On Fathers Day, we pay tribute to South Asian men for painstakingly fulfilling their fatherly duties. Since Politweak provides roadmaps to wellbeing, let’s focus on eliminating the suffering of those who enjoy none of the benefits of paternity while having fathers. As traditional safeguards recede, there is a role for governments in re-enforcing the vital biological contract between fathers and children in the growing minority of cases of neglect. The personal is political, because it is in the private sphere for fear of stigmatisation that children of deadbeat fathers are ascribed eroded rights, which often translate into quantifiably bad developmental outcomes. We lack authoritative statistics for single parent households in South Asia, almost as if fatherlessness doesn’t count, despite research demonstrating it does. Governments must pay attention as children without fathers are five times likelier to be poor, twice as likely to be addicts and convicts. Fatherlessness creates inter-generational handicaps. 71 percent of pregnant teenagers grew up without fathers only to translate “father hunger” into unhealthy emotional dependency on the opposite sex. Emotional costs accompanying the insecurity and diminished sense of self from not having hands-on fathers increase likelihood of anxiety and depression, accounting for 63 percent of youth suicides. We may not recognise when to intervene as pain is hidden behind swaggering personalities. Father deficits do not always carry forward into dismal indicators. Our world is replete with products of strong single mothers who beat the odds despite acutely feeling their fathers’ absence like President Barack Obama, Norah Jones and this writer. We are exceptions, not the rule. We must come forward to help legislators to comprehend the multiple manifestations of our personal hells to help others emerge as strongly we have, albeit with support. My story is atypical as I’ve had to cope with arguably the worst kind of absent father, albeit in privileged circumstances. During my parents’ 13-year committed relationship, my father thrice refused to be my father. The third time I was conceived, my mother chose me over him and didn’t look back after my father passed up the opportunity to be a part of my life. As a voluntary, single-minded single parent, my mother became both a taboo breaker and trendsetter in Air India, the company where my parents first met. The airline fraternity rallied around her, and she inspired many women to have their babies; as well-paid professionals they did not have to depend on longstanding relationships gone awry to be mothers. It was her magnanimity that enabled my father and my stepmother, Alka Thangkhiew, who he married a year after I was born, to escape social ostracisation for their pretence that I didn’t exist. My mother never sought his support as she felt it below her dignity to ever allow him to reject me again. My mother Charmaine Ferns, as a founder member and general secretary of the AIHA — subcontinent’s first union for airhostesses — had bigger fish to fry. Over her 36-year career, the AIHA won gender equality in retirement age, promotion and payment in the Supreme Court. To think that when I was born she risked being sacked for not being married to my father! At home, mother’s five brothers vied for the position of dad. I called them Dada so my infant mind and vocabulary should never miss having a father. “Bhagwan Ram Advani” was only a name on my birth certificate until I was informed at 10. I remember quizzing my paternal uncle Prem as a child which father he meant when he told me I was a copy of mine. I seldom felt unacknowledged, as my life was full of people my parents once shared. Father’s grandmother made me my first smock even as his aunt welcomed me into the world with the Sindhi tradition of putting sugar in my mouth. This, coupled with my Nana Celine’s doting care, rendered my Dadi Radhi redundant for orchestrating the separation. André Khanna, daddy’s best friend’s wife, insisted on being my godmother. My middle name Mistral alludes to the first ever windsurfer brought into the country by my parents, even as father refused to sign all my passports, which moved officials to write “Non Applicable” where his name should have been. My mother singlehandedly sent me to an international boarding school, and universities of Warwick and Durham. Laws must ensure fathers are equally financially responsible, retroactively if necessary, irrespective of mothers’ means. I became friends with Bugsie at 13 on a NYC flight we planned together. For five years, it was refreshing to talk to Daddy at 5pm most days, the special time we both stole away to connect, even if much of it was to advise him on how to raise my first half-sister Devika, whose punishments I fiercely advocated against, and academic choices diligently deliberated, despite our father insisting she was too young to know of me. She is two years younger than me. At 13 I wrote For My Sire: Here’s to the father I’ve never known/The one I could hardly ever call my own/The person who readily disowned me/even before from the womb I was free/I hold against you no grudge, / Though from your indifference you do not budge/Though you fathered all but me/Will leave to all but me a legacy/Although you are absent in happiness and sorrow/And undoubtedly distant even tomorrow/I will always love and be there for you/Despite you putting me in an emotional stew/So here I end, my dear Sire/The one I know not and still admire/I hope against hope you will accept your First Born/And sew up the heart you have knowingly torn. When father cited my siblings to miss my high school graduation, which I compered and was honoured by the Tibetan refugee community as a young freedom fighter, I decided it was unfair he kept me secret. I asked him to do the right thing by all three of his daughters by allowing us to bond. Daddy dredged up every tired excuse: age, fear his marriage would fail, even a weak heart, but I was determined to be treated the way I deserved. I calmly informed him I’d wait for him to introduce us until after our exams, after which I’d do it myself with sensitivity, compassion and maturity. Father took a back seat and even lied, turning what was a wary but positive interaction between teenagers into a painful slugfest. I’m not a victim. Life over-compensates me with father figures like Ambassador Hussain Haqqani and Prime Minister Jigmi Thinley, whom I celebrate today. Governments as overseers of marriage contracts must ensure that because of hostile stepmothers children of previous relationships aren’t prevented from contacting their fathers or not disinherited. Onus should be on fathers to disprove paternity instead of offspring needing to approach glacial, under-sensitised courts. It is not solely resources that matter, it is the principle that reciprocity must exist between parents and children, regardless of decisions made between partners. In patrilineal South Asia having a dutiful dad is what it takes to be considered a full citizen. Legal and economic costs to be an absent father must be increased, especially in the Maldives that has the world’s highest divorce rate. In Nepal and Bhutan fatherlessness means ineligibility for citizenship. Laws seem overly concerned with the relationship between biological parents and the circumstances around conception instead of guaranteeing children’s access to inalienable rights. We move from personal to political hoping everyone in danger of becoming an absent father or suffering for want of one may find themselves someday at the door of specially constituted Centres for Defence against Deadbeat Dads (C3D). C3Ds as dedicated quangos could overcome obstacles to recourse faced by those who could benefit from their fathers’ psychological and economic support via multidimensional and tailor-made solutions. By providing awareness, paternity tests, mediation, counselling, childcare, safe spaces for children to interact with unwilling fathers and legal aid, these centres could better absorb public grants and donations earmarked to guarantee children’s rights and to keep parents and children together despite changing family structures. The writer is a politics and governance professional, integrated media strategist and Gross National Happiness researcher. Her column Politweak reimagines paths to peace in South Asia. She can ber reached on Twitter @LatoyaFerns