DEAR DADDY SERIOUS

Nobody is more serious than a young girl’s father. A little girl has the ability to transform a free-bird of a boy into an extremely serious and careful man. My father is as serious as serious can be. 

Recession never hits an Indian father who is busy hoarding money for his daughter’s future wedding. If I were to tell you a round about figure, I have so much gold right now decked up for my wedding that I can even afford a sex change surgery. Ok, bad example.

Around five minutes back I got a call from my father. A certain guy from Australia saw my matrimonial profile in one of the gazillion match-fixing sites I am enlisted in and was desperately interested. With equal desperation he wanted to have our Kundlis matched. Never knew that “May I have your number please” has been replaced by “May I have your Kundli please”. My father sadly told me how his family rejected me because of the Jupiter that is sitting on my eighth house and a certain Mr.Shani who was playing hide and seek inside my Horoscope. He cracked the news of the rejection expecting a painful cry from my side, while I was lost in the feat of trying to figure out how Jupiter can be in my eighth house when I still live with my parents. I cannot even afford to live on rent, forget being able to afford eight houses.

But it is not always I that gets rejected. My father loves rejecting and selecting men according to their educational qualification, salary range, ancestral origin, current living city, height, weight, girth etc. It is exactly like the time when he was researching to buy his second car. 1200 cc engine only, Honda brand, Moon silver colour, power steering, petrol only, air bag and many such specifications. The only difference was that now he was trying to buy a son-in-law with in-built specifications that matched his taste. The process of rejecting and getting rejected is a never ending process.

I do not understand this seriousness behind this whole ‘get your daughter married before she hits quarter century’ thing. Gone are those days when people of the two opposite genders could converse with each other only through incoherent tensed mewls. I for sure am a very demanding person and I make sure my demands are met. Every girl is worth that. Ok for the sake of equality, men are worth it too.

My father is the best person on earth and I am the type of girl who replies to every girl who say’s “My Daddy Strongest” by “Sorry but I heard he lost the trophy to my dad”. But I must accept that this whole marriage fiasco has been seriously draining the life out of him.

So Dear Dad, it is time you took a deep breath and let things take their own course.  You raised me well, taught me to never go for something lesser than perfect and to always put across my opinions if I strongly believed in them. So here is my opinion. CHILL. Know that these rejections do not matter. I can find my own pet. Know that this gold hoarding will not do me any good. If anything, take a trip with Mom to Peru. I know you always wanted to go there. Know that watching the calendar dates pass by and marking my age will only make you grey faster. I did notice that your monthly visit to the local barber to get your hair dyed has doubled.

Know that you can still be that free bird you were before I was born. Know all this, because behind that seriously serious man, is a boy who used to do stand up comedy back in college.

This post is written for Indiblogger Cadbury Five Star contest - Condition Serious Hai.

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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.

Dad-0 Mom-1

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.

Dad- 1 Mom-1

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.

Dad-2 Mom-1

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.

Dad-2 Mom-2

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?

Dad-3 Mom-2

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!