Most of all, I remember the little kaleidoscope ," she says. "When he lifted me to his lap and put it to my eye, I entered a wonderland." Farida Singh, the daughter of aviation legend Jehangir Engineer, adored her father. She was 16 when his plane, a civilian aircraft caught in India and Pakistan's 1965 war, was shot down by Qais Hussain. Farida is in her sixties today, a wife, mother and grandmother , strong, successful and vibrant . She treasures memories of her father, triggered by the smallest things. "I still have a fascination for the glitter of glass," she says, linking this to the enchanting kaleidoscope. "Even today, when I see anything that gleams beautifully, I think of him."
Growing up with her elder sister Shireen and younger brother Noshir, Farida's youth was shaped by the optimism of modern India. She enjoyed great happiness with her family through the 1950s. She remembers outings on Juhu Beach, where her father would take his children into the sea on his back. "If we quarrelled about whose turn it was, he would take us all," she says. Her father was a champion swimmer, she adds; otherwise her mother, a delicate five feet against her father's strapping six, but much more the disciplinarian than the indulgent Jehangir, would have stepped in. Afternoons on the beach ended with coconut water, warm spicy chana and bright balloons.
21/08/11 Srijana Mitra Das/Times of India
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