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| Old Town, Barcelona |
There was a time when I still lived at home with my parents and my siblings, that there used to be a lot of 'prank' calls to our telephone landline. I was in college and I don't know who I met during those days who decided that he or she wanted to harrass me. My home phone number fell into the wrong hands and the problems started. Every other day, we started getting phone calls where someone would either hang up the phone immediately, stay on the call without saying anything or breathe deeply into the receiver or giggle and hang up.
There were weeks where nothing happened, some days where there were a number of these calls and then a call coming in once in a while. I think it was a guy because one of those times, I remember being spoken to but after a few minutes the person hung up. While we didn't know who was behind this, it had become evident that these calls were targeting me. I was embarrassed about it but no one in my home blamed me for what was happening.
One afternoon, I was sitting in the living room of our small Mumbai apartment watching TV and had a hazy awareness that my father was on a phone call. I was too immersed in the TV programme to hear any part of the conversation even though Daddy was only about five steps away from me. I do recall that at that age, what my father spoke on the phone didn't interest me at all. My father hung up the phone and by pure chance I looked up and asked him who he had been speaking to. It was a question asked more out of politeness and a will to chat with Daddy than out of curiosity.
Daddy then told me about the call. Turns out it was a young man on the phone who had called and started telling him things about me. He had told my father that I was not the girl my father believed me to be. That I was not trustworthy and that I did all sorts of disgraceful things. He continued to talk and my father continued to listen. I believed my father when he told me that because I had heard no reaction, no raised voice and no reference to my name. Then my father had asked the caller what he did. Daddy discovered that he was a student. He further asked him where he lived to which he didn't answer. But my father continued to have a conversation with him. Daddy enquired about his family, and who he lived with. The young man replied that he lived with his mother. When Daddy enquired after the caller's father, the voice on the phone said that his father had passed away a few years ago.
By this time, I was a bit worried about what consequence this call would have on me at the end of the day. I asked my father, "And what did you say?". To which my father stoically answered that he had told the young man "It's normal with a son like you, no father would stay alive. I think it's better your father didn't live to see how you turned out." Needless to say, the mischief-maker promptly cut the call.
I stared incredulously at this amazing, calm man, my father! Daddy had proven to me once again with his patient and relaxed attitude that one could disarm the strongest in war by using wit and biding time. Daddy was in no way influenced by what the world had to say about his daughter. He knew me and that was it! I looked at him standing there and saw in front of me a WARRIOR in the true sense of the name. A defender to his clan, a man who provided an abode of peace to anyone who was his.
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