Dear Daddy,

Thank you for nurturing me. For loving me. For your warm hugs. For taking care of my needs so graciously. Thank you for letting me chatter and vent my heart out. Thanks for always giving me a logical reason before offering advice. Thank you for always standing tall. For standing up for me and never letting my independent and free spirit know that I was protected.

How did you muster so much love and courage to bring up your daughters the way you did in the circus of the world where people train their children like pets, where dogmas and tenets fog common sense and rational thinking? Where others are supposed to think for you? How did you manage to cover  the rocks and stones in our way with your hands? To make us feel that we were walking in the sheltering palm of your hand and not on rocky paths, with our chins up, and our eyes full of dreams?

And when the time came for me to face the callous and ruthlessly self-seeking world, I cried. Many a times, I secretly longed  to run and hide in your arms and once again just be under the loving umbrella of your care, but time as you know always has a bigger and better plan for us.

Sometimes I blamed you for hiding the ugliness of the world and for the love and protection you gave me for I could not fathom that the world could have anything other than beautiful sunshine and happy colours. I could not accept that love could be bitter. That friendship could be motivated by selfishness.

But when I reflected deeply, I realized that if I hadn’t touched the joy and love for life in your being,  I wouldn’t have believed in the presence of light even when I was neck deep in darkness. I wouldn’t have learnt the essential lessons of life and I wouldn’t have known the difference between merely existing and being alive. I wouldn’t have known that immense pain leads to intense growth. And as I travel from being a struggling sapling to a flowering tree, I want to thank you for rooting me strongly in your love and yet giving me the sky to reach out to. For being the foundation I have built my life on.

My hope is that one day, heavy with the sweet fruits of love, I will nurture my child the way you nurtured me. I too will shelter him but not forget to give him wings to fly. May be one day my entire being will become pure love and embrace the whole universe in a great big hug. And all because, I learnt what it is to pass on the best in me to the world, from one special man. From you Daddy. 

Your little girl.

Shreeja Mohatta Jhawar is a partner in Think Unlike Events where she  organises creative and life-style transforming workshops. She is also a freelance writer, web and graphics designer as well as a social activist who runs ‘Kritagya,’ a group aiming to serve old and destitute people. 

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