Buried deep inside my mind is a sepia colored scene from early childhood, its hues taken from the films we used to see on the streets during festival time. In the scene, I am sitting beside my father Dada on a plywood divan in the front room of our three-room flat in the old city. I am destined to do great things in this world, he is telling me, and an incredible feeling is sweeping over me. I am special; I am to change the world, I believe. 
I wonder sometimes if my mind has combined different incidents to create this singular memory or if it just happened this way. Whichever the case, the words are real, and so are the details. Throughout my childhood, my father repeatedly reminded me that I was born with an attitude of a freedom fighter and that he will always uphold and be a foundation for me always; that I was to have a life different from that of other women in India.

This memory explains everything about my life; my successes, my failures, my joys and my sorrows. My father created an expectation that was hard to sustain. And yet, not for one moment have I wished that I had been raised like a “normal” Indian girl and told that my destiny was to be a slave in my mother-in-law’s kitchen.

It is hard to know if my father saw something in me or if my intelligence, my enthusiasm, and my willingness to work hard were simply by-products of his pride and faith in me. My father loved me and so did I.
What is true is that my father’s words shaped me; made me different. Other fathers took their cues from Dada and encouraged their daughters—my friends—to soar and shine too. 
We all went to co-educational schools. We all competed with boys; I more than most of all my team mates. My father encouraged me to participate in debates; to be direct, honest, and bold. When my middle school teacher accused Mahatma Gandhi of inciting the Muslims and partitioning the country, I raised my hand and objected, only to be admired, not admonished, for speaking from my mind and questioning authority. Those were the heady post-independence days of the ‘60s, when women were seen as the only hope of India.

Later, I studied science alongside men. The numbers of women gradually declined in my classes at each stage, from twenty-five in B.Sc. to four in M.Sc. to only one—just me—in the Ph.D. physics course at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur. Freed from the pressure to be feminine and pretty and to lure men, I behaved like a man. It was the only way a woman could survive at the university and in a profession in those days. 
Yet, lately, I have felt the pressure to change. I have encountered women’s games, women’s manipulations, women’s passive aggressiveness. Sometimes, in an all-women group, I have expressed my opinions too vehemently and sensed an undercurrent of resentment. And I have wondered, am I missing the female gene?

But when I was growing up, I did not feel judged for my feisty personality and my outsized ambitions. It is only now that I realize that the source of my mental security was always my father, who remained my ally no matter what. He gave me the confidence to be myself, to not worry about other people’s approval. He told me to walk towards the goal; not to look behind my back.

What is lacking in the feminist literature today is the narrative of bonding with fathers. When you look at women leaders today, like Arundhati Roy—a writer and activist I absolutely adore—or Hillary Clinton and Gloria Steinem, what stands out is that they did not have good relationships with their fathers.

Could this be the reason many young women today seem to lack the spirit, the drive, the assertiveness that should be their due in this so-called “post-feminist” era? Today feminism is decreasing, but feminism is one of the most valuable treasure a parent can ever get; only if  they penetrate  into the deep meaning of feminism. I hve to agree what I am saying; I am a feminist and I will always fight for the freedom of the feminism literature and history..

Now that my father is long gone—it will be the twelfth anniversary of his death this December—I find myself rudderless. An image comes back to me, of my alarm going off at four a.m. and Dada rising to light the charcoal stove to make me a cup of tea, a scarf tied around his ears. What makes a father sacrifice for the education of a daughter?

My father was my soul mate, my guide, my friend and my mentor. He taught me to love literature, to plant a garden, to enjoy cricket, to cultivate a taste for beauty, to drink tea, and to appreciate the other little things in life. Believe it or not but he, and not my mother, taught me cooking.

  I am jelous  and  proud of myself that as an Indian girl or as a female gene I was able to enjoy thee light and  love  of life; for getting a heavenly man in my life. Of course such a close relationship had its price. My brother resented me, for example; unable to share my father’s interests, he felt left out of the duo.

Still I do not regret my bond with my father; on the contrary, I wish that I had not let anyone come between us for any reason. For I know now that I would not have had the strength to battle the many adversities I have encountered in my life without the courage and strength my father gave me. He saw the real me in a way that no one else did. Now that I am becoming older and invisible, I want someone to see me the way he did.

I realize now how rare it is in this world for two people to be on the same wavelength. How wonderful and unusual it is for a father to impart so much of himself to a daughter.

So this Father’s Day, I want to rejoice Dada; sing an ode to him because he told me to win the race I was running . I want to thank him for making me live a realistic and pure life  as  a lover and a guardian angel for feminism , so that every single day of my life, I was reminded that I had to fight for my liberty.

And in spite of my immeasurable and unswerving love towards Dada, I do want to desperately believe that from somewhere beyond this realm, he is still watching me.