Notes to Anushka

My dear little one

I want to maintain with you a log about you - your bringing up, your childhood, the incidents and events, the thoughts and feelings - and the various stages of your growing up

Your father, that is me, is not very good at maintaining this sort of habit (of writing regular logs), or forming ANY habit. So please take it as part of my nature, if my letters (such as this) to you is infrequent. Perhaps writing these would help me to learn how to form a habit

It's been 20 months already since you were born. When you were born you were a tiniest little human I ever held in my trembling hands. And all you were good for was to drink milk, poop, cry (a very sweet sound it was) and sleep. And you were totally clueless of anything in this world and all you ever understood is our (your parents') soothing touch, your mom's singing, and my cradling. Certainly, love has no barriers

As a first-time father my first few months with you has been the most memorable, even though at 20 months too you are very tough competition :-)

I have you to thank, for getting over my nervousness with little ones. And as we go on, I hope I overcome my shyness with people of all ages, and finally coming to a more thorough understanding of what a human is like

A lot of what I say might not make sense to you. But don't let that worry you. There is a purpose of writing to you all manner of things. I want these notes to be timeless. You can come back to it at any point of life and find something new in it that you haven't understood before. In fact, at each point of your life you may have a different meaning for what I say here. This will only make your life more interesting, and I hope it will help you hone the depth of your thinking

I will conclude this letter here. The purpose of this letter is just an introduction - like a preface to a book. I am hoping you will form a habit of reading. Reading books is good, because it helps you maintain concentration, gives you an imaginative mind and makes you more intelligent. Being knowledgeable is just a by-product, but nevertheless a good-to-have!

Your daddy