June 15

meant for the comment section at Antipop’s, but…

Dear Dad

June 16, a (not) friend  on blogger wrote a heartfelt tribute to her dad. It was revealing, most of it; of how a little girl takes on her dad, how she feels like she owns him. Like he is hers and nobody else’s.

I had, earlier, read a number of  tributes, quotes, forwards, many of which I had just  bumped into while searching for this or the other, and they were all touching. Touching in a part of my heart or may be head that i know does not exist. Has never been there.- but i was touched.  

Apparently, dad,

“….that children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to drop out of schools and twenty times more likely to end up in prison. They are more likely to have behavioral problems, or run away from home, or become teenage parents themselves. And the foundations of our community are weaker because of it.” 

Makes me wonder dad, don’t you think it’s terrible i didn’t turn out as any of those mentioned above? Because i think it is, because then, people would well understand what i am saying, every single time they ask me about you.

See, I have never been mad at you really. I need to first know you, at all, to be angry at you.  To at least, have an idea of you. a sketch, a shadow. something to smash a plastic bottle of water at. 

But you. or maybe mom, or maybe whatever; fate, good luck et al, made sure that i have nothing. 

I always find it funny, well, not always, but ever since i started speaking about not speaking of you, i have found it funny that i used to hide the fact that i have no idea who you are or what you look like. I was ashamed, embarrassed of the fact that i couldn’t even imagine you.

I laugh at the fact that every time i looked at myself in the mirror, full length, naked, i would point out the things I don’t like about my body and attribute them to you. fondly, with love.  It’s funny!

And then just recently, when i walked into this office where i tried to explain that i have no dad and every one freaked, I realised why exactly I had been hiding my lack of knowledge of you; it wasn’t just shame and embarrassment, it was also that i wasn’t ready. i wasn’t ready to have people look at me in that way,to  ask me such (retarded qtns), talk to me like some diseased child. I just wasn’t.

And now that I am. now that I am ready to take all of that, i still am not ready to accept the fact that I will never be able to be angry at you. To wish, Like Chanel over there, that you were dead. or died.

Sometimes, when i leave “one for the next”, in my sub-conscience, I think am searching for you. Trying to find some one to get angry at. Smash a plastic bottle of water at. And probably deep down, I know that I love you.

Happy Fathers’ day. belatedly.