PARVARISH- The subjective perspective….

It’s no longer about the life cycle designed for us by the Supreme which begins with birth and ends with the inevitable death. It’s about the journey between these two stark realities of life. It’s about playing those different roles during our lifetime, those relationships that bind lives, those inputs that we give in to mould our relationships and it’s about the final shape that we see in the form of outputs. I know Parvarish is subjective. This piece is an attempt to give voice to a child’s perspective, keeping in mind that she too will be a parent one day.

We, as children are bound to behave the way we’ve been taught. Everything is a result of that parental input which then shows colors as the child grows. Genes give parental features, some physical, some intellectual and some psychological. Upbringing gives quality to life. As parents you have the complete right to control your child’s life but if that control becomes a cage for her, the PURPOSE OF PARVARISH is not served. With every birthday of your child if only with so many gifts, blessings and wishes, you too could grow with your child, then I believe “NO GENERATION GAP” has the power to bring loopholes in a parent-child’s relationship. This girl is brought up in a bed of roses; she is the apple of her parents’ eye. Not that she comes from a stinking rich family, but yes she belongs to the professional fraternity. Nowhere in her growth period she felt clueless, helpless and without that support which was always there all this while until once she crossed her teens. Yes the teenage, which calls for a lot of changes, mental, physical and emotional.

Her grievances revolve around issues regarding this age factor and the upbringing required to support it. Children themselves are in the process to figure out their adolescence and adjust to the changes that they see and feel for themselves. Some find it new, for some it’s exciting, some know it from science textbooks while some don’t know how to react. At such times they would opt to share and consult friends, because they know they share common issues. If only once, either the mother or father would come forward to assure the same friendship which their child had to go out and search in somebody else, 8 in 10 children would prefer sharing their secrets with their parents first. A child wouldn’t go under somebody’s wings, unless he feels insecurity and uncertainty in his/her blood relations. It’s a very painful phase where you chose to hide and lie to those holding paramount importance in your lives. Children crave to find friends in their parents. There are specific stages of growth where children are bound to stumble. They don’t know how to react to the changes in and around them. When they choose to react in a particular way, they wonder whether they should let their parents know about it, what if they would be thrashed.  I want to be specific here. Here I go…

Girls and Boys grow in their teens. This is evident. It’s pure science which the parents have studied in their biology classes when they were kids, and today their own children also do. Thanks to the education system today, it at least assures them that they aren’t abnormal when they get attracted to an opposite gender in their 13teen or 15teen!!! These signs of adolescence unfortunately are either ignored by some parents or left unaccepted by others. It’s difficult for children to initiate and discuss about what’s going in their lives at such times. Some come from families where you won’t find traces of such issues for years to come, while some families have pre-established norms to keep nil acquaintances with friends of the opposite gender. What kind of an upbringing is this, where your child is caged in the name of protection? You can’t deny your child’s right to see the world, if you can’t hold his/her hand when you are morally required by her. You can’t expect to know what’s going on in your child’s life, years after that very right time, when you had to take a step towards him/her as a friend. It requires an understanding and an acceptance from your end that your methods may not be 100% perfect at all times. There is scope for constant improvement with changing time and generation. You can’t say that “During our times we never used to raise our voice against our parents, how dare you?” You send your child to co-education schools and then restrict her from talking to guys, draw unnecessary boundaries for her to cure your own insecurity about your own child? When the time and age demands you to befriend your child, you become a detective and keep an eye on his /her contacts and call history. Communication cures misunderstanding. Where there is faith, there is no fear. Insecurity takes birth due to lack of trust in every relation.

If only once, had the girl’s mother approached her like a friend, to tell her that infatuation is a human phenomenon and there’s nothing embarrassing about it, she wouldn’t have kept a single development in her life to herself. Science says that infatuation is good, it confirms your gender! Just an initiative would make a difference! The first time she liked a guy in her class, she shared it with her best friend. She was lucky enough to know the difference between infatuation and love. Infatuation, she was experiencing and love, she knew it from her parents. She knew love had an eternal life. This was remarkable and the first output of her parents’ upbringing. Unfortunately it went unnoticed. Further she grew and happened to get influenced by the character portrayal and performance of a television child actor. Little did she know that her adulation for that character would turn into attraction and inspiration from him would lead to an infatuation for him!!! She was mesmerized by his performance and tantalized by his charm. She channelized her admiration through writings and poems for him. She knew, she is just a fan amongst hundreds of others, but she believed, her feelings differed from them. She decided that this character will be the reason for every good change in her life. That was her dedication. She not only realized her feelings but also saw the reality, the reality that she was dedicating everything to someone for whom she was nothing. The more she involved herself with him, the more painful it became to live in reality. The sadder part of all this was, she didn’t have anyone by her, to tell her that “its okay beta, all this happens!”

In the process to preach this character’s goodness amongst friends, relatives and teachers, she proudly declared him as her only prince charming. She raised a voice against contradictory views and opinions about him from people and spoke for him like a Congress Party leader’s speech. People would either give up, thinking that her passion is incurable or her obsession is dangerous. Her friends knew that she mistook her self-created bond with  that character, as love, but they also knew that its helping her fight her problems and giving her that happiness which she wouldn’t get otherwise. They knew she had created her own world; she lived in it not ignoring the reality, and was happy with this phase of her life. So they didn’t stop her.

Her aunt once came up and told her, “I’ve been seeing you since 1.5years. Dedication is good. Just make sure this passion doesn’t become obsession. It won’t allow you to welcome true love, if it comes your way.” It was an eye opener for her. But she had faith in her feelings, be it for anybody. She was happy; at least someone chose to see her passion.

She knew her feelings were one-sided but she maintained them for as long as she could. She battled with reality along with acknowledging her feelings, single handedly. In this journey, she met somebody who happened to be a medium to connect with her with her Prince charming. She befriended him, not as someone who would help her get close to her long time crush, but as a well wisher with whom she could share the day’s routine, night preparations for board prelims, delicacies enticing taste buds, and some common items in the not-so favorite list. All she could do was simply watch her life take transitions. She got a friend who showed her the reality behind the scenes. He made every attempt to give her the worth of her dedication. She began seeing the moon with the binoculars, it magnified the reality, she saw that the dark spots were huge craters and the moon is magnificent only when seen from a distance. Fighting with reality was easy; after all she saw it closely!!!

The friend brought that girl, not only closer to life’s reality but also closer to a bigger reality called THE ALMIGHTY. He taught her the art of giving, the power of faith, and the might of prayers. She got along with him because she had a pure heart just of the kind that was a part of his circulatory system too. The two beings were destined to meet. They did. They are soul mates now. Their convictions in their relationship lead to a commitment for lifelong. The biggest decision of her life, she had to take without her parents having known that she started off her bond with him as a friend, 3years ago. Just an assurity from their end that they wouldn’t mind a genuine friendship as such, just a little trust that my child wouldn’t choose a wrong path in her life and just little space in their relationship would have changed the scenario of the sad situation today. She is trying hard to unfold the truth now; this is one of the many victories of her parents’ Parvarish. She wants them to know, she has grown up now, but still belongs to them, because they form her first world. She wants them to know, that their daughter has found true love, it’s because she has seen them give her the same love, in their Parvarish. She hasn’t lost hope, she is still trying to search that friend in them to whom she would open her heart. She wants them to bless her. She wants to neutralize concealed facts and events of her life by disclosing each fold of truth, gradually.

It takes a lot do all this against situational odds. They say blood is thicker than water. But it’s also true that the thicker it is, the more difficult it gets to cure clots. This writing is not to question the upbringing of any parent. It is just to amplify the suppressed voice of a child who’s trying to strengthen her feeble emotions so that she can save her relationships. She knows she too will be a parent tomorrow, she knows the grave concerns parents face; it’s a Herculean task to bring up children, she has seen her brother grow. But she will not forget that Parvarish is first about building an edifice of concrete trust between you and your child and then anything else, so that never will a wall of misunderstanding, distrust and emotional detachment form because of the gap called “generation gap!!!” This is the subject matter of Parvarish which can never be subjective. The girl is preaching this as a child today, so that she can practice it as a parent, tomorrow!!!

Priyanshi