Or.

When I was a kid, my parents used to let me sleep in their bed for a few years until I was old enough to have my own room. I remember that I was asked, quite often, 'Do you like amma or daddy?' It was a silly question, one which I always answered with 'Both.' Even as a kid, I knew it was one of those ridiculous questions adults asked kids, like 'What do you want to be when you grow up?' But little did I know that it would be the theme which shaped my entire life.

My mother raised the three of us physically, but I like to think that we raised her emotionally and mentally. By protesting and simply talking things out with her, we taught her how to parent, how to live. Over the years, she went from being a doormat, a.k.a, an ideal Indian housewife to being a gradually freer spirit. She never taught herself enough to truly liberate her thinking, but what change came about was enough- my father and my mother fell out of sync.

He was a traditionalist, a man who proudly proclaimed that he would never change. He expected that his wife would remain the girl he married. Home became a place that went from being largely silent to a place where the silence was heavy with disappointment, anger and resentment.  My mother could not strike back at him with the hurtful, sharp tongue that he possessed, but she nagged and glared at him. Her most powerful weapon, as it turned out, was me.

My siblings, much elder, left home to pursue their studies. From the age of six, I was an only child. I don't remember much- just being afraid and painfully shy all the time. But around my twelfth year, my mother started whispering in my ear. The things my father said, and did, and oh, how unfair, unfair, but never ask him, never. That was when the rage started. Anger, always smothered because she was afraid he'd know she told me, built in me and became my defense mechanism. Reacting with anger and hiding it was the only thing I knew.

Over the years, as he tried harder to clamp down on her, she retaliated by telling me more. I was a miserable person because I loved my father but hated him, and I loved my mother but felt burdened. There was hardly any laughter in my life except when I was at school. In my twenties, I tried very hard to be more than what I was, and I knew that being my mother's champion was a terrible unfair role that I'd been pushed into. But she couldn't stop. And I couldn't abandon her. Even when I almost begged her to, she kept roping me in. I pushed her to fend for herself, but she was too used to cringing in the shadows. By that time, I was fighting with my father outright. He knew what was going on and he told my mother to leave me out. She pretended she had nothing to do with my attitude.

My father died when I was thirty three. The last few months of his life, we were barely talking. I hadn't called him 'daddy' in months. He died from liver cancer (the Hep-C virus), but I also know that he died because he had given up. He was living in a home that was a war zone and he felt that change was impossible- within him and without.

I won't be narcissistic and take all the blame for his death. It was largely him and his unwillingness to live and let live. But I knew better. There was a line and I was on the other side. I sat in his chair on the terrace on the eve of his death and sobbed 'daddy, daddy' over and over again because I hadn't said it enough. My heart broke again and again in the following months; I knew he hadn't confided in me about how sick he was because we were almost estranged. I relived every moment of the nightmare that was the last 15 days of his life.

There are no clear victims in life- was it my father , a rigid man with an abused childhood and unrelatable family, or my mother, a weak woman with a dominating husband and desire to be more than a role, or me, a child who was constantly put between two people she loved and asked to choose? 'Do you like amma or daddy?'

What have I learnt?

I think the most important thing I've learnt is that 'More than anything, who you are determines how you live'. It may sound simple, but it's a truth that is lived, yet not often realized.

Also. I've learnt to always fight my own battles. I've learnt to embrace peace far more than anger. I've learnt patience in thought, word and action. I've learnt that sometimes people shouldn't be helped because they don't really want help, or cannot be helped. I've learnt that children should never be deprived of their childhood. I've learnt that it takes years, decades to reprogram your life and some of the steps are very difficult. I've learnt that you cannot truly love someone unless you accept who they are. I've learnt that it's both easy and not to give up. I've learnt how to connect to a person instantly, and let go just as quickly. I've learnt that it's okay to make your own rules. I learnt that my choices impact my life in far-reaching, unimaginable ways. And I've learnt that the right answer to the question, do you like amma or daddy?' is 'Just leave me be so I can like myself.'