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I felt my father's presence with me, helping me to commit to paper the feelings I had. I really heard my father speaking to me from the other dimension.

For 20 years, my mother, my sister and I had seldom spoken of my father. If he happened to come up in conversation, pain and embarrassment entered the room and stayed until he disappeared back into the silence with which we all felt more at ease.

I told Mother of my decision to study medicine. She encouraged me to speak to Father... I began in a roundabout way... He listened, looking at me with that serious and penetrating gaze of his that caused me such trepidation, and asked whether I knew what I wanted to do.

When my father spoke, it was to say something meaningful.

As a little girl I used to daydream about my real father coming on a white horse to rescue me.

When my father would yell at me, I told myself someday I'd use it in a book.

I have a feeling of reverence about my father being in his 80s - a feeling that I want to whisper, take soft steps, not intrude too much. He's like a stately old cathedral to me now.

My last conversation with my father was an argument we'd had. When I came to know of his hospitalisation, I'd lost him within seven hours. I still regret the last conversation with him.

My father leaving the family shaped who I was and how I looked at the world. By the same token, my father telling me fairy tales that he had made up shaped me profoundly, too.