Why I'm Daddy's girl.

“I am not coming home unless you pick me” I screamed and rushed out with my school bag, leaving my parents pretending to be least bothered, with contrasting streaks of concern in their eyes.

I used to have special tuition classes for Chemistry, because this was one subject I had no clue about. And my chemistry class was after my regular school hours after which I had to board two buses to reach home, thanks to the choice of location of Papa to build our house.

So that day, I asked Papa to pick me up- because I dint want to board those stupid buses, you see. Papa, whose office was a good 25km away from home, reaches by 6 pm every evening. By then he would be exhausted, and riding that primitive scooter which has to be kick started around twenty five times and riding it in peak hour traffic for another few miles to pick me  was nothing less than trying to balance chemical equations. So he requested me to come by bus. And when I left saying that I wouldn’t and instead wait at the tuition campus, Mummy said….”She doesn’t mean any of it, will come home herself as usual, you know it”.

Evening came, and as I stepped out of my tuition class I could see Papa from a distance. I was so overwhelmed that I ran towards him and climbed onto the back of the scooter and we sped off home. On the way, I narrated to Papa about the endless chemical equations and that one equation in particular which would never get balanced and the teacher found that the formula itself was wrong. Papa nodded all the way along and laughed at my not-so-funny teen jokes keeping both eyes on the road all the way.

Next I can remember is a staggering pain in my tummy as I lay on the roadside on a  stack of gravel and I lifted my eyes to see Papa’s shoes on the center of the road. I turned around and saw Papa walking towards me barefooted. The scooter lay on the road, and so were my school bag and Papa’s shoes. By then a mighty population had already crowded us as if to catch a glimpse of the item dance I was performing. Anyway we both were okay, Papa and me suffered minor bruises ( but to all my friends I somehow managed to sound like I survived a shark attack). The wound  on my leg was slightly big and it bled a lot as we took an autorickshaw to the hospital. 

We called Mummy from the hospital and tactfully lied to her, that we are getting late as we dropped in at Margin free market midway. If not for that call, the least she usually does is to inform the police and say that her husband and daughter are missing and create chaos of a kind in the neighborhood. But we cant blame her, as it runs in her family.
By the way, let me explain how we were thrown from that scooter.As we were "speeding" at around 40km/hr, suddenly a puppy appeared as if from nowhere and it crossed the road just in front of us. You know when something is that cute, it mostly doesn't have enough brains. I do not remember what happened to that puppy or my school bag. 

As we reached home, Mummy almost broke into a temporary coma seeing Papa with bandages on his arms and me limping in a bandage clad leg. Mummy regained her senses a few minutes later and shot a long array of questions without leaving breathing space. So we explained the incident in dramatized tones, nursing our bruises for added effect. That’s when Mummy, wiped her tears and turned to Papa. “I told you there is no need to pick her up; she may say many things, but will come home”

Papa asked, ‘How can you be so sure?”

Mummy got up briskly, and said ‘Its so obvious! 99.99 chances are that she will!”

Papa gave his signature smile, turned to her and replied in a low tone, “I couldn't risk that 0.01%”.