Feature

Two alone,
Two apart

Marzia Rahman

THE day she was born, she changed her father's regular, daily life. He could no longer be the carefree man he used to be as she put heaps of responsibilities on his shoulder. Though, it's her mother who did or would continue to do most of the tedious work, mountains of sacrifices, many untold sleepless nights and thousand prayers for her well being. But her father also went through a few sacrifices, some compromises and a few waking nights.

Within weeks the new father discovered with utmost delight that he brought home a bundle of joy, a doll, his new playmate. He loved to play with this new plaything, called her by different weird, cute names, threw her in the air ignoring her mother's scream. The daughter also enjoyed his little adventures, his laughter, the warmth of his body but mostly his presence and his unconditional love.

It is said that girl daughters are more attached to their fathers than to their mothers and vice-versa. She and her father were no exception. She cried her heart out when he went out and rejoiced most when he returned, she discovered little, funny tricks to stay with him longer, discussed all her tiny problems with him, tried to attract his attention with her gibberish talk when he was occupied with his works. At nights when they lay together, her head in his arms, her legs over his belly amusing each other with grotesquely funny stories, he thought heaven must be like this.

She found that her father was a man who understood freedom more than her mother. In front of her father she could do anything she liked, take delight in innocent mischievous, which could not be possible in her mother's presence. For instance, when mother went out and she was left alone to her father, she could play with dust and dirty things, eat without washing her hands and sit anywhere without bothering about the dress. She enjoyed absolute fun and freedom and came to the ultimate conclusion that her father is the best Baba in the world.

Months rolled into years, the little daughter grew up and reached her teen-age years and slowly their came a change in the father-daughter relationship. Her tastes, choices, perspectives changed and her father could no longer relate to her. He loved his daughter as always but he could no longer understand her age nor her teen-age temper. It was not his fault. Because he was a man, born in 1942 and came from a family that believed that a father should be strict and should set up hundreds of regulations to raise the young daughter. So, there was no fun, no games, no sharing between them but only rules and regulations. She started hiding things from him, the things she adored, the latest fashion, music, magazines, and her latest crash and slowly they drifted apart.

He felt happy to see his daughter following his rules and Islamic regulations but he failed to see her real self, her true being. And she also failed to see his sacrifices, his hardship, his philosophy and psychology. She shared half his genes, lived with him most of her life, but now she could not find one thing to say to him neither did he. She realized that he would never understand her need for space, self-expression just as the generation that preceded him never understood him.

He loved her beyond his life and there was not a single thing in the world that he would not do to see her happy. She also loved her father and would be always there for him in his good days and bad days when he would need her. But still somewhere, somehow a little gap, a tiny distance existed between them. It was a small and simple problem but it required an answer, a solution of such vastness and infinite complexity that it can hardly be contemplated. This problem is called “Generation Gap”.

Thus the father-daughter started their journey with lots of love and happiness but their roads drifted to different shores. The joys, the laughter, the loving memories of passing time together now resided only in their memories and family albums but hardly in reality.

(Writer is a former teacher)