What matters…

I am at home after staying away for more than four years. I stayed in a hostel for two years while  doing my masters and another two years in a different city while working for a multi national  company. I feel glad that I am back. In fact I feel damn good. The best part is that my sister is also at home. She delivered her second baby three months back.  My new born niece is a beautiful baby. She is very delicate, soft, cute, sparkling,  fair… I can’t come up with any  more adjectives, believe me she is awesome.  I mean very very awesome! 🙂

My sister, Rohini, is a simple person who likes to talk on anything and everything under this sun. She has got a Masters degree in Mechanical Engineering and she teaches subjects related to Thermodynamics in an Engineering college.  I must say, at some level I have followed her foot steps in my life. For instance, when we were kids, thats when she was 13 and I was 9, she indulged herself in drawing and painting. I got influenced by her and I also indulged myself into art at an early age. There are plenty of other things that I got into because of her, like one thing I can never forget is when we did our first telescope with the help of one of our uncles. Much of the enthusiasm for life that I have today is something to do with growing up with her.

For last couple of months I have been having conversations with her on an everyday basis. The topics of discussion varies from Indian politics to family disputes – soccer to kabbadi – classical music to local rock band and many more. Most of the discussions are some what casual types, except one. That is one thing she talks with complete commitment, its about her son Raagav. As he is not staying with her for more than five months she is apprehensive about him. I guess any mother would miss her child especially when the child is just 5 years old.  Raagav is right now in kindergarten. He watches the cartoon program “Choota Bheem” regularly, likes to play cricket, has great passion to play anything that looks like a drum and like any other kid he loves toys a lot. Sister is bit unhappy that he doesn’t spend much of his time doing home work and things related to school. Many a times she cribs about his deeds and misdeeds at school and in turn asks me how should she react to such situations.  I have the tendency of defending my nephew all the time. The thing that comes to my mind is about my growing up days. I have this feeling that our parents did the best job in terms of raising us.  With that feeling always in my mind I advocate the same things they did to us.

During our growing up days, my parents strongly believed in flow than control, by that I mean to say that they let us do what we wanted than imposing their likes and dislikes on us.  I was least interested in studies and  very interested in arts and sports. They didn’t mind me playing little more than many other kids in the locality even when I scored badly in my tests and exams.  We had this rank system in our school. I used to get a rank somewhere in between 15 to 20 in a class of 30. While my sister used to get a rank always with in three.  I used to hate that day when they used to give report cards. My parents never compared me with my sister nor with any body for that matter, in fact they didn’t have real interest in knowing the ranks of any friend of mine. Mom always said that I was doing bad because I wasn’t preparing well, she used to mention this sanskrit line ” Yuddha Kaale Shastra byasa” which meant that my preparations were confined only during exams. Though she wanted me to do well in my subjects she didn’t believe in enforcing . I didn’t like any of my subjects except Mathematics and to an extent physics.  Mom knew very well that my real interest was in painting and cricket. In fact when I had a painting contest/cricket tournament/quiz contest  and a school test she used to leave it to my judgement on preparing for the contest or the test.  I just didn’t have interest in preparing for a test in which lacked curiosity,  I neither saw a value then nor now. My dad was never part of such micro issues, he just let my mom seldom decide. He was very busy through out the day at work.  Being a good teacher, he was always in demand, he used to take classes  at other places as well. However he knew the importance of spending time with us. He dedicated the whole of  Sunday for us. He took us for morning walk which used to last for more than a hour every week. He used to tell many stories during those walks, which included stories from the great epics Mahabharata and Ramayana. He thought me mathematics when I had exams and tests. When I was in primary school he took me to all possible painting contests that happened in the city and also to the prize distribution ceremonies when ever I won; on few occasions he took me to places out side the state to see me collect the award. Mom found great pleasure in telling her friends and our relatives about my accomplishments, though I used to discourage her from doing that , I secretly loved the attention. I had different feelings for my parents.  With one it was love and with the other it was respect.

The ‘control’ aspect in the family arose mainly from a financial perspective. My parents were very candid in expressing the financial limitations, they made us understand that being in a ordinary middle class family all that they could give is good values and education not money and the sophistication that comes from it . We never got pocket money,  dad never got a cable TV connection until I completed my BE, never got a telephone land line connection until my sister was about to get married, never got a automobile for himself nor to anyone in the family. In fact my mom had to almost beg and cry on behalf of me to get my first cycle and my sister had to top her class in the 6th grade to earn her cycle. He got me a computer after I managed to score a good rank in the engineering entrance exam . In order to get anything apart from basic necessity or educational, we had to put an application to dad several months in advance. At some level he used to get yielded to the pressure mounted by mom on behalf of us (sis and I).  Besides financial control, we weren’t deprived of freedom in life, except few things, like getting back to home before it turned dark, usage of only polite language at home, those things.  I dont remember my parents beating me at any time but I have seen their serious resentment towards me when I did some thing immoral or rude. Some mistakes that we committed were verbally  explained to us, while some they let ourselves to understand.

Keeping many other stories for the future writing, I must say that our parents approach towards parenting is more towards the liberal side. Like any siblings we both grew up with our own uniqueness though the parenting was almost same. We picked some great virtues of our parents like, I picked up passion for doing things while  my sister picked up the right disciplines in life. We gained fair bit of virtues such as that of being creative, adventures, outgoing, free thinkers and amiable, as a result of the free space, however the financial constraints in the family made us realize the importance of earning, good education and to a large extent made us ambitious. Had our parents been liberal in terms of money as well, then I guess they could have potentially killed that ‘wanting’ in us. Now, in their eyes, we both are equally neat kids, they see us as people with good thinking, well behaved and scholastically speaking they are damn happy that both of us earned masters degree in engineering . In fact, I should say my sister’s effort is really commendable, she did her masters after getting married. Nearing the end of her masters she was carrying Raagav, after all that, she went on to present an International  conference paper when Raagav was an year old. Having said the good things, I want to mention a few (probably, of many) ill qualities that I unfortunately gained because of the liberal attitude of my parents. Though my parents are very disciplined people, their efforts in making me understand the importance of discipline wasn’t sufficient enough. I never kept any of my stuff neat and clean, never followed any time table, in fact never good at time management, ill managed food and sleep habits, those things. I understood the importance of the organized style of working in a hard way, that is, when I got exposed to the busy schedules of the corporate world. One more ill effect of the liberal attitude, though I will never blame my parents for that, is I could never work under an authoritarian. I always had the habit of asking questions and never accepted an answer which wasn’t supported by logic but had some sort of legacy associated (though it may have logic ). Its a debatable topic on weather authoritarians make things better or worse, but I always had issues with such people in my adult life. I must also confess on few occasions ,to my knowledge itself,  I have crossed the fine line that exists between being confident and being arrogant, probably this may have something to do with the asymmetry of liberal parenting and controlled parenting.

Now coming back to my sisters concerns in raising Raagav, I am some times skeptical about the liberal parenting. If we assume that our parents did it right, can Rohini also do the same parenting that our parents did?  I can’t really say for sure weather she can do the same way. Things are not exactly the same, they are fairly rich and can afford any thing he wants. I have seen my sister yielding to Raaghav’s want much easily than what we had to go through. Also the entertainment media has more penetration than ever. The thoughts that one has to gain by contemplation is being replaced by many sources which are driven by ulterior/less spirited motives.  For instance, I feel pathetic when I see the kids from the school that I studied indulging in smoking cigarettes. May be my sister is little overly concerned or may be not, but midst of all these apprehension there should be something that should keep things in balance. We have always heard greatness of honesty, humility, generosity and many other values from our elders. As they say these qualities never go obsolete with time. I am damn sure they are right. Partly because of our intelligence, we know that the good values can alone make a better human being but the question is how do they go about imbibing good values and check the bad ? should the parents spend more time with their kids?  should they control the likes and dislikes of the kid? should they check penetration of all the negative energy from various sources?

Well, I wonder if parenting has become tougher than ever.