Daddy's girl

For the curious souls with good memories, yes, I got stood up last saturday.

I knew it. I told you.

Bwahahahaha! :(

If the brats had indeed turned up, I'd be blogging about them right now. But they did not.

So instead, I'm gonna write about men you can actually count on.

Dad, for example.

I called my parents yesterday. Dad said, "You know, we'd gone to see Haridwar over the weekend!"

"Achha? You know, I'd gone to see Banaras over the weekend!" I chirped.

It took me a while to calm down my completely freaked out parents, and explain the joke to them. Sheesh.

Dad sent me an email today describing his Haridwar trip. I always find his emails highly amusing. The subject line reads like a story. Today's was 'The monkey that ate the ice-cream' describing how a monkey approached Mom when she was eating ice-cream, so she got terrified and threw the ice-cream at it. The monkey caught it and ran up a tree, from where it winked (don't ask me how, ask my Dad!) at my ice-cream-less parents as it enjoyed its catch of the day.

Dad's writing style has remained the same over the years. Decades of being a banker has not managed to touch the creative writer in him. When I was really young, he used to write articles for the Times of India (in the days when it was a sensible newspaper, and not a tabloid like it is now), and his bank's inhouse magazine, which I used to read with delight, and then show off to my friends.

His articles were like my blog posts. He would observe things around him and write about his interpretations of them, often with catchy titles. I remember one of his articles about Mom using henna to dye her hair, and one of the phrases he used in it went something like 'When the wife dyed'.

I don't think Mom was too happy about it.

But I found the article hilarious.

Till I was at the receiving end.

One day, it was pouring like crazy, and he was taking me to the bus stop under his huge black umbrella. I had to cross the road, but a stream of muddy water was running along, leaving no room for me to jump across without ruining my shoes. The bus was already at the bus stop and the driver was honking for me to hurry up. (Yes, those were my gang days, and even the driver was my buddy who wouldn't leave without me.) My friends looked on from their respective 'window seats'.

"Dad?" I looked at him helplessly.

He took a deep breath, held the umbrella high up with his left hand, and with one clean sweep of his right hand, lifted me up and carried me across the road, his sandals making squelching sounds in the muddy water.

Okay, I SO did not see that coming.

When you're 14 and a gang leader, there's a certain reputation you must maintain. You cannot be seen in public, being lifted off the road by your Dad as if you were a two-year-old toddler who wears pink plastic shoes that squeak.

My friends were laughing their guts out when I entered the bus. Devoid of all dignity, I took my seat, and glared at Dad angrily from my 'window seat' while he put on this sad "What else could I do?" expression.

I was much ridiculed at school that day. But time is a great healer. Days and weeks went by, and the emotional scars started healing.

Till the day I came back from school to see Dad cutting his latest article out.

"Oooh! New one??" I asked, all excited.

"Yes!" He smiled.

"Show me!" I snatched it and sat down on the dining table to eat my lunch and read it.

I can't remember the exact title but it went something like 'A tale of a modern Vasudev and Krishna'. He had narrated how, just like Vasudev had carried the infant Lord Krishna across the Yamuna, he too had carried his little Krishna across a stream of muddy water to ensure she caught the school bus. (You see? The analogy thing is in the genes!)

"You wrote about that day???" I was aghast!

"Yes! Do you like it?" He smiled.

"Of course not!"

"Huh? Why not????"

"Because it's about me!"

"So?"

"My friends read your articles!!"

"So??"

"They had forgotten all about the bus incident, and now they will recall it! And those who were not in the bus that day will also read it and laugh at me! Not to mention that the whole country's going to be reading this and laughing!" I was almost in tears.

"What's there to laugh at?"

I did not know how to explain to him that public appearances of gang leaders must always be accompanied by extreme dignity.

"You won't understand."

I sulked for days. People praised my Dad to the heavens for that article. That made me sulk some more.

"Don't write about me ever again." I said to him.

In retrospect, it was so mean of me to try and stifle his creativity.

Dad, I know you don't know I have a blog, and so you will never get to read this, but I just wanna say 'Sorry' for being so unfair.

If only you knew how many posts (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) I have written about you on my blog.