Daddy's Little Girl I could hear my dad grinding his teeth. Getting ready to shout at me for something I did not do. I pretend to ignore it. My dad had started to self-destruct a little while after my mother's death. I never understood why. It was not as if he had loved her, or respected her. They had gotten married as a business deal, like most marriages in India, a convenience, an unavoidable contract that had to be signed before a certain age had lapsed. But there my dad had been at the funeral; miserable, drunk and angry. So he had been for the days that followed. I was angry at the prospect of having to take care of this person who never saw love, who never felt love, but grieved at the loss of someone else's love. My mother had loved him; that had been her weakness. I remember the slaps that followed every time he ground his teeth. My mother had taken it, and stayed with him. Domestic abuse was not a term that was well echoed in society. Mental abuse was...