A birthday present for me

I don't expect you to feel the way I felt while reading it, but maybe you'll know why it is such a special gift. Thank you Dad, I'll treasure this for years to come. And yes, I don't think anything else speaks of me so completely- including my greatest vice.:D

"She is like a multifaceted diamond, meaning many things to many people, but to me she is a daughter and good friend. Today, on her birthday, she is thousands of kilometers away from her mother and me and this testimonial is the only present I can offer her.

Do I know her from the first day in her life? No. When she had been born I was away and controlling a law and order problem created by an awful S. H. O. under me and my boss would not just allow me to leave my headquarters. Add to it, a flood which washed away all the bridges around my headquarters. I came to see my little new-born angel fourteen days after her birth. My wife was not, naturally, what you would call an idol of calmness to see my face. Little did she know that day - or for that matter- knows even today- that I had to drive my jeep, do more than some balancing acts twice across iron beams placed as improvised bridges over two turbulent rivers. My driver was hardly interested to drive the jeep across the rivers saying he did not want commit suicide so early in life.

And then, I saw my little darling slowly grow up and blossom into a lovely creature any father would be proud of. She is a great loyal friend to her friends; gorgeous and adorable goddess to some; has two solid shoulders to cry on and is a wonderful listener of sad tales to some people. She is conscientious from her childhood and did not have any confusion about gray areas in life – she knows whether an object is black or white.

A dreamy girl, she always had some dreams, dreams of different kinds and some of them may make her laugh now. After watching ‘The Sound of Music’ she decided that she would become a nun, someone like Mother Abbess. I am sure she has given up the idea now. After she has been to the USA for her MBA she has changed a lot and has become a more pragmatic woman. She has been pursuing a dream of a different kind now. I know that she is faithful to her dreams and will pursue them till she achieves them.

She is highly possessive of her near and dear ones. Only about ten years back, one day, she saw a little neighbor girl hugging me (I was not hugging her). She became livid and demanded to know the reason for showing so much affection to a neighbor's daughter. She was so angry that she misjudged her steps on the stairs and fell down. Imagine! If there is a word beyond ‘livid’ the word has not been invented yet. And this little story is only a warning to my future son-in-law – be prepared to be killed for infidelity.

When time demands she is ready to work 24/7 and at times she can be very relaxed and lazy, enjoying herself. Probably that’s how life is meant to be. When she got her book, ‘The day I was proven wrong’, published she really worked very hard to change the SMS lingo of her blog to proper book language. After reading her blog and then the blook a journalist friend of mine remarked, ‘She is our own Arundhati Ray’. I know she does not like such comparisons and wants to become only ‘Aparna Kar’, but there is a long way to go before she becomes ‘Aparna Kar’. She is a natural story teller but needs a good publisher with aggressive marketing, lots of which are in attendance behind all best-selling books.

Well, I can keep on writing with no end in sight but there has to be an end to everything. At the end I must say that she is a rare character in the present age because you don’t always find people who are ready to tell the truth even at the cost of harming themselves. Yes, that much of impracticality is there within her but the moment you know her you know that she is not a fake creature, she may be intelligent, smart but she is just natural herself, simple and reliable – and I am proud to be known as her father. I don’t believe in rebirth – otherwise it would have been easy for me to say that I want a daughter like her in every birth. "