Thank you Abba, for making me the woman I am

Thank you abba for not stifling my thoughts, allowing me to learn to agree and disagree with people, yet respect them.

It’s been almost nine years since Abba left us. I have written much about Ammi since then, about how she did not take his going so well, about her dementia. But I have somehow avoided writing about my father. Perhaps there is too much to write and it is difficult, even for someone like me, for whom words come easy.

In the last few years of his life, his health was flailing and he knew. He started to wrap things up, though he loved life and fought for it till the end. In that twilight phase, what came up repeatedly was him and I mutually agreeing that he needed to pen down his biography.

“I can be your ghost writer,” I had suggested. “You can be my assistant, and help me edit it. The rest I can do myself,” was the expected reply.

He really didn’t like depending on others.

It is Father’s Day today.

It’s not that I am big on celebrating ‘days’ personally. But it is because he was big on celebrating every occasion and so everything would become an excuse to celebrate – me getting good marks in a test, Father’s or Mother’s Day, Eid, second day of Eid, third day of Eid, some uncle or aunt performing Hajj, a promotion, returning from a trip, or something as simple as making a decision.

“I have decided I want to be a journalist and writer abba. I think I wasted time studying Business and Economics,”

I recall telling him after I was midway an internship at a magazine after my Bachelors.

“If you are sure that’s what you want, then I am sure you will excel at it. Let’s celebrate, everyone, we have a writer in the family now,” he said, taking the family out to eat.

The celebrations were usually at Bundoo Khan near Quaid’s mazar or some old Chinese place in Saddar, with generous helpings of food and lots of conversation.

My father was born in a remote village in Sindh. I have been asked multiple times in my life that he must have favoured his sons, my three brothers, more than us three sisters. I honestly reply that he loved each one of us equally, but if at all he had a tilt, it was towards the daughters – he treated us more gently and with more tenderness and gave the same opportunities to all his children irrespective of gender.

There is something about daughters who have had a father’s unconditional love and support – they are inherently equipped to handle what life throws at them, both the good and the not so good. We have read it so many times but nothing could be truer – a father is the first and the most important man in a daughter’s life. He acts as the wind beneath his daughter’s wings in a world that may sometimes try to put her down. He fills up the gaps which life may create in the niche of her heart. He stays with her, every step of the way, whether he is there with her or not.

I choose not to sanctify my father. When my siblings and I sit down and talk about him, we do not pretend that he was a saint or perfect just because he is no longer alive. We still laugh about some of his things we used to laugh about in his lifetime and we still recognise where he could have made better decisions. But we could not be more thankful having him for a father – he was an unusually soft-hearted, brilliant, smart and sensitive man, who was par excellence in his roles as a husband and a father.

From a village in Sindh to Aligarh Muslim University to a never-ending journey of acquiring education to serving his people, so that today it is one of the few and almost completely literate villages in Sindh, he lived quite a life. His book is due soon.

Till then, I walk around this world with many of his ideals etched in my heart and I live by them. Like him, I believe books, education, travelling and health are most deserving of spending your money on instead of clothes, shoes and other tangibles, because the things we buy don’t last, but human experience does.

I hope I can do even a minuscule portion of the kind of work he did to serve humanity, but I do believe, like him, that we are here for a purpose bigger than just our own little lives. Most importantly, he taught me that one must not be afraid to be one’s self, he allowed me to speak my mind and voice my thoughts.

Thank you Abba, for not stifling my thoughts and allowing me to learn to agree and disagree with people, yet respect and cherish them. Thank you for all the times you allowed me to debate and engage and converse with you about politics, religion, poetry and the many faces of activism. That has helped me become my own person. And thank you for teaching me what selfless parenting is all about.

I look so much like my mother they say and I am so close to her. But here I am, walking around the world with my father’s imprints – the rock on the bridge of my nose, the impatience when the other person does not get me, that slight lack of tact, the desire to forever have something to do, the tilt towards the mystic, the excitement at seeing every day as a chance to do more and so much more.

It’s pretty worthless telling people the ceremonial things like “take care of your parents till they are there, you don’t know how it feels when they are gone.” If they love their parents, they do and will for sure. Each one of those who read this, especially the daughters, will have their own stories to tell, stories of them and their Abba, dad, papa, baba, Abbu – whatever you call that most important man in your life  – the man who unwittingly made you the strong, loving, feisty and dedicated woman that you have hopefully grown up to be.

The circle of life continues and you are giving back the same to your children.

On Father’s Day, I don’t want to cry remembering my father, or on any day for that matter. All I want to do is be a good person like him, so that I can become the best legacy he left behind. That’s what children are supposed to do when parents have left – become for parents a Sadqa-e-Jaria (a continual charity). That way, we can continue to serve them and cherish them. And love them.