“How do I tell my dad I have a yeast infection and the medication is too expensive”
A friend said this to me today morning and this got me thinking about dads and their daughters studying abroad.

My father and his mom didn’t get along when he was younger; his opinions were too fierce, his tongue too sharp, his ideas too gutsy and his stunts too risky for grandma. She was worried that the fire in his eyes would burn him some day and so she would try to wash it down. She was a strict mom. Dad never could empathise with her. He also has no sisters. He was raised to be a manly man, around boys just like him. He has not been around many women in his life.
Ironically, my mum and he had two daughters and both my sister and I are very close to our dad.

My father is my best friend. I am obsessed with him. We have so many things in common; we love poetry and novels and traditional Indian recipes (well, he likes to cook them and I like to devour them) and whiskey and ghazals and history and mythology and our printing press and the intense urge to absorb all the pain there is in the world so no negativity can ever touch mum and didi. We also share this weird connection with my grandfather. Both of us could never have the relationship we wanted with him; I couldn’t because he passed away when I was only one and he couldn’t because the conventions of those times only allowed them to be son and father, not best friends.
I like to believe he tries so hard to keep up with didi and me because he does not want the social norms to dictate our bond. He truly is our friend before our father. I used to tell him everything, every inconsequential detail about school and my friends and this couple in my class.

But I am twenty years old now, miles away from home, living a life that he can never experience himself. He has been to Europe but being a tourist is so different from being an international student you know. My world is nothing like his, he hasn’t had similar experiences. Firstly because he was born and raised in Vadodara and his dad wouldn’t even let him go to Mumbai for his bachelors and secondly because he is a man and no matter how much time goes by, the world is a different place from a woman’s eyes than it is from a man’s.

So how do I tell him what is going on in my mind? How do I tell him about my life, my thoughts, my deepest darkest fears and my silly sorrows and my pain and my privilege and my farfetched dreams?
How do I complain?
My parents have made every single opportunity accessible to me, no dream was too big, no place too far, no experience too expensive. I was raised with a silver spoon even on days we could barely afford stainless steel.
There is one more thing my dad and I have in common- that fire in our eyes. But my father never tried to water it down, he fueled it even more. He made sure I foster that fire and try becoming everything he could only think of. He wants so much for me. He tells me I am made for bigger things and that all worldly things are irrelevant in comparison to my potential.

I believe him. And still, right now I want to tell my dad about my little crush and the coffee shop near campus and how I get uncomfortable when this professor always looks at me when she talks about cultural minorities and the pressure of saving money and the impulsive need to spend more.

“How do I tell my dad I have a yeast infection and the medication is too expensive”

“The idea of me being in love with a man is a joke to him, how am I supposed to tell him I have a girlfriend here?”

“My dad wants me to save money but retail therapy is real and home is too far and I am a hot mess”

“I was crying about being fired from my job and my father sent me groceries as if that would solve everything”

“I keep going out with older men because I miss my dad and I constantly need a father figure around, maybe I just have major daddy issues”

“Would my father still love me if he knew I smoke weed with random men at parties?”

These are all daughters who were lucky enough to have great dads. Dads who were present in their childhood, dads who are invested in their lives and dads who will bring the skies down if their daughters need them to.

My father would freeze time if I needed to just catch my breath, he loves me dearly.
But he is my father and I am no longer who I used to be.
What if I can’t live up to his idea of me? What if I have become everything he never wanted for me? What if I am too grown up? What if my thoughts are too radical and my fire too ferocious? Will we still be best friends? Will he still love me?