To, Daddy

To,

The first giant whose shoulders I stood on,

And the one who has scared me… never!

The one who suggested I should seriously consider riding his Enfield,

And who bandaged my wound and then said, ‘Girls don’t cry’

The one who called his cardiac arrest a ‘heartbreak’,

And worried about my Biology paper as he checked into an OT.

The one who can do a perfect headstand at sixty,

And who constantly tells me to “Wear some more clothes, please!”

The one who still sends me away with chocolates,

And who greets me with a ‘Hi Munni’ phone call everyday at lunchtime.

The one who’s started listening to new music so that he can experience all the ‘fuss’ about Frog,

And the one who’s crazy about Hitchcock and Simon and Garfunkel.

The one who wrote me letters when I was 4 years old,

And told me Tarzan(who lived in the tree opposite my house) missed me.

The one who gave me my first ever ‘I am Sorry’ card,

And allowed me to quit piano lessons after my tiny hands refused to jump octaves fast enough.

The one who collected shells with my sister and flint stones with me,

And who skillfully and painlessly pulled out my dangly milk teeth so that I’d stop scaring people with them.

The one who argued with Mrs.Pathan the day she caned my six year old bum,

And who told me he’d home school me if Mrs.Das threw me out of Chemistry.

The one who made us prawn sandwiches everyday when we got back from school,

And hid in the balcony to eat all the cholesterol laden jalebis and mithaees in the dark.

The one who thinks men who make music with their mouths(read:Bauchklang) are crass,

And who tells me stories of African safaris and English breakfasts every now and then.

The one who raised me like a boy, and made me my own tool box,

And a major chunk of whose life was spent taking us to table tennis, swimming and athletics practice.

The one who laughed off all the complaints at PTA meetings,

But came home, begged and then bribed me to stop talking in class ‘For God’s Sake’.

The one who threatened to send me to boarding school every time we spotted one,

But cried the day I moved away from home.

To the man who will never fail to cheer me up,

And to the man who people are going to have great difficulty matching up to.

Here’s to you, Daddy,

Celebrating exactly ten years of zero cardiac trouble!

*Addendum: The man who told me get plasic surgery done when he saw one of my tattoos, And who's blisfully unaware about the few others.