Father of two daughters

  I first met her 17 years ago. Our parents had contacted each other after going through a newspaper advertisement in a matrimonial section. It was four years since I had completed my MBBS and had got into a well-paid government job. Apparently, these are the basic qualifications needed to earn the title of “eligible” bachelor in the matrimonial sections. Luckily, my future in – laws also agreed to this basic premise, and the two families, after a lot of meetings, decided that time was ripe for the “boy” and the “girl” to meet and approve each other. We met over some snacks and a bottle of cold drink, witnessed by two and half sets of families. I did not take any time to show my eager approval, and my future wife was too shocked at the turn of events for a negative response. We got married a year and half later, while she was still studying towards completing her graduation. Aadya came into existence a few months after my wife’s graduation, and Shaivi arrived in time to celeb...

                The monkey looked tentatively as I continued my walk.               For the past few days, I have been getting up early in the morning and been going out for my daily dose of sunshine. While I am frequently on my cycle, I had decided in favour of jogging this morning and had commenced my labored running. I am a moderately fit person who is somehow not used to too much of planned exercise. In fact, I hate exercise, and my morning activities were actually due to an official compulsion, which I had decided to take advantage of in order to improve my fitness. Monkeys lined up for their daily errand on my boundary wall               The route that I take is a favourite playground of a group of monkeys as well as at least seven different tribes of stray dogs, each with well de...

       “Moana’s father had lost a lot of weight,” Aadya told me. “He had taken the entire family of Moana to another part of Motunui which was completely barren.”               “Was it the same island where they lived?” I enquired.               Aadya was telling me about a funny dream she had last night. She normally does not remember dreams, but she surprised herself by vividly remembering every detail of this particular one that she had during her exam days.               Her exams were very interesting. After having completed an online test conducted by the school, the students were informed that the exams should be treated as practice test only and that her unit tests would be conducted in a “multiple choice question” format while using "zoom" for invigilation. Her...

“You are a sorted person.” A lady I had befriended a few months earlier surprised me one pleasant evening by calling me up, and we were in the phase of catching up and recalling good qualities about each other when she shot the above words which challenged my very notion of grasp of the English language. She went on to explain that she felt I was very clear in my thoughts, did not have any airs, and did not behave as though I needed to convert every acquaintance into a profitable opportunity. While she did not use these exact words, I translated the sentiments to suit my ego. I never discussed the above conversation with my daughters. I never got the time. Shaivi, my younger daughter, has a very peculiar style of conversing with me – she starts talking incessantly on a topic till she runs out of things to say, and while I think about what to say in reply, she shifts to a completely new topic with equal fervour and gusto. She has not allowed physical distance to change her styl...

A bat came to visit me last night. I was half asleep when I was awakened by the whirring sound of wings in a dimly lit room. The television was the only source of light. The comedy on the television had started to lull me into bored dizziness when my senses were suddenly heightened by this sound. I squinted to find something moving above in the space between the ceiling and the mosquito–net. The house I currently live in is an old bungalow dating to the British India which has been done up multiple times in the past to make it breath-taking to look at but barely liveable. It has high wooden ceiling which drip during monsoon, but certainly do not allow the entry of bats on a regular basis. I wondered how this creature of the night got inside. I did not get much time to worry about. The bat was flying in the room in an oval orbit, with the centre around two feet above my head. I was safe inside the mosquito net, but it was flying irritatingly close to my head. It was making f...

“What is the name of the monkey that performs magic?” “Um. I don’t know. Wanded monkey?” “It is Hairy Potter,” replied the younger one mirthfully. The young girls were caught in the Corona pandemic at their grandparents’ house while I was stuck at my duty station. Long phone conversations with my wife and the children had become a routine affair. During one such conversation, the younger one started asking me a lot of riddles. Whenever I spoke with the girls, we talked about their daily routine which was completely different from what it would have been had they been attending school. I frequently made suggestions about how they could be nudged towards studies while not compromising with the fun that they were having. Invariably, I would end up irritating my wife who would say that she was doing the best that she could, and any alteration in their routine would only be possible if I were present.   And yet, she did take plenty of my suggestions. It is to her credit t...

   “Corona is such a nice thing!” chirped the younger one.                 After the children’s final examinations, we had taken a very short break to go to Manali – a place where we enjoyed to the fullest. I came back to my workplace while the children accompanied their mother to their grandparents. Just before the school was to reopen, however, we got the news about extension of the opening date due to the Corona pandemic. The situation had elicited this strange and irregular response from the younger child.                 And they had good reason to rejoice. They had their cousin, grandparents, uncle, aunt and mother together with them in a large three storied house, complete with a rooftop garden, and their grandmother’s on demand delicacies.            ...