Father of two daughters

                “Good morning! Good morning! How are you? Just fine!”                 Long time ago, we had bought a doll for Shaivi which sang to these lines when it was picked up. She was very fond of it. However, these or similar words come out of my mouth, and not the doll’s, on the morning of every school day.                 The response is typical. Complete silence.                 My wife gets up a few minutes before me, and gets busy for the kitchen. Even I can cook, but my culinary skills are limited and my daughters have very specific demands for their lunch. Hence it has been decided that whenever my wife is around, the responsibility to prepare and pack lunch falls on her. I take over when she is not around.                 Repetition of the morning sing song daws a little response from the elder one – “Five more minutes!”                 “Two minutes!” is my typical response.                 We both know that my next attempt will be ten minutes later.

  “I want to go swimming,” declared my younger daughter.                 I have been known for pushing my daughters towards sports and physical activities. It was a hot summer day when swimming was the only option for activity. The swimming pool was barely a hundred meters from my house. Yet, the statement filled me with a sense of guilty pain.                 Shaivi had been suffering from a severe form of seasonal allergy in her eyes. She was on heavy medications, which gave her much relief. However, her previous visits to the swimming pool had greatly aggravated her suffering, and we were scared for her vision.                 And yet she stood, her swimming costume in her hand, even as her elder sister came out fully dressed in swimming costume over which she had put on her T shirt – so as to waste the least possible time in preparation to jumping in the inviting, chlorinated waters of the swimming pool.                 Shaivi is a person with good powers of reasonin

            “Let’s just go home” sobbed my daughter. It was the third or fourth day at the new school – her sixth school till date - and my wife had gone to pick up our elder daughter. But instead of the beaming angelic face of Aadya that my wife was used to seeing at the end of a long day, she saw a vision of a long-faced girl who was fighting her tears. Enquiries elicited the above reply before she burst into tears. My wife spent another half minute in trying to figure out what was wrong without much success, and then took the young lady to the car parked in full June sun. After a few minutes, with the AC turned on and the school a few hundred meters away came the story, punctuated with sobs and tears. She had been caned by her teacher. Since she was a late admission, she was not aware that her geography teacher had given lots of homework. She was one of thirty odd students who did not submit her homework, and they were all caned. This was a first for my daughter. While sh