Dear Daughter,
I know that you don’t exist in the real world, but I need to tell you something. Even though you do not exist, your mother, my wife, and I welcomed your brother more than three years ago. I always said to your mom that I wanted you, but it was not in our hands, and now we have your brother instead of you. When the doctor helping us bring your brother into this world jokingly said that it takes a lot of good deeds to be blessed with a daughter, I understood it fine and clear that I wasn’t good enough for you.
As a matter of fact, I am still not. There is something in me that isn’t dying. Let me tell you a story of how I became so unworthy of having you in my life.
When I was a kid, when I didn’t even have a clue of gender differences, I used to hear my grandmother saying that a boy is a sweet made with pure ghee, tasty even if deformed. I heard my sisters making fun of her, but for some reason, I felt I was more wanted than my sisters. I didn’t say anything, but it somehow made its place inside me, and nearly 30 years later, those words are still with me even though the speaker isn’t.
I had always seen my mother going out of her way to make my life comfortable. I remember when I demanded my favourite dishes for lunch, which were hard to cook, my mother used to get up early in the morning in order to give me my favourite dish before I headed to school. In my mind, the purpose of her existence was to serve me. I had never even realised the troubles she had faced to fulfil my whims and fancies.
Her care made me so obnoxious that I almost felt myself as the centre of the universe. I remember when my sisters asked me to drop my plates in the kitchen sink after having my lunch, I felt so humiliated that I began crying. It almost felt that I was asked to do a menial job. My mother heard me crying and started scolding my sisters. She carried my plate, and I stood beside her when my sisters were humiliated for no fault of theirs. At that time, I felt they did a cardinal sin. They violated my right to live with dignity.
As you could have seen, my poor assumption of women’s place in my life was boosted with every passing day.
In school, slowly but surely, I realised that the girl students are different from us, and for some illogical reason, the guys in my class mocked and laughed at anyone who talked to girls. I remember when almost all the boys stopped talking to me because I had lent my water colour tube to one of the girls on her request, in the drawing period of class 3.
I also started to hear some fabricated stories of my classmates having secret sex with each other by the time I reached class 6. I even teased a girl with a guy’s name. She said nothing but later informed the teacher. The teacher confronted me and threatened to call my father to the school. I still remember that I felt angry at the girl for throwing me under the bus. I hadn’t even had the slightest idea about my own actions and their consequences. At that point, it all looked like I knew everything. The news from fellow friends felt like gospel truth. I thought that the girl who complained was indeed of bad character, and in order to save herself from the truth, she was questioning my knowledge about her. What a bitch!
I would often imagine the rumoured couples in my head. All these rumours and my belief in them being true did something that I had no idea or intention of. Slowly but surely, I started having desires for my female classmates and stopped looking at them as what they really were, my classmates. I didn’t even realise this change in me. It was so subtle. I wanted to talk to them and tell them about how I felt, but this idiot of a girl complained to the teacher for what I knew then to be pure truth. I liked her and was scared of her. A vicious idea came to my mind. I started making rumours against her. In my head, all this would have led her to fall for me. What couldn’t I do just to have her attention, just to have her notice my existence?
I never became comfortable in front of women in my entire life. This constant fight between fear and desire got ingrained in my personality. I was helpless. I chose the one way that only looked viable as I grew older. I chose to wear a mask of indifference. I acted in such a way that no woman had any impact on me, when factually almost all of them shook me to my core. I tried to lie to myself, but it is a painful endeavour. You know your truth. When I first got my chance to be alone with a girl, who made a ridiculous miscalculation on her part and decided to be my girlfriend, all those bundled desires lying deep inside found a way to show their existence. I treated her with utter disrespect. I forgot that she was a human being and poured my boiling lava of desires on her. She cooperated as far as she could but could not tackle my ugly display of lust. No woman would like to be treated like a mere piece of meat, and I was just doing that. When I had my way with her, I didn’t even offer her food. How humiliated she must have felt. She was so nice that she told me of my mistake and asked me to never repeat it with any other woman. I was acting as if a beggar had somehow managed to get inside a vault filled with gold and wanted to take out as much as he possibly could. The way she degraded in my mind from a person of desire to a material of desire still baffles me every time I think of it.
Then I met your mother. She somehow chose to ignore all my animalistic tendencies and agreed to marry me. My mask comes off as soon as I am with her, but she has endured my ugliness. In about a decade with your mother, I can safely say I have turned into a less ugly version of myself.
The point I am trying to make is, there are far too many men who were shaped the way I was—and far too many women who suffer because of it. This world is full of people who would take advantage in any way they can. They don’t care for you or your feelings. They will try to loot you. When I picture a boy, very much like me, doing the exact same to you, my blood boils. I feel suffocated even to think of it. It has only dawned on me now, after so many years, that the girls I disrespected in my arrogance were someone’s daughters as well. Unfortunately, as of now, nothing can be done about it. We have made a world where women of all ages are traded like cattle. We have turned our society into a menace with a mask of decency. The mask idea was not mine alone after all.
This confession to you is my way of saying that I am still a work in progress. I am ashamed of how I was. I am ashamed of how I still am. My addiction to porn, prostitution, and perversion still proves that nothing has really changed on the deeper level. Something in me which treats women as objects of mere pleasure, having no worth on their own, is still inside me. I still wear my mask during the day to hide my rotten face of the night. I am still trying to cheat my way out of it, but it doesn’t look possible anymore. To top it, I have the biggest duty of my lifetime at hand, and that is to make your brother a lot better than I could ever be. I want him to learn more than I would ever know. I want him to grow into a man who treats people with respect. I want him to grow into a man whom women feel safe around.
I want to turn myself into a person whom he can look up to.
If you could feel my shaking hands and my wet eyes in my words, you can feel that I still have a long way to go.
I may not have the blessing of having you in this life, but I promise to become a version of myself worthy of having you. You may never be born, but the man worthy of being your father still can be.
Even without ever having you, I love you with every fibre of my being.
Yours, Papa.
