Mommy or Daddy the greatest??

Since childhood I have wriggled out of complex situations. Complex situations where a kid doesn’t like to get caught in especially in front of his/her parents, because how much ever mature they seem to be, parents are an insecure bunch. As I grew up, there have been numerous instances where my parents would force nerve jittering questions down my ears.

My Amma would alarm me in the most relaxed manner and would shoot the most venomous question ever. She would ask me “Mole, you like Papa more or Amma? Be honest to me Mole”. Now since I know that the answer decides what she would cook for dinner and whether she will polish my school shoes for tomorrow, I would innocently look into her eyes and say “Amma, you and Papa are like my eyes. I can’t like one eye more than the other.” This answer always awarded me with an extra scoop of dessert serving after dinner. I always stick to this answer, but for the sake of not appearing to be a trained parrot, I would change the body parts from ‘eyes’ to ‘limbs’ or ‘ears’.

Today my father asked me the same question and I like a Ninja answered him and made his chest rise from 40 to 44. But today as I lay on my bed for an afternoon nap, I couldn’t stop myself from actually questioning myself regarding my allegiance. Did this Mole, love her Amma more or her Papa? Who was my inclination towards? I had to find an answer once and for all.

CALL IN DISTRESS- As a child I was my Daddy’s pet, still am. I was treated like a boy and I disclosed the torments of my childish mind openly to him. As a kid, I never liked Amma giving me a bath because she never told me stories of her childhood adventures while foaming me up. She had a boring childhood anyway. My Papa was the man I wanted to become when I grew up, though I turned out to be a woman. But as I grew up, I stopped opening up to Dad and he never probed me into revealing my problems too, for he knew that it was not his field of expertise. Mom was the one I approached and she became my therapist, though she was a bad one. She became my call in times of distress.

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FREEDOM- Now I am boasting when I say this but I really do have the ultimate man as my Papa. During my tenth boards he caught me reading Cosmopolitan. I was busy staring at the picture of topless and hairless Hrithik Roshan in the magazine by keeping it inside my Chemistry book. He didn’t scold me at all, but forced me to keep my Chemistry book down and read the magazine for 2 hours straight. That was my punishment, though I never understood how. My mother on the other side was a pain in the bum during my teenage years. She would run and enter my room faster than a coyote just to inspect what exactly I was doing online. She never trusted me and I can’t blame her for I knew that the curious me couldn’t be trusted. My mother always brings the whole concept of being a woman into everything and anything I do or did, while my Papa like a gentleman that he is shuts my mother off and listens to the apple of his eye i.e his Mole.

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SPOILING ME- Amma, Papa and my Acchamma (Dadi) all have a fair hand in this.  My Amma used to go around scolding my nursery teachers for not treating me well because they complained to her regarding my biting problem. Now I have to confess, I used to bite my teachers as a kid if I they ever scolded me or tried to make me answer the questions I didn’t want to. But my mother conveniently blamed them and never pointed a finger at me. My Father would buy me balloons and Samosas at 12 midnight because I cried out loud for it. For this he had to walk half a kilometre into the neighbouring slum and safe himself from probable thieves. You don’t want to know about my craze of bursting balloons and then crying till I got another one. If I was my Papa, I would have disowned me. He once made six omelettes for me before making the perfect one, because I do not like even a fragment of the existence of whiteness in my omelette. He made 4 omelettes, slapped me, said sorry and made another 2.

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MONEY BANK- My parents provide me with money without any interrogation whenever I want. Me giving them false reasons for the money is a totally different aspect and I know for sure that my parents are not dumb enough to actually believe every word of what I utter. But they know for the fact that their Mole spends most of the money in her cute little purse, hogging at every restaurant standing in the town. She can lie for food and they know it. My Papa never opens the message I send him, for her knows that the message contains just two words ‘PUT MONEY’. The guilty me never calls for money and when I do, I always report to my mother directly who takes care of the situation. So I believe both share an equal stand in this aspect.

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CRY ME A RIVER- The only way to deal with the situation is to ask myself this- ‘ If I ever do anything wrong, something which makes me feel guilty, something I am truly not supposed to do, whose face comes in my mind? Who is it that I don’t want to see hurt or disappointed? Whose judgement on my character matters more?’.  Now when I review my life till date, I notice that I have always tried hiding unwelcoming facts about myself from my parents. If I tell my mother, she will pass it on to my father which I don’t want. My Papa has provided me with everything I have asked for and didn’t ask for or dreamt about and this comes in my mind whenever I fall into a messy situation. I can tolerate my mother’s indifference, but never the disappointment in my father’s eyes. I have never seen him cry, not even when he lost his father and I never want to be a reason behind his eyes brimming over with tears. I don’t know from where this special soft corner towards Daddy came from, but I have to agree that it has always been there and how much ever my mother tries to win the position by feeding me Gulab Jamuns, she can’t win. We don’t need to tell her that, do we?

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So, it turns out that I am my Daddy’s little grown up girl and always will be. Amma might hate this revelation but she wouldn’t mind losing to him for she knows he is worth it. And if my younger brother happens to read this, I just want him to know that no matter what I do, wherever I go, I was their first baby and they love me more. I know they might use the arm/limb/eyes story which dealing with your queries, but you know who stands tall and first. THE SILLY OLD MOLE, ME!

P.S- Sorry about the extra long blog post! This just had to be done!