Happy Birthday to our Babi!

Like most girls, I don’t just love or adore my Daddy, I can’t imagine existing without him.

There is no one in my life whose opinion matters more; no one else whose words have more of a profound effect on me and no other’s approval I crave for more.

My dad and I are like two opposite ends of a stick, like chalk and cheese, like the Coyote and the Roadrunner! In the end though, everyone knew that Tom and Jerry would be incomplete without one another, dull and mundane, suicidal most of the time, and the “soul of the party” – my father and I are exactly the same.

My Baba constantly complains that the thorn in his side is that I never write these long, loving letters to him, but the truth is that my father is a “feeler” rather than a “talker”. I will often find him teary eyed after listening to some injustice happening a country away (in fact, it’s a long running joke in our house, often shamefully spearheaded by my sister or myself,) but catch him doing it, and he embarrassedly rubs his eyes free of the salty substance in an instance. Why? I often ponder, and I think the reason is that for as long as I can remember, my dad has been the prankster. Most of my traumatic high school, university and even work moments have embryonically taken shape via my father – from his mortifying Pavarotti inspired opera singing in the middle of my High school car park, to his incessant requirement to call me by my nickname Motu (which means fat in my language) in the middle of an all Indian boys conglomerate, to yelling our names within the midst of a live audience while we are acting in the school play! There are so many more, trust me.

The truth is, my Baba is the one we remember as being the cool one, the Go to guy when we were attempting unsuccessfully to organise a peaceful protest to convince mum to let us take the day off school, the one who would creepily shake the car like something out of I know what you did last summer while we waited in the dark for mum (and dad supposedly) to return from parent teacher nights (only to find out later that he’d left mum in the lurk while pretending he had to relieve his bladder and never returning because he was bored!), to refusing to take our call collects while we waited for him to pick us up because he was around the corner anyway!

My daddy is the fun, omnipresent, positive one but he is also the most humble, spine chillingly open minded one. We will often be at loggerheads because I can’t believe he thinks a certain way about an issue on hand, but in my soul, I know the reason I think the way I do is because my parents have imparted with me the power to think about the World around me, and have taught me that it’s okay to question it, in fact it’s imperative. My Baba is a feminist, a socialist, a humanitarian and no one else’s opinion on my feats in life matters more. My dad is one out of the three males who have continually inspired me to never turn my back on my passion to write, and when it comes down to it, is my epitome of the perfect example of the ideal soul mate in life.

My Baba is everything to me and deep down in my soul, I know that no matter what man comes into my life, no one is truly ever going to compare to my Daddy, he may get close, but never completely as great as him.

So to my dearest Babi, this is to prove that once and for all, we do love you more than what you do 🙂 And that I have finally put pen on paper (or at least keyboard to computer screen) to express 1/gazillion of the love and adoration we feel for you, because what we feel is far too deep to document and can only be felt in the corners and crevices of our souls.

Happy Birthday to the kindest, most gentlest, most selfless, most giving, most funniest, most positive, most AMAZING father in the whole entire universe.

We love you more than anything anyone’s imaginations or real life could ever muster up.

Only Your Chotu & Motu ❤ ❤ ❤