I was once a “Daddy’s Daughter”…till things changed, a mystery that remains unsolved to this day…but on some sporadic days…I remember my childhood, when I was my father’s pet…

A little girl entered one of the holiest shrines of the Hindus…packed with thousands of devotees, her little hand clutching her father’s hand as tight as she could…as the family entered deeper inside the Shrine, the pathway leading to the Goddess, became narrower and narrower…the same crowd of thousands now seemed to be in lakhs…and amidst all the chaos of chanting, shouting, puja…what no one saw was the little girl getting almost squashed in the crowd, her small height meant she was trapped in the mob of adults, leaving no room for her to breath…the little girl tried desperately to scream for help but her voice choked due to lack of oxygen, even without ever climbing into a swimming pool, the girl experienced a feeling of drowning; she realised in that tender age, this is what death feels like and holding her father’s hand cannot save her…just when she was about to collapse , she suddenly felt herself being lifted up in the air, and she gasped the uninterrupted oxygen…it was her father who realised his little girl will suffocate to death by this throng of people, so he picked her up and put her on his shoulders…the little girl was now over six feet high, towering over the crowd that almost literally took her breath away…as she sat on her father’s shoulders…she glimpsed the Divine Maa Kaali…that little girl was me…when no one, amidst the thousands realised my dire predicament, my father did…and he saved my life…

When I was toddler of just 5 years, I was selected for a dance recital..I loved dancing and practiced hard, but unfortunately a week before the performance, I fell off the stage by accident and hit my head so hard that I lost consciousness for a couple of minutes…when I regained my senses momentarily, I saw myself again on my father’shoulders, vomiting on his white linen kurta, as my father continued frantically filling hospital formalities for my admission…three days later, when I was recovering from the accident, I started practicing my dance steps in the corridors of the hospital ward, much to the amusement of the nurses and doctors, oblivious that the practice would go to waste because the doctors have forbidden me to dance lest my head injury becomes worse…my father did not have the heart to break this bad news to me…so he had an hour long fight with hospital management, desperately trying to make them understand, how important was the dance performance for me… finally my father convinced the authorities to allow me to leave the hospital for just three hours so that I could perform and be returned back to the hospital…on one condition, that my father signs a legal declaration that his daughter was taken out of the hospital against the best advise of the doctors, and should anything untoward happens to my health, my father will be solely responsible…my father signed the document, and I could dance on stage for the first time…I danced while my mother sang and my father played the Tabla…

When i first started school, I hated leaving my mother and home, I hated school and would cry everyday when my father would drop me off…my father would cry too… genuine tears, to the mild amusement of the onlooking parents and teachers who were not so surprised seeing a toddler cry but her adult father crying was a novel sight indeed…but my father cried everytime he dropped me to kindergarten, even though I was to return home in less than 4 hours…

Thank you Daddy…