Daddy's Little Girl

Happy Birthday, Daddy

Blue skies, white fluffy clouds and me soaring high and then hurtling down...to be caught in Daddy's arms... Every girl has this memory of their dads. I do too.Today, he is not beside me. Just one night he decided that his time was up and departed. It was just another night...

As I was waiting outside the ICU doors waiting for the doctor to bring him out of an overnight stay in the hospital for a health scare, I heard Daddy call out to me. Soul to Soul. He wanted to leave. He said he was finding it tough going. I was in a trance. I did not want to let him go. He was perfectly healthy. I fought for him. I fought with all my willpower to give him that extra strength to fight this weakness of leaving me, leaving all of us. The struggle continued for a few more minutes. Finally, he said bye.

The sobs shook me and I just looked at Bobby, my husband and told him that Daddy is no more. My Mama sitting next to me started shouting at me to shut up, screaming at me that he was going to be shifted out of the ICU in a few minutes.

I looked at my watch just as Daddy bid adieu. It was 9.15am. Twenty minutes later the doctor came and broke the news that daddy had passed away at 9.13am.

It's been a year since he died. I still can't forgive him for just quitting when he was so fit and healthy. Just ten days prior he was in the tennis court playing his daily game. He had dry pneumonia and within a few hours of being diagnosed, he died. Apart from the myriad soul wrenching moments and questions of, "could we have done more, was he suffering from before...",we had no answers.

As people celebrated Father's Day and put pictures of their dads, I was bereft. I had left home 20 years ago to make a

name for myself in Mumbai as I wanted my own identity, rather than be known as Ashok Das' daughter. What I would do now to change the course of events and time and be Daddy's little girl, all over again...