My father loved me very much, but he always acted strangely, he forced me to have long hair, wear skirts at home, called me “my beloved daughter” while I was his only son
The night rain was drizzling, the wind blew through the mango trees at the village entrance, rustling as if someone was crying. I lay listening, my eyes wide open in the small room with only one window overlooking the Ganges River in the distance. I have lived in this house for eleven years, since the age of seven when a strange man took me from the Varanasi orphanage and said, “From now on, you will call me Pitā

His name was Vikram, forty-two when he adopted me, now in his fifties, with half his hair grey, his back bent from bending over a wood carving table all day. He loved me in a way that would seem strange to outsiders: he never let me cut my hair short, he never let me wear kurta-pyjamas at home, he only let me wear lehenga or ghagra. Floral bandhani dresses, thin georgette dresses, silk dresses that flared like princesses, which he bought from the old market in the city. “Meri beti must be beautiful,” he said, his eyes sparkling as if looking at a diamond he had just picked up.

I was afraid of upsetting him, so I obeyed. At the village school, I wore the boys’ uniform, my long hair tied in a low ponytail, my friends called me “Arjun with long hair”. At home, I took off my shirt mi, wearing lehenga, letting down hair, letting him comb, letting him call “Priya, where is my daughter?”. I thought it was a lonely adult’s game. I loved him, so I played along.

Until the night of my eighteenth birthday.

That day he made the most sumptuous dinner: butter chicken, hilsa fish baked in banana leaves, dal mahkani soup, and a tiny cake with eighteen candles. He wore an old white kurta, a red scarf, looking ten years younger. He poured lassi mixed with traditional bhang into two copper cups, pushing one toward me.

“You’re grown up. Have a cup with me to celebrate your coming of age.”

I drank. It was rich and spicy at the same time, burning my throat. He looked at me for a long time, his eyes red.

“I have something to tell you. Something I’ve been hiding for eleven years.”

I smiled awkwardly: “Are you saying I’m as pretty as a princess again? You’re grown up, Dad.”

He shook his head, his voice so low I’d never heard it before.

“No. I’m going to tell you a story about…someone pouring lead into the box.” He took a small sandalwood box from a drawer and unlocked it with a key around his neck. Inside was a yellowed ultrasound photo, a silver necklace with a tiny Om pendant, and a tiny, never-worn baby white muslin lehenga.

“When my Priya was seven months old in my mother’s womb, Vaidya said she was a girl. I was so happy I went crazy. I named her Priya, made dresses, bought a crib, even bought a pair of gold-embroidered juttis. Then one afternoon your mother had a tuk-tuk accident on the way back to her mother’s house in Goa. She died on the spot. My Priya… died with her. Seven months, and Vaidya said her lungs turned purple before she could breathe.”

He paused, his hand trembling as he stroked the ultrasound photo like the face of a sleeping child.

“Dad carried the body of his little daughter home without even a name. The cradle was empty. The white dress was left in the closet. Dad lived like a dead person for seven years, only knowing how to chisel wood, carving Kathputli dolls that looked more and more like his daughter… until the day he saw you in the orphanage. You were seven years old, with long hair, a round face, big eyes. Eight parts like my Priya. Dad trembled, he thought: God, give me another Priya.”

I felt a chill down my spine. In the eleven years I lived in this house, I had never heard him mention his wife, or his dead child. I only knew he was a widower, childless, and lonely.

He looked straight into my eyes, tears rolling down his wrinkled cheeks.

“Dad was selfish. He wanted to keep you, so he adopted you. He let your hair grow long, made you wear dresses, called you his daughter, because every time you wore lehenga, he saw his Priya come alive a little bit. He knew you were a boy, but he deliberately fooled the whole world, fooled you too, to call you a princess once more. He was crazy, Arjun…”

He collapsed to the floor, his head between my hands.

“Dad was wrong. He robbed me of eleven years of being a real son. He forced me to live in a glass cage that he himself built to comfort his heart. I am not worthy of being Pitā…”

I was stunned. Not because of anger, but because of heartbreaking love. I hugged him, feeling his thin shoulders tremble in my arms. The man who had spent his whole life carving wooden dolls and making worshiping objects for the villagers, but had never built a complete home for himself.

I cried. It was the first time I cried in front of him.

“Dad, don’t kneel. I don’t blame you. I just… don’t know what to do with the eleven years I’ve lived as a fake Priya.”

He looked up, his eyes red but brighter this time.

“Then from tomorrow, cut your hair. Buy a kurta to wear. Invite your friends to come over and play kabaddi in the yard. I’ll call you Arjun, not Priya anymore. I’ll learn to call you my son. As long as you let me call you Pitā, and come back to this house to sleep in the same bed with me when it rains, I’ll be satisfied.”

I nodded, tears falling on the back of his hand, hot.

The months that followed were the most magical and the most difficult of my life.

I cut my hair. For the first time in eleven years, I felt the back of my neck. The feeling of the wind on my bare skin was both scary and exhilarating. I bought jeans, a T-shirt, kolhapuri shoes. I stood in front of the mirror, looking at an awkward eighteen-year-old Arjun, his shoulders a little round from not exercising for a long time, his skin white from not being in the sun much, but it was Arjun – not Priya.

He looked at me, not used to it at first, his eyes often wandering as if searching for an old figure. Once I heard him call me “Priya” in his sleep, then suddenly woke up, mumbling “Arjun… Arjun, sorry.” But he tried. He learned to pat my shoulder instead of stroking my hair. Learned to say “mera beta” instead of “meri beti”. He cleaned out the old lehengas, keeping only a tiny white dress in a wooden box, locked it, and put it on top of a high cupboard, saying, “Priya’s is mine. And you are Arjun, my son now.”

One afternoon, he quietly carved the last Kathputli doll. Not a doll in a dress. It was a short-haired boy in a T-shirt, holding a tiny cricket ball. He painted a pair of juttis bright red for “Arjun.” He placed it on the shelf, next to the old princess dolls, and smiled gently: “Finally, I have a poor family chhora.”

On my nineteenth birthday, he collapsed in the carving workshop. I found him lying in a pile of sandalwood shavings, still holding the wooden doll of me, his mouth moving, “Arjun… Arjun beta…”

I hugged him, called an ambulance. He woke up after three days in a coma. The doctor said he would be paralyzed on one side, have difficulty speaking, and live a few more years if I took good care of him.

I took a year off from college and stayed home to take care of him. I carried him out to bask in the sun every morning, spoon-fed him khichdi, and at night, put a charpai beside his bed like he used to put me to sleep when I was little.

One rainy night, he held my hand and whispered, “Do you… hate me?”

I shook my head, tears falling onto his hand.

“I just hate that I didn’t have time to say it sooner: I love you so much, Dad. Whether you used to call me beti or beta, I’m still your child.”

He smiled, a smile as pure as a child’s.

“Dad… santusht.”

The next morning, he passed away in his sleep, his hand still holding mine, his mouth still moving slightly: “Arjun… mera beta…”

I arranged for a simple Hindu funeral for him. The villagers came in large numbers, everyone said: “Mr. Vikram achcha aadmi, you raised an orphan to be a man, you love me so much.”

In the afternoon, when I saw him off to the shamshaan, I wore a white kurta, jeans, and my short hair was wet from the rain. On the pyre, before lighting the fire, I placed two things: the wooden doll of “Arjun” he carved before he died, and a light pink silk odhani – the only remaining piece of lehenga I used to wear to make him happy.

His ashes were scattered in the sacred Ganges River. I whispered to the water:
“Pitā, I will live a good life. I will be Arjun, your son. As for Priya, I will leave her with you so that you will not be lonely there, and can hold your daughter like you used to dream of.”

The wind blew, and the mango trees rustled again.

I think he heard me, because as I turned to leave, I saw a ray of surya peeking out from behind the grey clouds in the Varanasi sky.

My Arjun is leaving, Pitā. Come home.