Popagandhi

My father - fish fanatic, plant enthusiast, aspiring barista, full time maverick and devoted family man - recently enquired on how to set up a blog.

It was easy to wave it off and laugh about it with friends later. I haven’t gotten around to it mostly out of self-preservation: I reasoned, if he starts blogging, he would come around to this site, sooner or later. Those who know better tell me not to be delusional and believe he doesn’t already know it exists.

I suddenly remembered this when speaking about our fathers with some friends, and I found myself thinking: what a cool dad I’ve got. He believes his website will be a hit, as he pens his thoughts on the challenges he faced in bringing up children like you (there is no such thing as a difficult task, he says, only a challenge). My father’s quite the radical. Like most adolescents, I used to hold the opinion that fathers were better off as far away as possible. I can’t help but be increasingly thankful for a father like this one.

People who have met him are always struck by how much of him they see in me - listening to him speak about his beliefs, can be quite an inspiring scene to be part of. I was the stereotypical “daddy’s girl”, sometimes I suspect only because he moulded me into the shape he had always wanted his father to do for him. A large part of who I am today: the writer, the techie, the liberal, the feminist, can be traced directly to his deliberate efforts. At identifying and honing my linguistic abilities from an early age (likewise, if I had been given to science, or art, he would have done the same), the father-daughter trips out to the electronics store at Holland Village (the then Cost Plus Electronics).

This was the father who, despite the demands of his Chineseness, as well as of his Christianity, instilled in me the belief to always stand up and be counted if I believed in something strongly even if it ran contrary to his own beliefs; who delighted when I began to display, at the age of five, feminist leanings as I demanded proof from a weighing scale that I had received as much potato chips as my brother had, “or else.. you’re being sexist”.

He never cared for that I wasn’t a maths or science whiz, a big deal in these parts of the world, only for that I excelled in the areas I loved, areas relating to the English language; and it was he who, unlike most of my friends’ fathers, actually dissuaded me from legal studies, who first made me wonder if I was considering it only because I could, rather than because I wanted to. Who was so proud each time I got into (legitimate) trouble with teachers, and who, in response to my comment about the Jamie Han fiasco (I’d said, aren’t you glad I didn’t attend? It could very well have been my picture there instead), said: “Why? I would have been proud. I would have cut it out and framed it up. At least you have an opinion at all.”

This morning, as I clambered out of bed for my earliest class of the week, he made my latte and my breakfast without complaints; the same way he would stay up with me as I studied into the night for the A level exams, cycled out to buy my prata or wanton noodles at 2 in the morning, cooked me supper at other times. Everything he does for his children, he does with so much pride and joy that it’s almost contagious.

I know he’s happiest when I talk to him and engage him in conversation about politics, people, when I include him in my life, when I let him read my writings. For far too long, I haven’t been able to say I did enough of that. Over the Chinese New Year period, he had seen an old woman sitting by a curb, collecting cardboard boxes with little cheer. He whipped out a red packet, put in a considerable amount of money (enough to be considered mad, for a stranger), and handed it to her. And that’s the way he is: a good man who loves his God, his family, and somehow, even his daughter too.

Maybe I could even think about hosting him. A father with a Wordpress blog, on popagandhi.com - now, how cool would that be?