The Last Frontier

TWO GENERATIONS OF MEN PROVE THEMSELVES IN THE KITCHEN

- Anisha Rachel Oommen

My father raised two daughters. He dressed us in bermudas, kept our hair short and sent us to a co-ed school so we wouldn’t be silly girls who were tongue-tied around boys, or worse, afraid of them. In the first grade, he told my little sister to defend herself against the boy who was bullying her in class, when the teacher refused to pay attention. “If anybody hits you, hit them back twice,” he instructed her. (He was sent a note to meet the school coordinator the following week.)

A few years later, he lost his temper at a teacher who complained that one of his daughters wasn’t as academic as the other. “Don’t compare them,” he said through gritted teeth, and encouraged us both along, reassuring us we’d find our own paths, or make a way where there was none. Other times, he encouraged behaviour that could be labelled anti-authoritarian, planting seeds of progressive thought insidiously, and watched the mischief unfold. A boy would complain that a little girl beat him up. A teacher would be confounded at questions on inclusion and morality. Sometimes I look back and wonder if he did it for the laughs.