She is sixteen today; no more a child, though I like to think she is; not yet an adult, though she likes to think she is. There are yellow roses in a small crystal bowl in the centre of the dining table. She loves yellow roses. It is just one more thing she has inherited from her father.
I was leaving the house this morning when she was emerging from her room, drowsy eyed and tousle-haired, beautiful even in her oversize Winnie the Pooh pajamas. She had feigned delight when she had torn open the parcel my wife had pressed into her hands. It had contained an elegant white and gold salwar suit. She shall look like an angel when she wears it...if she ever wears it. I know what she has her heart set on - the little black dress with the broad satin belt. She had fallen in love with it two weeks ago when we had seen it displayed at the shop window. Her mother thought she had looked too bold in it. I thought she had looked different...grown up...and an argument had ensued. She had stormed out of the store in disappointment and rage while I had stood aside and let my wife buy the salwar, unable to explain to her the absurdity of her choice.
I remember, eight years ago, a similar situation had risen over a dark blue pinafore. My wife had insisted on buying the yellow dress on sale, a three layered affair in ribbons and lace. She, fixed in her ideas of fashion even at the tender age of eight, had clung to the pinafore with fearful obstinacy. It was my wife who had walked out of the store then, disgusted at our child’s behaviour and more so of her choice in suitable attire. I had, even then, sneaked back into the store and bought the dress, hiding it in the recesses of my closet for three months until her birthday. Alas! Fashions had changed and the child cried for a pinafore no longer. In fact, lace dresses were much more the thing. She accepted her mother’s yellow choice with a lot more appreciation; and the pinafore was never worn. Well rest assured, the same fate does not lie in store for this little black dress.
It takes me some time to locate the section in the store where the dresses are hanging from steel racks. I hold up a sample against the light, surveying the dress at arms length. The sheer material dances between my fingers. I smile because my little girl will steal the show this evening.
A shop assistant appeared at my side. “May I help you Sir?”
I am distracted by his presence. “Yes...yes. I want to buy this dress. For my daughter. She turns sixteen today, you see.”
“That’s wonderful, Sir. What size would she be?”
He catches me off guard. Indeed, what size would she be? I look around the store for a clue.
“She’s not very thin. But she isn’t quite fat either, you know.”
The boy smiles politely, but still waits for a definite answer. I beam at him. “She’s quite perfect really. Though as a child she used to be fairly plump. I don’t know when she shed all that adorable fat. But she’s perfect...quite perfect.”
The attendant turns his attention to a girl holding out a pink blouse for him. “I would like a Medium in this please.”
“I’ll see what I can do, Madam.”
She reminds me strongly of my own daughter. She has a pleasant face- soft features which reveal a healthy upbringing. “I want a Medium in this dress too,” I called after the retreating assistant, who nodded respectfully and disappeared through a door bearing a wooden plaque which read “Staff Only”.
Fifteen minutes later I drive away, the dress tenderly wrapped in a brightly coloured package and carefully placed on the front passenger seat. I can already imagine her reaction. She will shake the dress out in amazement first, her eyes- they say she has my eyes- will light up in wonder and then she will throw her arms around me with a shriek of delight. And as for me, I will pretend to be a trifle annoyed at all the noise, but in reality, I will be revelling in her joy. I adore the way she still hurls herself on me in moments of excitement. For the brief moment when her arms are wrapped around me, she is once more the little girl who had cried inconsolably if her Papa didn’t take her on a “piggy-back ride” every evening.
I hear her laughter float in from her room as I enter the house. As always, it makes me smile. I place my parcel amongst the others on the glass topped table. Mine is the largest parcel. When she opens it, she will forget our argument last week, when, in a fit of rage I had ordered her off the dinner table. She must have gone hungry that night, poor darling. I have already forgotten what it was that we had argued about, but I will have redeemed myself in her eyes with that dress; the little black dress, which she believed, was an essential element of every woman’s wardrobe. When my wife’s white and gold salwar suit goes neglected, it will be my turn to be smug.
I look at the yellow roses once again and smile knowingly. Less escapes a father’s eye than children like to believe. I know that she has been up all night, curled up on the living room sofa, whispering into the cordless phone, when she thought her parents had fallen asleep. I know too, that it is her late-night caller who has sent her these roses under a false name. Young love is a thing to be envied. I arrange the bouquet in an empty crystal vase and place my parcel beside it. My wife will never forgive me. She thinks I spoil our daughter far too much. And though I deny it, I know it is true.
The smell of biriyani floats in from the kitchen. There is to be a party tonight. Fifteen of her friends shall turn the house upside down. I had wanted to decorate the living room with multi-coloured streamers as I have every year before this. She had been appalled. At sixteen, one must be sophisticated. She bought her first heels last week with money she saved from tutoring that Singh boy next door. She paraded in front of me that night, her long legs daintily shod in a pair of narrow black stilettos. Gone are the days of white lace socks and pink Mary Jane shoes. They are in the attic now, torn and worn out, the bow unglued and the pink satin moth-eaten. I wonder if a similar fate lies in store for the dress. I feel a pang of remorse. Little black dresses have replaced yards of lace and ribbons. Exit, my little girl. Enter, a lady.
My eyes fall on the picture of a little girl, encased in an elaborate frame and hung on the wall of the living room. I smile wistfully. I hear my wife rustling into the room. She is in her white sari, the only sari she reserves for this day. With tears in her eyes she tenderly places a garland of white flowers around the picture of that girl, in a yellow dress of ribbons and lace. Her distraught sobs jolt me out of my reverie. A car screeches outside and I hear shouts of horror. She had lain there, her yellow dress sodden with blood, her mouth open in a silent laugh that had never changed into a scream.
There are no yellow roses... there is no secret lover...there is only my brightly coloured parcel which contains a little black dress which shall never be worn.
I break down and cry as I have every year since that day.
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