She's Leaving Home...

This is perhaps the best loved article by me. Please help me 2 find out why I like it.
It has appeared in the Times of India. Forgive me I dont remember the date.
Author: Rajiv Desai


On a friday morning at breakfast, she had a shy smile on her face. Her mother told the father,"She has something to say". The father who really is averse to such disturbances as he reads the morning newspaper  looked up  distractedly. As he looked up, he saw his wife was hugging their daughter and sobbing. It was really too early in the morning  for drama, the father thought to himself. Being somewht cantankerous, the father grunted, not quite understanding her comment. Then the penny dropped. His daughter had just announced her engagement.He put down his paper and looked at her.In the event he was struck by his daughter's demure posture. She was plain-speaking person-always told it like it was loudly: "Dad, deal with it. I'm never leaving home". She had told him, time and again. Daughters are special, they love their mother and if the father think its okay its equivalent to winning a Nobel Prize.


On that Friday morning, she was leaving home. Confused between happiness and sadness when she announced her intention,the father looked at his daughter in a new light: a beautiful young woman who was about to set up a new life.Through the day though he looked at the collection of photos on the computer. The pictures captured a gorgeous little girl: holding her infant sister,taking her on a ride on her tricycle; twirling in ballet class with her little pink tutu; going off by herself to the Bon Jovi concert in Bombay; cavorting on the beaches in Goa; posing in front of her new car when she was at college in America; dancing ever so well at her best friend's wedding. And on that Friday morning a shy smile. A cloud hovered over her father's happiness: for all the years she'd lived in America and in England, he knew she'd always come back. On that Friday, however,something awoke in him that he had always denied for many years: she's leaving home.