‘Have four boyfriends at a time’

On Father’s Day, Twinkle Khanna pens an emotional note remembering her father, the late superstar Rajesh Khanna

In the lengthy post, Twinkle has shared a lot of moments she spent with her father. From tasting alcohol with him to exchanging relationship advices, Twinkle spoke about many things that define their bond.

"Father's Day, for me, will always be in December. If my father hoped for a boy as his firstborn, I was never told. All I know is what he said to my mother: That I was the best present she could have ever given him as I entered the world, feet first, on his 31st birthday. He always called me Tina baba, never baby, and though I didn't realise it at that point, my upbringing was different from all the other young girls around me. The restrictions drawn around their adolescence did not define mine. The permanent marker, one that would later be passed onto their husbands, to enforce the circle of captivity did not exist in my case," Twinkle wrote on her website Tweak India.

"He was the one who gave me my first sip of alcohol, Scotch on the rocks in a glass too heavy for my hand. I was permitted to peer into the living room with its shaggy white carpet and its bejewelled people. The light from the chandelier was diffused by the smoke that enveloped the room like a diaphanous veil, then the epitome of liberated sophistication... When I started dating, we exchanged advice. He told me that he was looking for a partner who would lie down in his lap as they would read the same book together. I laughed, 'Dad, this is never going to happen. Your expectations are ridiculous. What if they read slower than you or want to take a break? Just find a decent woman who can tolerate your nonsense and that should be enough'," Twinkle wrote.

Wittily, she recalled how Khanna had once asked his daughter to have "four boyfriends at a time".

"Don't have one boyfriend,' he once said to me, "always have four at a time. That way your heart will never be broken. A suggestion that held me in good stead, though I never told him that the only man who had the power to break my heart was my father," she said.

Twinkle also explained the importance of a father's role in his daughter's life. "A daughter needs her father's presence in her life for many reasons. What she needs most is to know that she has someone to lean on, to depend upon, besides herself. My father may not have been standing by my side, holding my hand through every stage of life, but somewhere deep inside, I knew that I could count on him. When he looked at me, regardless of how angry he was, there was a singular reflection, one that never faltered -- his complete belief in me," she emphasised.

—IANS