Under normal circumstances children come into their parent’s lives, but in our case, we both came into each other’s life about 12 years ago. If you begin to search, you will find many stories, movies, books that have been written about stepfathers and stepchildren, but standing here today, I can safely say our relationship does not fall under any of the stereotypes. A lot of that credit goes to you. I stood here this very day last year and spoke about Priya during her graduation and how much I had learnt from her. You Kanika have also enriched my life in ways you will probably never realize. Your demeanor, your maturity and the poise with which you handle yourself is something for you to be very proud of. I have said this before and I will say it again, if there is anyone in this house who knows how to best handle me, it’s you.
Those of you who know Shibani’s dad, he has always made fun of regular DNA testing of various members of the family to check the integrity of parenthood. Well, I can safely say that if they ever checked your DNA, they will never find my genes in your blood, but I don’t think for a moment that our relationship needed a medical validation. I feel that you are no less my child than Priya. You have an amazing way to uplift people around you. I will miss your smile, your humor, your positive attitude and our conversations. I will not however miss your messy room and the trunk of your car, which reminds me of vagrant bag ladies.
I don’t have much words of wisdom to give you other than this line that I read a while back in a book. “Remember, The person who you’re with most in life is yourself and if you don’t like yourself you’re always with somebody you don’t like”.
You are about to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. You can't get there by bus, only by hard work and risk and by not quite knowing what you're doing, but what you'll discover will be wonderful. What you'll discover will be yourself.
Good Luck and always remain happy.
