Show Me The Way

With baby eyes I would look at you with awe,

With baby hands I would hold on to your Superman ones,

With baby steps I would follow you and no other

man, my Papa, my perfect father.

Well, although your daughter has grown up now and does not live with

the illusion of you as the 'ideal' Pa anymore.

Although your arms so strong once upon a time, do not seem that strong anymore.

And that smile that used to be so winsome

fails to hide your wrongs anymore.

Although I can see your mouth eaten up with tobacco,

Papa, you still are the only hero I know.

I have seen you solve my Math problems.

I have seen people revere you at work.

I have been known as your daughter.

I have admired the way you remember the way to all places in the city! And

the way you drive on busy roads and

the way you can calm down angry people and

the way you handle all crises and

the way you clear all my queries with the logic that only fathers have and…

I know you are great.

But now I know, not invincible.

When I used to read tales of valiant warriors, I would think of you.

But then I read the tale of a sarpanch of a village far away.

I read of his greatness, of the power he possessed in the palm of his hands.

And I read of the disease that crippled those hands, twisted his fingers

so that he could hold on to power no more and there was nothing that he could do.

And Papa, I thought of you.

I thought of you…

You too have that disease, don't you?

Hands tell me that they won't be able to forever

hold my universe together.

And that they would someday not be able

to grip the steering wheel of my life.

And that there would come a day when I would have to hold them

they would be so weak.

Greatness too, can get deformed, misshaped, distorted-and crippled,

is what hands speak.

How will I survive?.

I have tried to defeat you. I have tried to make you known as my father.

At times I have succeeded but through words unspoken

I have known that you have supported me even when

I have rivaled you. Because you were always for me, never against.

How will I survive?

Maybe I will always be your baby girl.

Dependant, love-hungry, lost, awed by your magic and a follower of your footsteps.

Maybe when life would intimidate,

suffocate and menace me,

I would come back to you and ask you to change

my disillusionment to clarity, my confusions to certainty.

No matter how weak we are, we will never lose the strength of wisdom, hands tell me.

No matter how crippled we are, we will still guide you in the right direction, they say.

Very well then, I might as well never grow up, because whenever your bitiya would lose track in her life,

Her Papa's hands would show her the way.