Fathers and Daughters

Fathers and daughters and kitchen wisdom.

‘Daddy, you are wrong!’ Our daughter exploded, ‘ My grades don’t reflect how much i study, there are folks in my section who failed these tests ! Ma!’.

Mitali was caught between Nihal and Himani. 

Himani left back to her hostel that evening, after some back and forth arguments between father and daughter on what her ‘duties’ were, ie only to put her head down and study. This fuelled my anger. Why was he trying to control her?

Am not like your mother. I want to tell you, Nihal. Perhaps there was a shortage of food and stuff in your house. Perhaps your mother had very few nice things. But my cupboards are overflowing, i am struggling to store the last gift you gave me for no reason other that being your wife.

What I lack is what i was not given by my father. I was not given the trust that i am a responsible person and that i can live strongly, independently, without anyone, that i am intelligent even if there are people cleverer than me, that i have abilities, even if i just can’t do some things like solve more than one side of the rubik’s cube.

I want to feel i am enough. That is all i want from you. Perhaps its what you want from me too. 

So stop being like my Dad.

Mitali sighed, half thinking these thoughts as she was wrapping up the nightly kitchen duties. 

She felt the root cause of her problems with Nihal and generally with life,  lay way back in childhood.

Her father was a control freak, and her mother didn’t want one blemish of anything going amiss in her daughter’s life. Till she was married, Mitali didn’t really feel she was leading her own life, anytime she did something that pleased her alone, she felt guilty. It was like her life had to be borrowed from her parents to live it. 

When very young, every spare moment from school to extra classes to homework and bedtime was monitored by her mom. The periods her mother was probably fighting her own depression and neglected the kids a bit, were the only times Mitali remembered as the happiest periods of her childhood. 

It was an era of control.

Her father had little role in her childhood but with age he started imposing all kinds of books, ideas and philosophies on her. Trying to ‘mould’ her thinking. His approval or disapproval meant life or death to her. There was safety in his approval. He said it was ‘to infuse her with confidence, make her strong’. It was all so fake, her father never realised the basic fact that true strength lies in a person’s view of herself. In trying to get approval from her Dad, Mitali lost her own self-approval.

Mitali had been building a theory to resolve her own dysfunctional upbringing.

Her theory was that daughters feel about themselves the way their fathers’ make them feel and sons the way their moms make them feel.

Funnily, and quite contrarily daughters will blame their mothers for everything that went wrong in their lives and sons, their fathers.

But in the inside, its a different story altogether. 

Perhaps Nihal’s mother had made him feel the desparate lack of ‘things’ from money to food to clothes, bags and more luxurious ‘stuff’, so in his adult life, he spent large amounts of his money acquiring and giving people, things, was called generous by friends, but the reason he was the way he was, lay way back in childhood, the wounds were an era ago.

Mitali on the other hand, could never do things which anyone would disapprove of, she was always a ‘pleaser’. She wanted people to like her, to think she was a good person. It was exactly what her father had made her feel, that if you met another’s approval, you were fine.

Today all this mattered all the more as their daughter, Himani, was developing her own sense of herself and how Nihal made her feel was crucial.

The evening’s conversation again rewinded in Mitali’s head.

‘What you are saying is, give her the freedom to make mistakes’ Nihal told Mitali, ‘but why encourage her? Let her feel i dont approve of any of it..booze, smoking, boyfriends, anything’.

‘Then she’ll hide and do everything, that will only make her feel guilty and distance her from us’.

‘ No, she still must get a clear message that I don’t approve. The rest is upto her. I am not breathing behind her back. I am only saying no to this. She has been doing so many things she wants, like travelling, buying concert tickets, plays, books, dinners in fancy places. Have I stopped her from that? Just look at my credit card bills.’

Mitali wound up at the kitchen and went to her side of the bed for an uneasy rest.

           **************************

A few months later Diwali came and Himani landed well in time for a simple celebration. Though there was a more substantial firecracker waiting to explode, later.

‘Dad/ Mom, i want to tell you something. I am involved with a guy in college. Been so for a few months’.

Little stunned, we absorbed the info in silence. ‘Am happy for you,’ Nihal said, while I was a little conflicted. Himani was looking at me for a response, ‘Cool!’, i uttered.

Later when Nihal and I  sat down to discuss it, I asked him how come he had not reacted.

‘She looked so happy since she returned, didn’t you notice? Maybe its ok, though i did tell her later to not let it affect her marks. There is no point in telling anything else now’. 

Nihal was right, Mitali thought, as she finished wiping off the kitchen top and switched off the light.

Nihal did not lecture Himani on anything other than studying. His periodic reprimands, probably helped their daughter to stay on course, with the numerous distractions and the complete confusion that a rein-less upbringing may have caused.

Now he was willing to let their daughter explore the uneasy terrains of love! 

Nihal is not like my father. 

Actually he is the father I wish l  had.

She threw off the kitchen apron, climbing onto the bed and snuggled into Nihal’s back, as he snored away.