Being my father’s daughter

I have often wondered how life would be if my father wasn’t my father! From the earliest of my memories, my time with my father has been mostly happy ones with fun and jokes all the time. That is not to say that I was never afraid of him. As a kid, if I got low marks in school, my mother would threaten me by telling me that she would tell my father when he came home from work and that would keep me terrified all day. And true to form, he would come home, my mother would tell him everything and he would scream at me. He also spanked me and boy did that hurt! I was way more afraid of him than I was of my mother even though my mother had the tendency to give me the silent treatment which is frankly the worst punishment ever! He was certainly very impatient because when I was a little slow at learning math and asked him to teach me, it almost always ended up in a fight and my crying all over! I was so glad when I finally started liking math and never really had to go to him to ask for help! As I started growing up, our disagreements started taking the form of silence. Both of us would scream at each other and then just not talk for a few hours. The most we went without talking was probably a week. Our temper is something we share. At our peak anger, we often say things to each other that I believe both of us regret later. The quicker we lose our temper, the quicker we calm down and its back to fun and jokes, mostly at the expense of my mother. It was no wonder that my entire family called me a daddy’s girl though I never really understood it.

As a child, I was also curious about his relationship with his father. I had always heard stories from my mother about their relationship but I was too little to remember instances myself. Since my father is not much of a talker, I questioned my mother about his childhood and his relationship with his parents. I was always amazed at how different their relationship was, compared to the one he and I shared. Theirs was a much more formal relationship compared to ours. But that was not because my grandfather wasn’t funny or amiable. I distinctly remember his cracking jokes and being very jovial most of the time. I had never really seen him angry. Something, I always felt my father should have learnt from. My father was much friendlier with me than he ever was with his father and that fascinated me. This difference that my father built between the two relationships, is something I am constantly grateful for and something that makes me admire him for being the way he is.

As I grew up, our relationship changed a little, at least in my mind. I became a lot closer to my mother as I began sharing girl talk with her. But, having said that, I can’t say that my father wasn’t involved! He would tease me for years about my crushes and make fun of “issues” I had with classmates. The fun didn’t stop. But there was a difference. Now that I was more aware of things and the challenges of moving away from home and staying alone, I started getting more aware of my father’s work, his challenges at work and his ambitions. As a child, I would not understand why he pressurized me to excel in school but now when everything was done and dusted, when I had finally started working myself, I started realizing what he meant. I had always had that feeling that all kids do, that my daddy is the best! In my mind, he was so brilliant that I was just plain proud of him. He was (and still is) my human dictionary and calculator. I was and still am in complete awe of his language skills, his inspirational lectures at universities and even his handwriting! If anyone talked to me about him, they would see me all starry eyed, as you would be about a movie star! However, as I grew up, I began to appreciate these things at a completely different level.

He is now the CEO of a bank. I find it weird to see him in the news and watch him give interviews on TV. Almost every time he gives a live interview I find some fault with his style of talking or some characteristic especially now that I’ve been through 2 communication skills classes for my MBA where our every move/gesture was scrutinized and graded! He always just laughs it off and tells me to learn and not repeat his mistakes! It is exciting that when I google his name now, the first page actually has relevant results with news about him. ET wrote an article dedicated to him along with some details about his personal life that even I didn’t know! Even though I’m not in India, where I’m sure I would get even more attention for just being his daughter, it’s quite a feeling when people from his bank send me friend requests on Facebook and refer to me as Ma’am!!!  Some of my classmates from MBA class, who have met my father, send me articles they see in the news! That makes me feel proud as well. It makes me want to be like that as well. However high he goes up, on the one hand I feel extreme pride and on the other hand, to me, he’s the same man who gets excited at the prospect of exploring a new gadget, or learning some new technology or chiding me for not being as tech savvy as he is even though I am an IT graduate as well as a professional! He is the same man who watches my puppy through the webcam of our laptops with boyish eyes of wonder! He is the same man who goes crazy with his jokes and sarcasm when he is watching cricket! Through it all, his sense of duty and loyalty to everything he commits himself to is inspiring. His pride, of belonging to the family that we are a part of, is inspiring!

While I want to be like him in most ways, I have realized that I do not think like him so it would be hard to be him in most ways. I don’t always agree with his decisions and sometimes I even feel that he has made some bad ones. That makes me realize that even if I wanted, I couldn’t emulate him completely. He has made some bold choices that I wasn’t really in favor of but they make him happy and he is successful so that is something I can try and emulate. My father always would say that I don’t have pride in myself. I don’t have the drive to push myself to do better. But I believe that’s not true. My pride may not be like his pride. My pride lies in being his daughter and doing all that I can to match up to him someday. I don’t necessarily want to beat him and that’s where my father would point out that I lack the pride in myself. Nevertheless, for me it’s more about reaching where he is quickly so that I can enjoy that with him and show him that I can get there too!