Welcome Home, Daddy!

The little girl of seven sat perched on the table by the window of her room on the top floor of her
house her glaze was set outside the wood framed glass window, chin resting on palms and elbows
bent in wait. It had been three days since she had heard her mother speak on the phone to a person,
who apparently was giving the mother news of her husband’s return home soon. Three months
since the little girl last received a letter addressed to her from her father. Three hundred days since

she had last touched her father and kissed him goodbye, a slight peck on the cheek and a not-so-
slight hug at the waist of the man who so adored his dear little princess.
She had just eavesdropped on bits and pieces of that conversion between her mother and that
person again this morning. She didn’t remember or understand much of what was being said, except
the fact that daddy was coming home! She couldn’t wait to open the door before he could ring the
doorbell and go running into his arms while he would pick her up and kiss her all her could, as if it

would be the last time he would get to see his little princess. She couldn’t wait to tell him of how all

those school kids troubled and bullied her, and how she could scare them off bravely by telling them

how her daddy would take out his huge gun and then punish them for picking on his little princess.
And above all …
She just couldn’t wait to see him again, to hug him again.
She could understand it; oh yes, she had learnt enough in school to understand the words her
mother told her, “Daddy is coming home.” But then her mother put off the gas, switched off the
lights in the kitchen and went to her room, closing the door behind her. And that this poor dear
could not understand.
But where is the need to understand any of these things, she thought. All of that can wait till her
daddy comes. And so now, the little princess sat waiting by the window, looking out over the stone
path that lined their garden.
And then, an army jeep arrived and stopped in front of their house. And even before the engine
could completely shut down, the princess ran towards the door to welcome her daddy, a bright
smile lighting up an even brighter face.
If only she had waited by her window for a few more seconds, she would have known that the man
coming out of the jeep was not her daddy.
If only she had waited for one more minute, she would have known that her daddy was coming out
of the van following the jeep right behind, his body neatly encased in a coffin.
If only she had waited for a while more, she would not have gone rushing to the door with that
thousand volt smile on her face, only to greet her dead father’s body in the coffin with a very
cheerful, “Welcome home, Daddy!”