A prayer for my daughter

He then nodded to the pianist who began with the instrumental intro to Heartland’s I Loved Her First… the definitive ‘dad -giving- away-daughter’ ballad

My friend Bugs Bhargava Krishna’s daughter got married last week. It was a Delhi ‘shaadi’, the venue was the leafy Cantonment area, shading us from the fierce smog that has shrouded our capital city. As my ‘brother from another mother’ stepped up on the stage, under the Delhi skies, mic in hand, he said simply: “Good evening everyone, this is a song for my daughter… on her special day.” He glanced at 
his only child, his smile encompassing decades in a nano second, a kaleidoscopic montage of memories. He then nodded to the pianist who began with the instrumental intro to Heartland’s I Loved Her First… the definitive ‘dad -giving- away-daughter’ ballad.

As he burst into song, Bugs’ eyes shifted to her groom for the opening verse.
‘I was enough for her not long ago
I was her number one, she told me so
She still means the world to me, just so you know
So be careful when you hold my girl
Time changes everything, life must go on
I’m not going to stand in your way’
 
Then from the second verse onwards,
his gaze shifted back to his grown-up girl. 
 
‘But I loved her first, I held her first
And a place in my heart will always be hers
From the first breath she breathed
When she first smiled at me
I know the love of a father runs deep
But its still hard to give her away’
 
And as Bugs sang, his voice soaring into the night sky, he bore a look of extreme unconditional love, a communication with no buffering, no breakdown, but an outpouring with each word, with each lyric, images were being conjured, time passages being relived—for those three minutes of song, the rest of us were cropped out of the picture, blurred out of this two-way emotion, time stood still for my friend and the apple of his eye.

I thought of men and their daughters… that quite unique dynamic, that special connection, that fine line of ‘letting go’ but never quite cutting the chord.

Those early experiences of wonderment, of creation, of the baby steps of fatherhood, of only easing up at the sound of her key in the lock, of judging boyfriends, of moving past the ‘no one’s good enough for my li’l girl’ to ‘Yeah he seems okay’.

Built into Bugs’ vocals, were a subtext of instinctive protectiveness, innate possessiveness, insane unpreparedness, and immediate pride.

Boys tend to waver in their feelings towards their ‘old men’, sons are wired differently, locking horns with their dads, seeking to continuously step out of the shadow, rebelliously shunning ‘dad’s business’ 

(‘I’m going to make it on my own’) or obediently ‘taking it over’—many strings attached to that linkage. Legacy often outweighing love. 

The fairer sex has always been fairer in their judgements: the DNA locking them and linking them, in a protector-protected union, with their fathers —a lifelong sense of one-ness. 

And as my friend Bugs Bhargava Krishna finished the ode to his daughter, and as he paused to appreciate the moment, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. Many a stiff upper lip, now quivering with emotion.

This wasn’t a changing of the guard, just the inclusion of a new guardian.

Rahul daCunha is an adman, theatre director/playwright, photographer and traveller. Reach him at rahul.dacunha@mid-day.com

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