Vincent Dip Gomes

The mild stroke of having to buy her the coolest phone that her best friend’s boyfriend had recently bought featuring three cameras on its back was yet to wear off my old chest, when I woke up on March 6, 2020, and even before I could put the paste on my red toothbrush, the sound waves of her feet banging the floor came running towards me and her arms gave me a hasty, tight hug from my back and through her smudged, red lips I got the invitation to have lunch with her at the coolest open-terrace restaurant in Dhaka city. Either out of affection or fear, I had almost forgotten the craft of saying no to her. It is still the hardest nut to crack for me.

It reminds me of an incident when she was only ten and demanded a digital camera as a present for her birthday. My salary did not allow me to buy it for her. Instead, I gave her a marvelous bouquet of red roses that she threw in one of our filthiest looking trash-cans within a few seconds after snatching it from my wrinkled hands. Throughout that day, she was so upset that she locked herself in her room upstairs, where there was an attached bathroom and a water filter right on top of her desk capable of containing at least three gallons of water that I use to refill every day in case she feels thirsty. She did not even show up for dinner that night and that was the longest dinner of my life. Each moment of taking a bite of the meal felt like an eternity as I did not have to pay attention to each letter of my daughter’s jabbering about the new Tok-tok videos in trend. For the following three days, in the middle of the nights, I think I heard footsteps of a rat walking down the stairs from her room, going to the kitchen, and rushing back towards her room. In the following mornings, I used to find some food to have gotten mysteriously missing from the refrigerator. I still wonder how muscular the rat had to be!

Lunchtime was nearing fast and while looking for my car keys, I saw my princess coming down the stairs wearing the red gown that her mother used to wear on special occasions. It was only then when I realized that she not only inherited her mother’s attire collections, but also her glamour. I wore my red suit, as usual, the only suit her mother ever gifted me, and witnessed my little princes jumping in excitement for the reason I was still happily unaware of. She insisted on driving the car, which started to make me feel terribly uncomfortable, but with a bright smile, I handed over my all-time favorite keys to her tender hands. Her nails, being polished with glossy red paint, instilled hope in me, however.

The streets were surprisingly clearer than usual, and thanks to my daughter’s expertise in driving, we reached the over-hyped restaurant within a few minutes. As soon as we got off the car, I noticed an unbelievably perfect-looking young stud with long, curly hair, wearing a black suit, white shirt with a blue tie, smoking an expensive cigarette. His cool gesture of tapping the ash of the cigarette, some of which vanished in thin air and some of its bits fell on the recently paved street in front of the restaurant, made it too hard for me to soothe the sudden ignition of temptation in my heart to bum a smoke just for once since I quitted it, thirty years ago, in the humble request of her mother, who used to turn bright red and angry at this habit of mine. Indeed, he was the guy whom my daughter eagerly wanted to acquaint me with, and even before we could have as eat in one of the pre-booked tables by my daughter, she uttered, “Dad, meet Jeff,” followed by the three magical words, “I love him.” I still wonder whether “I will marry him” was implied or not.

I wasn’t really shocked at my daughter’s behavior. After nurturing a daughter for over twenty years, nothing surprised me anymore. I offered the gorgeous stud a beautiful, red rose as a memoir rather than a present. At this, my daughter looked so ferociously at me and the guy at my daughter as if I had rejected their proposal and called the police. I immediately made a gesture of being embarrassed for not bringing a bit more expensive memoir as it was my very first meeting with the stud. Of course, I had anticipated that I will be meeting someone really special to my daughter!

Throughout our lunch together, I explained at least twenty times to him about the magnanimity of love and care I have for red roses, which I even cultivate in the backyard garden at my house. Each time when he heard me, he scrutinized the rose with affection and gently hovered his hands over the two dark green leaves hanging on both sides of the flower without even noticing the beauty and redness of the flower itself, just like a snake pays respect to beautiful, clean green grass when it stealthily crawls through the endless fields being unnoticed, non-violent and unimaginably silent, waiting for its prey. We had a sumptuous lunch and the boy did not even let me have a look at the bill. It is to mention that the tip he left was even less than I would have laid down. “He might be exceptionally stingy or economic,” I kept on saying to myself.

Right before our departure, I asked him about his family and his home address. I wondered at the crisp and hasty manner in which he described everything to me and sensed a bit of secrecy in his words. We shook hands, he gave my daughter an adhesive goodbye kiss in front of me and ran away in his Audi, as if he had other meetings to attend on a sleepy, sunny Friday. I am still confused whether he had any plans or not that day for he had turned his cell phone off right before we entered the restaurant.

Four days later, I was driving back to my home and preparing myself to face some unfiltered verbal abuse from my daughter as I texted her, “I cannot let you marry Jeff”. She was standing right at the front door of our house; the beast was waiting for the aged beauty to arrive. She was well aware of the sudden visit that I had paid to Jeff’s house in the morning of that very day. I barely stepped out of my car when she, standing at our doorstep, started yelling at a tone, which was enough for even scaring the stray dogs in the cities that come out to bite at night, and she censured me saying, “I know why you don’t concur to our proposal! You are jealous of his lavish possessions and lifestyle that you can never offer me. Tell me, what’s the problem with him? Can’t you see me smiling at least for a day while I am still breathing? Answer me!”

Honestly, I was not amazed at her reaction and smiled at her with a forgiving nature. Closing my car’s door, I gradually walked towards her, gave her a firm hug, and ignoring all the hatred that was flaming in her eyes for me, I whispered in her ears: “Everything is perfect with him sweetheart, but I saw the red rose was dead, waiting for its eternal habitat in one of his luxurious trash-cans”.