Twelfth of February, 1985, 2:10 p.m. was a special moment in the life of my parents. It was the day when I was born. In a small little civil hospital in Ujjain, when the nurse placed me safely in Daddy’s arms, the first thing that he noticed about me were my palms; he wrote about me in my Baby book, a beautiful pink book, which my parents had purchased from Kathmandu a few months before I was born.

‘It was her palms that attracted me the most’, he wrote. ‘She had well-defined longish fingers and unlike other new-born babies, she had not curled her fingers. I told her that day, beta, I want to see you becoming an artist someday…’…

Dad left for Darjeeling a few days after my birth. He had to join at St. Paul’s School as a Physics teacher. And when I was just 21 days old, I went half way up the country, to be with Daddy. Then was a journey of a beautiful life which I started off with Dad…

My parents hailed from very normal middle class families, both of them were school teachers and by the end of the month, we would have to struggle a lot to make both ends meet. Moreover, Darjeeling is a very cold place. With all the expenses I had as a little baby, my parents had to earn for additional charcoal for the fireplace, my sweaters, and two Nepali nannies who had been employed to take care of me.

Dad kept writing in the pink book religiously. He wrote of my smile, the first fruit that I had, the occasional colds I used to catch. He wrote that every day I would get up early in the morning and start talking to myself, and when he came near my cradle and asked me, “Beta whom are you talking to???…Jesus???..”….I would give him a very broad smile…Dad would further tell me to tell Jesus that he was very happy to have me in his life..!!!

As I started to grow up, we moved to Ooty. Here my parents started to work in Lawrence School, Lovedale. I have a lot of memories of this place. We lived in a beautiful house with sloping roofs and a wooden floor and a little lawn in front of our house. I was admitted to Lena School and I still remember the first day when Dad left me at school. I cried the whole day after he had gone and when he came back to pick me up in the evening, I ran into his arms. Days in Ooty were magical…we used to sit in our lawn on Sundays and have icecream…he would take me out for toy train rides in the Botanical garden…bring me glow-friends on birthdays and barbies to play with. We had a huge painting of Jesus in the living room of our house. It was later that I got to know that Daddy had painted that picture..!!!…We would go over to the main market in an over-crowded blue bus after having waited for almost an hour at the bus stop. And when ever I saw an Ambassador car pass us, I would tell Daddy that I wanted to sit in one such car someday. He promised me that he would buy us a big white car someday. The Founder’s day function at Lawrence was always the most awaited  event of every academic year. And every year there would be a mega play. That year, Dad directed ‘The Teahouse of the August Moon’ by John Patrick. It was a beautiful play set in a Japanese village called Okinawa. I remember seeing Dad working on the music, the costumes, the backdrops and all the characters of the play for hours together. I was also given a role. I was a little Japanese kid in a beautiful kimono and fortunately, I had no dialogues. All I had to do was to smile. A week after the Annual day, Dad came running home with a copy of the Hindu newspaper with him. He showed something to Mom and she was really excited as well….and then he showed me that his name had come in the newspaper for directing the play. The characters of Sakini and Colonel Purdy had become an instant hit and were widely appreciated. The music was fabulous and so were the costumes. The Teahouse of the August Moon had brought his name in the newspaper. That night mummy cooked chicken to celebrate.

When I was in third grade, Dad got an offer to join the Indian School; Al Ghubra at Muscat, Oman. Initially I could not even pronounce the name of the place. Whenever people asked me where was Daddy going, I said he was going to work in some school in ‘Custard’! The day he boarded his flight to Muscat, my heart was breaking into pieces. I could feel the pain in his eyes, as well. For a whole year we were separated as he did not get a family visa. But, the next year in December, we got a call from him to join him there. Wow, I thought!!! I was going to fly for the first time!!!!! And all because of my Dad, who gradually was becoming my hero.

My time in Muscat was the best time of my life; fast cars, clean streets, air-conditioned homes. It was like a dream come true. It was at that time that I got to know Daddy much better. He was passionate about everything he did. He was a Carnatic vocalist and would practice for hours together before any performance at school. He would leave his audience spell-bound when he sang. As Dad was a great fan of Jagjit Singh and Mohd. Rafi, we had a whole collection of cassettes and CDs of all major Carnatic and Hindustani artists at home. Daddy inspired me to sing along at times and I began to sing along with him as he kept strumming his guitar. I remember the first inter-school singing competition for Indian schools in Oman, that I had gone for. There were like almost 120 odd students from all over Oman. I was so nervous but amazingly, I sang with confidence and I came third. When we got back home and I showed him my trophy, he took me to his room and showed me all the certificates and trophies that he had won when he was in school and college. ”Great start”, he said, “…but you have a long way to go champ!!!…”. I felt jealous of his success!!!!

Daddy was an amazing photographer. He would take the photography club students in school to different places for capturing breath-taking pictures. He once entered a restricted zone near the Sultan’s palace with his students, got caught by the Royal Oman Police, spent an hour at the police station and was released later.

As a teacher he was the best…in twelfth grade, some of his students who could not score a centum in Mathematics, scored full in his subject, Physics!!!! He bagged the Best Teacher’s Award that year. I used to be amazed by the way he interacted with his students…be it Raami, one of his Omani students, or Dave, an American student from the ABA at Muscat, everyone loved his teaching, not just because he was strong in his subject, but because he could relate so well with all his students. Every year he took the twelfth graders on a picnic, sang with them, danced with them, and took pictures with them. Sometimes I had a feeling of possessiveness inside me. I wanted him just for myself and for no one else!!!!! He would sit along with me and teach me Math, the only subject that I dreaded the most. He would scold me for making silly mistakes but the best part was that he understood I had no inclination towards the subject. It was History that I liked. So whenever anyone asked me as to what I would like to become when I grew up, Dad would interrupt and say, “She wants to become a History teacher…!!!”

22nd of March was his birthday. And one year, on his birthday, he came home slightly late. He took me along with him to the parking lot. There stood a big white car looking like a white pearl under the moonlit sky. And then he said, “Remember I promised you that we’d have a big white car someday…well, here it is…!!!!!”. But it wasn’t an Ambassador, it was a Toyota Corolla!. And as we went on a long drive that night, I remember praying to the Lord to make me like my Dad…

In 1997, Dad decided to come back to India. He got appointed as the Principal of Naval Public School at Colaba in Mumbai. He was elated, and so were we. Finally he had achieved what he wanted to achieve in life. We shifted to Mumbai and I entered into my teens. In Mumbai, I saw a different face of Dad, as an administrator. Whenever he walked along with Naval officers in school, I felt proud of him. They all began recognizing me as the ‘Principal’s daughter’..:)……I remember how nervous I was during the Founder’s day of NPS. We sat in the Homi Bhabha auditorium waiting for the Principal’s address. The whole auditorium was packed with students and their parents, most of them officers in uniform. When he walked up to the dais to speak, my heart began to pound inside me. I didn’t want him to make a fool of himself. But once he started speaking, the whole auditorium became quiet. For every joke he cracked on stage or every serious statement that he made, my heart would skip a beat. Finally the whole crowd applauded. That moment was one of the proudest moments of my life!

As I got into my teens, I told mother about some cool movies, a few bad grades, a few good-looking guys at school. I wasn’t bold enough to talk to Dad about such things then, and she, like all Indian mothers, went and told Dad all about everything. The next morning when I went to wake him up, he called me near him, made me sit next to him and said, “If there’s anything that you ever want to hide from anybody in the world, be it your parents, your friends or your teachers, then always remember that it is wrong….because whatever is right and good need not be hidden from the world…”. That day, Daddy became my best friend. There was never a thing that I did not share with him after that day, and he would sit next to me, counsel me, make me understand why the right was right and the wrong was wrong. We became buddies. We used to go out for long rides, have lots of chocolate together, get wet in the rain, speak in Telegu whenever we didn’t want Mummy to understand what we were saying….!!!…, sing songs together, try MJ’s moonwalk…!!!!…and do a lot of other crazy things together. I learnt to cook from him and most of the weekends we would cook all kinds of dishes and give Mummy surprises!!!

In the month of August in 1997, we went to Mount Mary Church at Bandra and for the first time in my life, I saw Daddy weep in silence. Mummy was worried and she asked him what was wrong. He said that he felt as if God was calling him back. That was a very silly thing to say, I thought…

In the month of August 1998, he met with a minor accident. With a few bandages on his knees and elbows, he didn’t seem to be in too much of a pain, but I sat next to him, weeping throughout the night, because I wanted to take away his pain. A lot of his students from NPS came to see him with flowers and all. I said, “Dad, this is just a little accident and we have almost half of Mumbai crowding into our house, what if something serious had happened to you??…I guess the whole world would have been here then…!!!!”…..

One quiet week passed by and on the fateful night of 19th of August, 1998, at 2:10 a.m., I heard sounds of somebody gasping for breath in the veranda. I rushed there, only to find Daddy half-conscious. He had had a massive heart attack. 5:30 pm, on 22nd August, as I stood watching the sun set from one of the windows of Ashvini Hospital, a strange sense of fear gripped my heart. I felt as if Daddy was going away. And right the next moment my uncle came out of the ICU and told me that Dad was gone.

I understood that life would never be the same again.

As we packed our belongings to move back to Ujjain, I found a bookmark in his Bible that read like this,

‘Death is nothing at all. I have only slipped into the next room. I am I, and you are you. Whatever we were to each other, that we still are. Call me by my old familiar name, speak to me in the easy way which you always used. Put no difference in your tone, wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes we enjoyed together. Pray, smile, think of me, pray for me. Let my name be ever the household word that it always was. Let it be spoken without effect, without a trace of a shadow on it.  Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was; there is unbroken continuity. Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am waiting for you. For an interval, somewhere very near, just round the corner. All is well.’

Even today, when I receive friend requests on Orkut or Facebook from his old students, they recognize me as Shweta, daughter of  Mr. M. Vincent, who taught them Physics.

Daddy, thank you for making me what I am today. I might be your little ‘sonny’, your ‘cutlet’, or your ‘burnt black bun’….:)….but for me you will remain my hero, my angel, my sole identity forever. And in a few days as I start my own career as a lecturer, I pray unto the Lord, that He in His abundant grace would grant me success like he granted it to you.

Miss you Dad! But with the eternal hope that I have in Christ Jesus, I know for sure that I shall meet you someday in heaven.