I was sipping my cup of morning tea sitting in our balcony while glancing through the morning daily. 8 o’clock. Perfect luxury, it being a Saturday, my hubby out-of-station and our tiny little lion still in bed! There was news of rising inflation, up 7.82% and probably highest in over three years; prediction of about ten rupees hike in petrol prices in near future; a doctor dad suspected of murder of his own adolescent daughter and some infidelity in the background as per the news – which was the most shocking news of all. Naturally, out of curiosity I read through the whole story. How pathetically human lives are put to an end so easily without a second thought nowadays! What prompts an event to take such a turn? The more educated we’ve become, the more full of comforts our lives have become, the more civilized we start telling ourselves, it seems as if more intolerant, impatient, unkind and demonic we’ve become at the same time. 

The story to some extent did dampen my spirit with which I started the day. It kept hitting my conscious mind as I moved over to a happier news – girls outshining boys in the CBSE XII exams in our city. All the three streams science, commerce and humanities had a girl topping the batch and only in science was there a boy jointly topping with the girl. Smiling faces of the toppers adorned the pages of the daily. I was more amazed to note that the science topper has not appeared in any entrance exams till now and wants to take a break from studying hard for some time. Without being judgmental, I just feel that how matured today’s children (she may be seventeen or eighteen but I’d choose to call her a child) have become to think or act in that fashion in their lives. Without a very specific plan at hand an intelligent and bright child would not dare to decide so, and she must have convinced her parents too. Look at me – what a contrast! 

I remember, when I was in school my mom tried to instill an aim into my life – and that was to become a doctor. Any good student, especially a girl, had the options of aiming for either a lecturer in a college or a doctor or a teacher, in that order, in the middle class households like ours. There were other professions like practicing law or appearing for the civil services, of the state, but these two were somehow not encouraged to me. A girl was seldom encouraged for national civil services for that would limit her marriage prospects! Finding a groom of her stature and from the same caste would be a very very tough job for after all, however forward looking you claim to be, castes and gotras are always a bar in arranged marriages, even today. So my mom chose the aim of life for me – to become a doctor. And I honestly nurtured the idea and followed the aim. Whenever I was required to write an essay on my aim of life I would write a beautiful one about becoming a ‘doctor’. Teachers at my school were always impressed and encouraged me a lot. After my XIIth, however, my dad wanted me to do a major in English because he felt I am technically strong in the language and weak in maths and my biology grades didn’t come out that impressive; my most concerned maternal uncles wanted me to take up a combination of Economics, Political Science and Statistics / Maths because they thought that would fetch some great scores and would help me get a teaching job in a college. Four years later I successfully completed my ‘Engineering’ though! For by then, more girls were getting into the stream of study. And currently, I am at a job which is far from any of the above courses of study or professions discussed while I was young!! But very often I wish “I were a doctor” for I would have been so close to people then and could have served them first hand. Looking back, I think I was never determined enough about what to become when I grow up. Nor did anybody held up a clear picture in front of me with regard to sticking to the aim set in childhood and religiously chasing it until achieved. My mom too probably got confused by then who was my main source of encouragement all the while. And we all went with the flow. Taking a break of an year to relax for some time and then prepare for entrance to get into the chosen stream of education and institution was unheard of at that time. But it is worth doing, is what I feel now. This whole stream of thought came to my mind today after reading about the CBSE science topper’s say in the morning daily.

What would I do when my child would reach that stage of life when he would require to take one of the most important decisions of life? Well, that’s fourteen years away, and changes happen pretty fast nowadays, but still the thought knocked me today. First thing, I think I shall not nurture any dream or wish pertaining to what would become of my child when he grows up, apart from his growing up into a kind, loving, understanding and most importantly, an independent individual. He need not join a particular stream of study just because his peers have joined it or most of the good students do so. My toughest job would be to figure out in next twelve to fourteen years what he enjoys doing most. And then ask him if he can engage himself with that activity eight hours a day for twenty years without getting bored. If the answer is yes, he would be at liberty to follow it. If answer is no, then he repeats my life to some extent. Meaning, if I figure out that he loves chatting with his friends the most over anything else and answers ‘yes’ to my question I would encourage him to become a good RJ, VJ, interviewer and the likes and excel in the field. If he answers ‘no’ to my question, then I again give him a chance to make the second pick among the things he loves doing. If he comes up with an answer say ‘blogging’, I would ask him if he is really serious and can he do it eight hours a day for twenty years. If this time his answer is yes, I encourage him to do major in English, hone his writing skills, take up the necessary training and courses and become a full time writer instead of slogging to get into that engineering or medicine or biotechnology or economics course. There can be no greater bliss than getting to do professionally what one loves to do as a hobby.

As of now, I notice that he has no other interest than drawing, just ‘drawing’, no coloring interests like his peers and to some extent ‘cooking’! He keeps himself engaged with drawing upto two hours each day and loves it to such an extent that he has learnt to draw and paint even using the ‘Paint’ on the PC! The attached picture is a complete independent effort of my four-year old. Therefore, whereas me and my husband was till some time back dreaming of sending him to the likes of IISc, IIT, IIM, Stanford, Harvard, MIT etc., now we have suitably modified it to Shantiniketan and similar searches abroad are on.

My little one jumped into my lap and pulled away the newspaper I was reading sitting in my balcony.

“Mamma!”

“Yes baba!”

“How dare I not pay attention to you and continue reading the daily when you are awake and bouncing beside me, dear!”, I thought.

I kept aside the daily and followed his instructions to squat beside him and his complete kitchen set and help him with the cooking while he supervises teddy, bunny, bruno, kitty and others…