Father, dear father

I remember, as a child, I was a spoilt brat. Fussy about food, throwing tantrums at the slightest issue, always wanting things my way. My gr...

I remember, as a child, I was a spoilt brat. Fussy about food, throwing tantrums at the slightest issue, always wanting things my way. My grandmother would always complain,‘It’s her papa who has spoilt her.’ She would then add, ‘‘If she asks for the lioness’ milk, he’ll go and get it!’’ I would squirm when I heard this and sometimes protest loudly. But, today, I know she was right.

I remember as a child that whenever I rushed to my dad with a ‘Papa, you know what…’ or a ‘Papa, I want…’, he would drop whatever he was doing, turn towards me with a smile and hear me out. He does that even now.

I remember as I was growing up he always allowed me to take my own decisions. I chose Arts over Commerce, although the latter was the favoured option among my friends. Some of them even went to the extent of asking my parents to make me change my mind. My mother wasn’t too happy with my decision, but my father always said, ‘Let her decide’. I did.

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I remember turning to him with many of my childhood problems and, as I grew up, with grown up ones as well. The grown-up ones were the particularly difficult ones. Not only for me, but for him too. I remember the day I broke the news that I was going steady with Sanjay (my husband now). When I told papa I needed to talk to him, he had turned to me with a smile. Being an only child, my parents had other plans about whom I should marry. But they changed theirs for mine.

I remember the day I came to know he had prostrate cancer. I was broken but for both my parents’ sake tried to be brave. I was working in Ahmedabad and had to rush home as he had to undergo an operation urgently. I reached home to find my father in excruciating pain.

Said my mother tearfully,‘He had refused to get admitted into a hospital until you got home.’ When my father saw me, with tears glistening in my eyes, he said: ‘I’ll be okay now.’

Later, when he came out of the operation theatre in a semi-conscious state after almost six hours, the first thing he asked my mother as we crowded around his stretcher was, ‘Have you all eaten?’ And I thought, as tears welled up in my eyes, it’s just so typical of him — to worry about us when he was the one who had gone under the surgeon’s knife.

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A month ago, he underwent the same operation, this time it was more serious. I remember with a sense of deja vu that as the wardboy wheeled him out of the OT, he said: ‘Have you guys eaten?’

There are two things about my father I don’t remember: I don’t remember my papa ever grumbling or complaining about anything. He was the same even in the midst of a serious illness. The other thing I don’t remember is whether I actually told my father that I loved him.

Perhaps, I didn’t need to — he knew he was my pillar and always will be.