy. 

The mere thought of giving away his daughter to a person who he barely knows or has probably just met, starts giving him restless nights.  

From the start of seeing the groom, to the marriage preparations to the main ceremony. I am sure father's might be going through different emotions.

The excitement in his daughters eyes while shopping, the smile when she is talking to her fiance, the sad face when she doesn't get the exact shade of what she wants.
It makes him very happy as well as sad, to think that the time for her to leave him is coming nearer.

  

On the day of her marriage, all the memories from her childhood to now, even those forgotten memories flash through his life, like a photo album. 

During the Kanyadaan, father goes through a wave of emotion in this biggest moment of his and his daughter's life. That moment when its time for him to finally accept that there is going to be another man who will love her and protect her.

Silently, he wishes that this man loves, cares and protects his daughter more than daddy can does. 

When his daughter steps out of  her parents house as "Miss" to become a "Mrs" she leaves a gazillion memories in that house.

With tears in her eyes, when she turns back, she sees a man standing in the corner with sad red eyes, trying hard not to cry.
When she comes and hugs him, he doesn't see the bride, the grown up woman but he sees the little girl who used to hug him. He sees his little baby.

And a single tear rolls out from his eyes.

He is the father of the bride

Daddy's are always the daughter's first hero -Google Quote
A son is a son till he finds a wife, but a daughter is a daughter all her life-Google Quote 

Original Post: http://indiandramaqueen.blogspot.in/2014/10/daddy-and-his-baby.html
I really wanted to share this post here, since there are a lot of girls here and would understand the sentiments. 
Thanks Maithili for letting me post from my blog.

Lastly, Happy Diwali all you pretty ladies

But, he said "I love you"

12th December 2009

I am sitting here staring at the computer screen.
An email open in front of me.

To anyone else it would look like just another email. For me it was different
It was the wedding card of the man I loved the most.
The man I have dreamt of living a life with every waking hour.
It gave a very bitter taste in my mouth to read someone elses name in the place where I have pictured mine to be.

There was a link of wedding website in the email too.
They say "curiosity kills the cat". This time it hit me real hard and I opened the site "Mayan Goya weds Ishjal Frakha" was written in big bole cursive letters
Beneath the title was the story of how they met.
I realised, the man who promised me love, promised it to someone else too.
The places, their meeting points mentioned there were the places where we held hands and promised togetherness.
The way he proposed her was they way I had described my dream proposal to him.

There was a picture of them holding hands, hugging, him kissing her forehead.

A bile rose in my stomach.
I wanted to throw up all the bottled emotions that have rotted without proper nurturing.

Its a weird feeling knowing soon he will officially be a husband. ...someone elses husband

I want to scream out loud, I want to shed every unshed tear, I want to rip off every emotion I have for him, I want him to know that he has hurt me real bad, I want him to know am breaking inside
But, I sit here silently penning down my feelings.

19th January 2014

Now, stumbling over this letter hidden in between my files makes me feel how dumb I was then
Why did I cry over someone who wasn't worth anything
Karma is a darling when she is on your side,
But, it surely doesnt make me a bitch when I get this sadistic pleasure to hear that he is going through a traumatic divorce because she was caught cheating on him.
Maybe this is what is called 'What goes around comes around"


Image Courtesy: Google Images

The Night After It...

Hello, Women and the Men reading this!

This happens to be my first DoV post, so please do not abandon my post if I disappoint you!

And she mounted her vintage Impala SS Convertible, which predominantly had been her father's. It was one of the posh cars that adorned her garage. People thought it was quite incongruous for a girl to behold an obsession for speedy wagons. Her mother never liked it a bit. She understood why. It was something her Dadda had bequeathed, or rather instilled in her. She always amused Dadda by her inquisitive nature about the vehicle. he had taught her to clean it, mend it, drive it. He had told her that they were not mere cars but a beauty. She had recently replaced it's brake engine, stock up it's oil tank and bathed it like it was her own baby. Each time she convened in this car, she had to live through her worst nightmare.

It was the conventional monsoon night of July. She never could have fathomed the news like it had hit her. The call from the local police station had shook her soul and slapped her awake that life just wasn't about enjoying the world's vista from the comfortable seat of her Dadda's robust bears. The police had testified that his car cascaded over the bridge in haste while he tried saving the little boy from a hideous blow by his car. 

She'd stopped believing in God and his miracles the moment she witnessed Dadda's lifeless cadaver in the morgue. She had gone all by herself, knowing her mother won't be able to endure the very sight of her husband's corpse. She'd been just seventeen, for the love of God! It was strenuous for her to concede to the truth that there'll be no more Dadda to tuck her into the blanket each night, like she'd never grown up. Not that she ever objected to it! 

She decided to walk through the frosty plethora back home, thinking the cold water would calm her screeching soul which was demanding Him to give her back her Dadda. Life was going to be chewy, very chewy. She couldn't figure which way to break the news to Mum. What would she say? That Dadda's no more? That they'll have no more vacations? That she'll have to be the only one to attend all the result days and the Parents' Day of the remaining two years of her school life? That she'll not have the piquant frame of him to behold her when she'll be wanting it the most? That she'll have to live in the most improbable phase to come? Handling her mother had been tough. But yet, she handled herself commendably. Mum knew her daughter would need her the most at this point of time in her life. She too never let Mum down for even the minutest of the seconds in the coming years. She was the new life partner Mum never thought she'd find. They'd gone shopping, watched films, taken cooking classes, had their own parties, drunk on the night of her convocation. She'd drawn her mother out of the obscure pit in a way!

The sudden rain brought her back to the present. It had drizzled in an identical fashion the other night. She unknowingly eyed the dashboard. She'd never opened it, lest her Dadda's essence escape the little area she'd preserved till date. She couldn't define the force which compelled her to open it after all these years. She found the tiny box she had hidden there for her Dadda on his birthday, when she was merely 14 years of age. It had a flower crafted out of origami sheet and a note conveying, "I love you, Dadda. You're the best Dadda ever." She felt the imprint of a writing on the reverse of the note. She turned it, and her breath caught in her throat. "Dadda loves you too, Honeybunch. You too are the best daughter ever." 

She felt the moisture on her cheeks, and then the note. After years, she felt the serenity of their love again. She re-filled the contents of the box, restored it into the dashboard and piloted her way to her office. 

That's all for now fellas. You can check me on The Silence Of My Voice.

Tener cuidado! =)

MY FIRST MAN!! :)

            I hugged him tight as tears rolled down my cheeks. The train gave a long hoot and slowly started moving away. “I don’t want to go”, I whispered. “You HAVE to go. Go and build a wonderful career. You HAVE to do this without me. Without US”, he said and turned away to wipe his tears.

          “All the best, paapu”, he said and watched me hop on to the train. I stood at the door, waving my hand at him, bidding him a goodbye. His eyes, they spoke everything. I have big eyes, just like him. I have his teeth, elongated and pointed teeth. I have his nails. I have his color. Wheatish. I have his qualities, I sing, I write. He does them too. I’m short-tempered, so is he. I’m courageous and bold (if someone had gone through what I went through, they would have quit college long back. It took a lot of courage to stand up to people and prove myself right.) The courage and that thing to ENDURE people, especially bad ones are from him. He has endured more of such things in life. The way I sit, the way I pick my spoon to eat, the posture I sleep in, the way I twitch my face and look up at the sky when I laugh, it’s all HIM. I’m the Daddy’s girl!!

            He was the first man to hold me in his arms. The first man to touch me. “Ap-pa”, I must have fumbled when I was a baby and I can imagine how overjoyed he must have been that day.

“Appa, do a jeeeeeeeeeee-jhik”, I would ask. A Jeeeeeeeeeeee-Jhik meant, he would throw me high up in the air and catch me. He would repeat this until I’d ask him to stop it!!

Up in the air and he would never let me fall. He would hold me before I could fall. Maybe, as a kid, I trusted my dad so much that I knew he would never let me fall.

          “Appa, I have a doubt in these allied angles. Can you explain them to me now?”, I asked him when I was in fifth grade. It was 3 AM. “Now? Its 3 AM”, he said rubbing his eyes and looking at the clock. Nevertheless, he immediately recalled I had an exam coming up in the morning and sat up all night with me to teach me allied angles. My Math Whiz Dad!! :P 

          “Look at this”, he said, waking me up one fine morning. “Look AT THIS”, my paapu’s photo is in this newspaper. “WHAT!”, I said throwing myself up from the bed. I could see my dad’s face beaming. I was one among the toppers in my tenth boards and my photo was in the newspaper. He was flaunting it to my mom – “my daughter”, he said. He used to stay up with me all night while I studied for my boards, because I just couldn’t study alone. He would do little things like making coffee for me, playing the radio so that I don’t fall asleep, keeping me company whenever I felt bored of answering ‘model question papers’. All of this, in spite of working all day long in office. I don’t know how he managed to do that.

          “Appa, are you sure I can do this? I’m kind of scared”, I had told him. “Of course you can. I’m right behind you”, he said and wrapped his arms around mine and turned on the accelerator. It was my first scooty lesson. Dad had insisted I take a scooty to college. At some point, I remember, I had put on the brakes with the accelerator turned on. I fell and he fell with me. We both were bruised. Badly. Yet, he never stopped giving me driving lessons.

          On the first day to College, he had followed me up in his car, while I drove the scooty, just to make sure that I would wade through Bangalore’s traffic carefully.

          

          “Which course do I choose dad?”, I had asked him. My Medical ranking was WAY better than my Engineering ranking. “I think I would get a better medical college than an Engineering college”, I had said.

“It’s Engineering”, he had said. “You cannot survive in medical, paapu. It’s not for emotional ones like you. You will break down if your patient dies. I’m not discouraging you. But it’s a hard field for you. Think about it”, he had said. Had I taken Medicine as my profession today, I would have flunked. I’m glad dad put some sense into my brains then. I joined an Engineering college.

          “Appa, I have a confession to make”, I said one day. He looked up from his papers and removed his spectacles. I slept on his lap and cried. I had got my fifth semester results that day. And I had passed in all the subjects with a meager FIRST CLASS. A girl who scored distinction, stooped down to a FIRST CLASS. “I’m sorry Appa. I don’t know what went wrong. I’ll work harder next semester”, I promised. “You need to know what went wrong, paapu. Tell me what is happening. Is everything fine at college?”, he asked.

          I looked at him. He had turned into a friend long back, maybe ‘I’ hadn’t noticed him. “Nothing is fine, Appa. I don’t have any friend in college. It’s just me. I don’t want to go to college anymore Appa. Can I just quit and take some other course? Please Appa”, I had started crying uncontrollably.

“You will NOT quit just because you do not have any friends. You will NOT quit your career just because somebody did something to you. You will NOT quit just because you are alone in college. You will NOT quit just because people are stamping all over you. I want my girl to be strong. Stay where you are and show people that you are strong and can survive without them”, he said. If I had quit that day, if he had LET me quit that day, I don’t know what I would have done today. My dad had analyzed the weak point, and he helped me convert it into a strong point. And the next semester, I was back on the topper's list.

          “If you feel alone in college. Call me up, call up mom. Talk to us, we are always there”, he had said the next morning before he left for work.

That’s probably how me and Appa became ‘friends’!!

          Finally, when things in college settled down and I found my true friends, Appa would sit with my friends and talk to us. He would talk to us about college, lecturers, laboratories, internals, externals and would still not get bored of our college talks. Probably, that is why my college friends still make it a point to visit my mom and dad when I’m away from home myself.

          “You are also not here, somebody should visit your parents when you are not around, right? So, its US”, my wonderful friends had said. I feel they are the angels in my life. I’m glad; at least, somebody visits my parents often to see they are doing well when I’m away. How many of you have such friends? Lucky me, isn’t it? 

          “Appa, guess what, I got placed!!”, I had yelled over phone. “That’s awesome news. Congratulations paapu. I can’t believe my little girl will be going to office”, he said.

And THAT office, packed me off in a train and brought me to Delhi. Away from my dearest Da-da!!

          “Appa, I want to do my Masters. Please don’t get me married soon”, I said jokingly. He laughed at it, I’m not letting you get married until I understand that my little girl can handle a family. And you can do your Masters if you wish to. Go ahead and study everything that you can”, he said.

I gave my entrance here, in Delhi. I missed him so much on the day of my exam. Every exam, my dad would drop me to the examination center, he would wait there till I wrote my exam and would bring me back home. But this time, I was alone. I had to take an auto. I had no one to come back to when I finished writing. It was such an empty, hollow feeling.

          Every time I roam around places in Delhi, my mind would go back to my dad. “Would dad like this place? Would dad eat here? Would dad buy this shirt? Would dad like my office? Would dad…”, so you get the drift.. It’s always my DAD for me.

Thank you Dad! For being there with me, for me and for being the First Man in My Life!!

Confessions of a Daughter

Dear Dad,

I have probably never said this directly to you, but I love you. I have always found our relationship in a bit of swirl and always going through ups and downs. I have heard that father-daughter relationships can be as complicated as it can get. I also saw the movie “Abiyum Naanum” and got to know what you undergo watching your daughter grow and let her out of your hands into the world. In my younger days, I did not understand you even that much as I do now. I just used to think that you are being way too strict and short-tempered and stubborn. As I grew, I convinced myself that I cannot reach you as certain people reach their fathers. So easily. As a close friend. I thought that you can never understand what I think.

All the while, my inner voice kept chiding me that I am misjudging you. It took me a while to realize I was blinded by my childish nature that I failed to see that you were just taking care of me with each restriction and that you just wanted me to reach new heights by each scolding. Though, I did not get as close to you as I am to Mom, I knew that you missed me when I was away in spite of the fact that we both fought most times when I am at home for holidays. I would not say you are 100% flawless. For that matter, no one is 100% perfect. But, you were all one could ask for, for a dad, even much more. You were unique in your own way of nurturing me and anna.

This distance from the start somehow made me not being able to convey personal stuff to you as much as I tell mom. We both are that way till now- feeling awkward when it comes to discuss certain personal stuff. But now I know. It is like that for you because you want me to get the best and at the same time want me to be safe. It is like that for me just because of habit. I will work on it. 

I know the struggle you are undergoing inside- a struggle between letting your daughter have what she desires and not letting her get hurt. I have learnt to exercise tolerance when you say the same thing over and over again. Because, now I know. I know that you want me to do well. I have learnt to find a way around things when your ideas seem a wee bit orthodox for me. Because, now I know. I know that you have been living in that kind of mindset for so long that you do not know that there is another way of seeing things. The way I do. Nevertheless, you always have given me my freedom and space to open up my wings and fly high and wide. You know I have to fly high and I will too. But however high I go, I will always be coming back to you and amma. For, without you two I am nothing.

Your loving daughter,

Keirthu

Until later,

Keirthana :)