COMMENT | Abandoned by her convert father

COMMENT | In a recent playwriting workshop I conducted, I met Priya (not her real name), a 35-year-old teacher. While assisting Priya to brainstorm the subject matter for her monologue piece, I discovered her past and with her permission, I am sharing her story here.

As a young child, Priya used to tell her primary school teachers that her father was a doctor. She did this for several years after finding out that it was the best answer which would make her teachers stop asking why her father was always absent in every parent-teacher meetings and special occasions at school.

The truth is, Priya’s father was not a doctor. In fact, she did not know who her father was until she became much older.

Ever since Priya was born, she only knew her mother and her older siblings. As the youngest child, she was raised by a mother who juggled between many jobs to make ends meet, and cared for by her three elder brothers. No one spoke about her father at home.

Growing up, she knew there was something odd about her family, especially when teachers at her school kept asking about her ‘missing’ father. All the questions about what’s her father’s name, what he does, where is his workplace, what is his race and religion, what’s his contact number - it used to stress her out.

That’s when she started becoming creative to make the questions stop. In the beginning, she told everyone at school that she did not have a father. That only raised everyone’s eyebrows. So later on, she changed her story and told them that he had passed away - and everyone became interested to know how it had happened.

At one point, Priya decided that her father was a very busy businessman. It worked for a while until people started asking what he was selling...