For most of my childhood, my father and I were inseparable.
I was his loudest child, his most curious child, his most mischievous child—and perhaps his most emotionally attached child.
I wanted to be near him.
I wanted to travel with him.
I wanted to sit beside him.
I wanted to know what he was doing.
And most of all, I wanted to be his favourite.
I think I always was.
But love does not mean two people will always agree.
As I grew older, I became more independent in my thinking.
I wanted to live life in my own way.
I believed in simplicity.
I believed in taking life as it came.
I did not want to be bound by every expectation society placed on me.
My father was different.
He had lived through poverty.
He had seen what it meant to have very little.
He believed in security.
He believed in responsibility.
He believed in family obligations.
He believed that a person had to think about the future, the family, society, reputation, and consequences.
I believed more in the present.
He thought about tomorrow.
I thought about today.
That difference grew as I became an adult.
My marriage and the choices I made in my life became a source of conflict between us.
There were financial decisions that affected me and my family.
There were business decisions that caused me financial losses.
And because my father loved me, those losses hurt him too.
He was deeply upset whenever he felt that I had lost something I had worked hard to build.
He worried about me.
He worried about my future.
He worried about my daughter.
And sometimes, he worried about my choices more than I wanted him to.
I, on the other hand, stood by my husband.
That is what I believed marriage meant.
When you choose someone as your partner, you stand beside them through difficult times too.
My father did not always understand my choices.
And I did not always understand his concerns.
That is how our arguments began.
But even in our disagreements, something never disappeared.
Love.
We could argue.
We could be angry.
We could disagree strongly.
But I never stopped being his daughter.
And he never stopped being my Appa.
There was a strange comfort in knowing that.
Even when we were on opposite sides of an argument, I knew that if I needed him, he would come.
And he knew that if he needed me, I would come too.
We were both stubborn.
We both had strong opinions.
We both believed that we were protecting the people we loved.
Perhaps that was why we sometimes collided so strongly.
Because beneath the disagreement was love.
He wanted to protect me.
I wanted to live my life.
He wanted to secure my future.
I wanted to make my own choices.
He wanted to save me from mistakes.
I wanted the freedom to make them myself.
Neither of us was entirely wrong.
Neither of us was entirely right.
We were simply two people who loved each other deeply but saw life differently.
And yet, even after the arguments, we always found our way back.
Sometimes quickly.
Sometimes slowly.
But we always found our way back.
I was often the peacemaker between my parents too.
I hated seeing them fight.
My sisters would often mind their own business.
I could never do that.
I would involve myself.
I wanted to support my father.
I was, admittedly, very possessive of him.
I always felt that I had to be there for him.
Even now, I know that I was sometimes selfish about that love.
But I loved being the person who stood beside him.
I loved being his daughter.
And perhaps that was why our disagreements hurt so much.
Because I could argue with him only because I loved him so much.
Our conflicts never erased our bond.
Even when he was disappointed in me, I knew he loved me.
Even when I was angry with him, I knew I loved him.
That truth remained underneath everything.