Today is my daughter Geetanjali’s last day of attending classes at the school she has been in for the past 14 years.
We saw her off at the bus stop, just as we did on the first day all those years ago, when she joined that quaint little school in the middle of nowhere, which over the years became the Mallya Aditi International School.
After this, she will be spending time (I hope) preparing for her 12th standard exams (which are in March), but the days of spending time in her school classrooms are over.
Funny how time flies.
When I finished school, I barely felt anything. It didn’t even strike me that I was leaving behind a lifetime of protected existence, where teachers took an active interest in you, and that I would be entering college, where lectures lecture and leave, and you are left mostly to your own devices. It was only years later that I awoke to the fact just what I had left behind then.
Just how much is too much when you spend all your time trying to provide for your family? Does struggling to give your child the best of education, the safest of lives, the nicest of clothes, etc. compare to playing with your daughter and her puppy in the garden for an afternoon? Where’s the balance?
The sheer mortality of relationships (at least at different levels) is a frightening thought. While she will always be my daughter, she will steadily progress through life (if she puts her mind to it), establishing different relationships, sometimes/often at the cost of a level of relationship with me.
Decades from now, how will she, or I, remember these days that end today? Will there be a deep sense of regret and loss, as I am feeling now, or will time cover the bad spots and let us remember only the good times?
I realise, as I sit here writing this, just how much I have not done, and will probably never be able to do again in this lifetime. That includes the things you’d expect a normal father to do with his family – going to the zoo, the circus, a movie, or just for a walk. I don’t think of myself as a bad father because of this, but the sense of loss is inevitable – these times will never come again.
Whatever was I thinking these past one and half decades?
Slipping Through My Fingers (ABBA)
Schoolbag in hand, she leaves home in the early morning
Waving goodbye with an absent-minded smile
I watch her go with a surge of that well-known sadness
And I have to sit down for a while
The feeling that I’m losing her forever
And without really entering her world
I’m glad whenever I can share her laughter
That funny little girl
Slipping through my fingers all the time
I try to capture every minute
The feeling in it
Slipping through my fingers all the time
Do I really see whats in her mind
Each time I think I’m close to knowing
She keeps on growing
Slipping through my fingers all the time
Sleep in our eyes, her and me at the breakfast table
Barely awake, I let precious time go by
Then when she’s gone theres that odd melancholy feeling
And a sense of guilt I can’t deny
What happened to the wonderful adventures
The places I had planned for us to go
(slipping through my fingers all the time)
Well, some of that we did but most we didn’t
And why I just don’t know
Slipping through my fingers all the time
I try to capture every minute
The feeling in it
Slipping through my fingers all the time
Do I really see whats in her mind
Each time I think I’m close to knowing
She keeps on growing
Slipping through my fingers all the time
Sometimes I wish that I could freeze the picture
And save it from the funny tricks of time
Slipping through my fingers…
Slipping through my fingers all the time
Schoolbag in hand she leaves home in the early morning
Waving goodbye with an absent-minded smile…