My little girl is
the perfect extrovert revenge by life on both her introvert parents. Apart from
her apparent love for reading, story-telling
and being a quiet child happy with herself, she is a people's person to
the core.
So we were not
surprised when even at such a young age
she had an extremely warm and friendly relationship with everyone in the family
and extended family that she met.
A particular trait
that stood out was her incessant tirade of queries and questions about
everything. So much so that I often call her my human question bank.
She shares little
anecdotes about her and make the keep asking the other person to share theirs.
She has dozens of supplementary questions for every query that she has, and to
top it all the perseverance to be a patient listener of tales.
One of the people
she formed a special bond with is with my father. He was 74 when she was born
and by the time she had started having meaningful conversations his health had
taken a dip, resulting in frequent irritability and some age-related bedimming of
memory.
But he was the most
peaceful when he was with her. She would put him at ease and they spent hours
huddled in a blanket sharing anecdotes about friends and incidents. Some of his
stories going long back to a pre-partition
childhood in now Pakistan.
Three months after
she turned six he passed away. She was my pillar of strength and as I was
trying to come to terms with this new life without him ,I was surprised, how
she knew details about his childhood that even I didn't- like his first bicycle
was red, his younger brother had bitten his ear bad enough for a couple of
stitches just to snatch a few mangoes, the boy who taught him to swim in the
Jhelum was a Sikh.
Three of my four
grandparents were alive for many more years than her brief six years with her Nana and still I don't know as much about
their childhood, their memories with their siblings and the like.
I am glad my aaj-kal-ka-baccha had the time and the
patience for all those questions to him. I am glad she was so involved in my
father's last years and that she has created so many fond memories with him.
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