The antique tiffany framed mirror in the family home is my witness of how appreciative I was as a little girl getting ready to go to school and how you would make my pigtails painstakingly while I sat restlessly, hummed and sang admiringly to my reflective buddy in the mirror… and often expressed my dissatisfaction with your art of grooming my mane even though I realized how patient you always had been with the rough coarse bush of my hair that I was born with. I can not possibly count the number of times you massaged oil in it, washed and dried it… untangled it gently one section at a time, day after day week after week year after year.

It was amazing how easily and comfortably you slipped into the role of a mother too when she succumbed to an untimely demise and left me as a toddler in your arms. Two teenaged sons and a toddler daughter, a very scattered family… Oh boy daddy your hands were full, so full that I don’t think you ever got a chance to even hold on to mom’s only picture and had cried your heart out and expressed to her soul around you how much loved and missed her. From getting your little girl out of the door in the morning and tucking her back in bed at night time with a lullaby or two, and a peck on her forehead… finding a moment for yourself was a near impossible event to come by for you, but you shined through! Your family kept you on your toes daddy!

There was no visible sense of awkwardness in you daddy when all of a sudden I hit my puberty. Not only you kept your cool and gave me appropriate answers at the right time, you put up with my fluctuating attitudes and clouded sense of reasoning during the most confused period of my life. You proved to be my mother’s right hand, a heaven sent angel by carrying out more than just parental duties whenever my transitional phase felt a wave of turbulence. Whenever I cocooned myself in self-defence and the world seemed scornful and ludicrous, you came up with most hilarious scenarios and made me burst into a riot of laughter. Thank you daddy for allowing me the time and space to grow out of my faceless horrors of wavering purpose (which happened to be my early teens), without being judgmental ever! My adolescence progressed normally, however, during my pre-teen years when it could have been easier for you to floss a barbed wire than to raise a tomboy like me, thanks so much for keeping a patient and well-composed outlook. Your big warm hugs and countless kisses on my forehead lulled down the unnecessary upheaval in my young heart many a times when everything felt raw and invigorating in my easy to bruise ego. Often you would calm the brute down in me with witty and sensible answers to my loathing of prejudices and frustrations, which are so typical of a teenager.

The aura of my comfortable and natural art and love for cooking, household chores, reading endlessly, sharing witty humour, my manly strengths in the professional and socioeconomic front of my life, yet my marshmallow heart with a sense of forgiving and moving on… are some of the rare gems from your crown of an experienced life and of course your genes in me! No mother, Guru or Saviour could have done for me what a committed evolving operator and a multidimensional father like yourself have done with such Divine consciousness. The great sense of timely decision making with dignity and pride that you have fortified me with has enabled me to summon the courage, integrity and impeccability to be a winner always on my own terms and conditions. Shining out of my challenges with ultimate class is always due to your rearing.

My reasons may have been different today but I realize fully and appreciate the challenges and adventures of being a single parent, as you have quite unconsciously prepared me to live an incomparably proud and remarkable life of a single parent. Hence, I am sure that I am taking good care of this role with much conviction and confidence. It is you daddy from whom I learnt how to swim against the current. The warning mechanism of fear of obstacle has no room in my life due to my upbringing.

I can never express in words how thankful I am to you for preparing me for the life’s journey and endless ventures, all I wish at least for once is to hug you and tell you that you are my hero and I love you! Heaven is there where my daddy resides! Happy Father’s Day Daddy!!!

– Anoop Kaur Babra