Letter to My Baba...oops Dad...as advised by advertisers

Dear Baba,

Its Father’s Day this Sunday and all the advertisements are telling me to remember you, tell you that you are the greatest DAD, write you a letter to mention that you were, are and will always be my original Superman, etc.

Yesterday the Archies show window in a mall had so many Best Dad gifts that for a moment I thought why would anyone need so many? And then the wicked thought came that perhaps with divorces so much on the rise, kids would need to buy for different dads – the best one, the better one and the fun one. Something like that.

Oh by the way I hope you know that I have started the letter all wrong, I am supposed to call you DAD not Baba. Baba is old world, its unfashionable not like Dad – Dad’s smart and modern.

Anyway I am too old to change my ways and since you haven’t been around for about twenty years now, I have no way of changing it and getting you to respond to ‘Dad’ so Baba it will be for me.

I have been missing you a lot lately, it’s not like I didn’t miss you earlier but now it’s more and it’s growing.  I see small kids having fun with their grand dads, being taught manners, games, new tricks and being given bear hugs and I feel bad for Aarini. She is now almost 16 months old, she runs around at top speed, bumps, and falls, starts to cry but then gathers herself up and starts off again. I am so very proud of her and I so wish you were around to see her. To play with her, to tell her the stories that you told us and in your own quiet way teach her the right principles. I miss you Baba and I miss you on behalf of Aarini also.

Mummy is lonely, nothing in her life is right except maybe the fact that she can hold on to Aarini. She has lost her home, her family and her position. She has been living with me for over two years now but she is not able to call the place her home in her own mind. She misses you badly and though I feel her pain I don’t know how to right it. If you were here it would all be ok. She would be smiling real smiles. I miss you Baba for mummy.

I am missing you so much for myself too. Wish I could come and be with you. Pukai is lucky she doesn’t have to bear this pain.

Miss you Baba.

Wish you were here, we would have done inane stuff this Sunday to celebrate father’s day. We would have requested for your special mangshor jhol and maybe muri ghonto too.  And we would have all sat around and gossiped while you listened on in your own inimitable way.