Strangely, Shora has the wisdom of a grandmother. She can gauge a person’s nature within minutes of meeting them. The kind of things she talks about, the kind of unsolicited advice she gives is well beyond her six years of age. Her sensibility, her sense of discernment—along with her temper—come from our side. She is quite a mix that way of athleticism and erudition.
Recently she asked me, ‘Papa, if you were not my papa, would you still love me so much?’
‘Yes, of course!’ I said, taken a little aback by the nature of the question.
‘Why?’ she asked.
‘Because you are so lovable. You are so disciplined. How can anybody not love you?’ I replied with a smile. But she was serious.
‘Okay, then why don’t you love other kids as much too?’ she persisted.
‘Of course, I love other children too!’ I said.
‘Yes, of course. But do you love them as much as you love me?’ she quizzed.
Our conversation went on. I was awestruck. From where did this thought wander into her little mind? But she talks like this all the time. In this particular instance, I assume she was trying to teach me that I must love all children equally. She constantly teaches me lessons, constantly surprises me with her thought process. Her solid memory power leaves me just as baffled. She remembers my scenes faster than I can. Like the chaddi rant from Freaky Ali: she heard it just once but she learnt it by heart instantly, and it is not an easy bunch of words to remember right away.
Compared to her, her baby brother, Yani, is a very simple-minded little boy. Many may look down on Shora as being tez (shrewd). But I am very confident about her. I know that she is headed in the right direction. It is crucial for girls in our country to be tez, shrewdly aware, so that they can survive anywhere, so that nobody can take them for a ride. Most fathers would worry about their daughters, but I am not at all worried about mine. She is quite street-smart.
These days she has a bizarre habit of collecting all kinds of tiny things and locking them up in a safe place in her room. Nobody dares to touch them, not even her harmless little brother, who, by the way, of all the things in the world is only interested in his bossy big sister’s stuff. We keep trying to explain to her that he is your own brother and he is a baby. But that is the rare time when she ceases to be charming and becomes borderline rude. Uncannily enough, my Nani was the same. She had a reputation for collecting all kinds of trinkets which she would not let anybody even see, let alone touch. It was only after her death that we could access her secret collection. We found handkerchiefs, letters, money, so many clothes which nobody could wear, notes, ribbons . . . For us, it was the equivalent of excavating Tutankhamun’s treasures.
I did not know how much of an impact having a daughter would have on my perspective. Due to the very fact that Shora is a girl, many changes have come in me. I have begun to view women in a new light, as human beings with countless characteristics. Before that, given my village background, I had a bumpkin’s attitude. My hopelessly shallow outlook about women confined them to merely the sum total of their roles, that’s it. Some of these roles were not even their choices, they were simply assigned to them. A woman could be a wife. A woman could be a mother. A woman could be a sister. Or she could be a maid. How awfully foolish I had been! It is shameful. Today I know that she has countless forms. Each woman is a person in her own right with myriad characteristics. She can be a friend. Simply by the act of being born a girl, my daughter dispelled my narrow-mindedness.
Now for the very first time in my life, I have female friends. I can talk to them for hours, I can listen to them for hours. It is no different from having male friends. Before having a daughter, I used to be awkward around women. I could talk with them for a few minutes, limited mostly to greetings and other formalities. This new-found comfort with women is amazing. It is liberating, it has added a new dimension to life altogether. And I am deeply grateful, indebted actually, to my baby girl for giving me this gift.
PART IVACTING
18Anurag Kashyap
Awkward. That’s the word which seems to define the flow of my life. Yes, that’s it. However, coming to think of it now, in retrospect, it does not seem awkward at all, that I first met Anurag, my mentor-to-be (but I did not know that then, did I? Or maybe I
