Issue February 1 - 14

It is a vocation that never ends

When do parents stop being parents? I don’t know. Do you? When our children are babies, we wait for them to grow up a bit. But come school time, and there’s the rigmarole of picking and dropping, of uniforms to be ironed, of books to be covered, and the daily genie of homework that needs to be appeased. Mothers worry over results, ragging, and bad words learnt and good habits forgotten. The worries are infinite...

AND it goes on. Right through school and high school and college; even after, through the first job, and after marriage. A child is always a child to its parent.

WATCHING two friends reacting to their children’s respective performances on two separate occasions brought this home to me. One of them was attending the school day programme of his six-year-old. The boy had a role on stage, and even as he sat at work, one could see the father’s mind was already a step ahead, waiting for the moment when his little boy would play his part, and do his parents proud. He had even taken special pains over dressing for the evening event, though it was mid-morning when I saw him.

PARENT number two was having labour pains of the mental sort. Her son was showing his very first film — an hour-long feature that he had written, directed and edited himself — to a select audience. The film — about being young and confused — starred a man and a woman, who were caught in a moment in time against the stark, brutal landscape that is the road to Ladakh.

The young film maker was quite calm, despite the fact that the equipment failed during the test run, and was miraculously resurrected only in the nick of time. But the mother could just about contain her nervousness and I could see from the way she looked around her, that she was wondering if the hall would ever get full; if the audience would be pleased by what it saw, if the apparatus would pack up again... I could see every imagined horror as clearly as if she were recounting them to me.

Luckily for all concerned, the film was not only a slick, fast-paced, thought-provoking production, it also proved the young man’s talent quite beyond doubt. My friend I think, relaxed only when the applause came at the end, as the lights came on, and the critics came up to congratulate the director and the actors.

VERILY, parents live their lives all over again through their children, and as long as parents remain older than their children (which is a given, isn’t it?), there is always one more experience to be relived, one more anxious moment to be experienced.

One Saturday, I joined a group, 2,000 strong, to walk for Multiple Sclerosis. It was a pleasant morning at the Race Course in Mumbai, and as we walked the oval track that usually has horses thundering over it, the young made a lark of it, gym enthusiasts walked purposefully, older women plodded along, and a bunch of young army officers marched past at a clip that made us all seem to be dawdling. I walked one round, and set off on another, despite the fact that the sun was blazing by then.

It was my gesture towards those who are struck by MS, and who have to live with the affliction for the rest of their lives.

It was the least I could do, having heard out young people who had MS and who had managed despite it, to get through college with merit and who held jobs that demanded as much from them as from any able-bodied person. I walked with great pride in the fact that I was one of the few doing a second round. Then ahead of me, walking painfully on her crutches, I saw someone who was definitely afflicted. I could see that she was tired but not willing to give up.

I WOULD finish my walk and go back home and forget all about MS. She would have her crutches for the remainder of her life. To her spirit, I dedicated my walk.


The Editor