Unknown Uncle

              It was a bright Saturday afternoon, and my dad returned home after work. As usual, I was the one to open the door and get his bag. Along with his work bag was a plastic cover, which had 2 books in it. He saw me staring at the cover and said, “Those are for you”. Now, my dad isn’t the kind to bring home books for me. So naturally I was quite surprised. I quickly checked what the books were. One was a medium sized science quiz book and the other was a 200-page vocabulary builder. Okay, this was getting even more confusing. My father, who has no idea what kind of books I need, was bringing me an excellent quiz book and a wonderful language reference book?

             Looks like my expression gave it away, but before I could ask, dad answered the question. “Hey, don’t be so surprised. I’m not the one who bought this. A colleague of mine gave it to me as a present for you.” Wow! Now that was amazing.

“Was it Sudha aunty? Or Rajesh uncle? He bought me a pendant when he went to Hyderabad last time,” I said.

“No, actually Sashi Sir, our division manager gave these.”

Sashi sir? The name did not ring a bell at all. I was confused again.

“Sashi ..Um.. Well dad, I don’t remember who he is.”

Dad laughed. “No wonder there. You haven’t seen him. He’s one of the oldest of our managers. A very respectable man. I used to talk to him about you, tell him how much you enjoyed quizzing and reading and all. So today he just gave me this cover and said it was a present for you.” 

I was totally caught by surprise. This guy hadn’t even seen me once and he had sent me brand new books because he knew I loved reading and quizzing? I felt some kind of emotion that I could not express. I opened the quiz book. On the first page, there was something written in a curly handwriting, in pink glitter ink.

‘To my daughter Malavika…With love, U.U’

I was completely touched. He had called me his daughter. But, u.u?

“Dad what is this U.U”?

“Oh yeah! U.U...Forgot about that. He did tell me he had written the initials U.U inside. It stands for ‘Unknown Uncle’ ”

Yes, indeed I did not know him. And he was aware of that. But still he wanted to show how much he cared for me, an unknown girl. In my stack of books, these would forever remain precious to me, not because of their content, but because of the amount of love and consideration an unknown man had showed to me. With a full heart, I thank you Unknown Uncle!