'JAB' TAK HAI JAAN

So finally, I have checked the Covid box and become part of modern history. Not as a witness, but as a survivor. By now, a sizeable population has been there and done that, many surviving to tell the tale, and many unfortunately not making it home. My turn came late, almost like an after-thought.

After dodging the nasty pest for more than two years, I finally got involved in a fling for something more than a casual flirtation. Even as I am typing this the head is woozy and limbs, wobbly. And I am lazing in partial delirium, trying to think coherently.

Beats me. I had done everything right, or at least had not taken it for granted and gone footloose for two full years. I denied myself the small pleasures long after the world got back to revelry. Eschewed all foreign trips and carnival cravings. For the most part, life had become a stack of predictable tasks with no risk attached. Even after four vaccines. And yet, it had to afflict me and shunt me out for more than a week!

‘How?’ Someone asked. There is no answer to it. Covid is a bit like love. You never know the hows, whens and wherefores of it. You realize you are hooked only after you have taken the bait and got into the bed with it.

‘Did we give it to you?’ a dear niece asked. She and her family had hitched the Covid ride recently and had paid us a social visit upon recovery. I laughed it away. No one can ‘give’ it to another, like a bouquet or birthday gift. It just finds its way, like a snaking river, and snuggles into cozy bodies.

I am now surprised that I can speak of Covid using romantic analogies. In two and odd years, it has lost its virulent force. There is no fear of dying anymore, only the tedium and vexation that comes with falling sick and lying curled up in a corner remains.

Yet, there was something about the whole affair that lingered in the head after seeing the previous horrors, as I lay convalescing from a fever and crushing fits of cough. The memories of seeing people in close vicinity losing their loved ones, their pain vicariously becoming mine, the paranoia of getting caught in the uncertainties and a weird sense of walking blindfolded into the future gripped me amidst my broken sleeps.

Many I know had been rash during that time and they had ended up paying the price for it. Many others had been complacent and they too had gone to the brink and miraculously returned. This thing that I was now dallying with was once a slayer of dreams. It had snuffed out millions of lives in a snap.

But here I am, fully inoculated, lucky to have escaped the worst, merely sniffing the surface of a global calamity. It was a humbling thought. One that brought to mind the men and women who must have toiled through the nights in their labs to find a fix for this malady. With what urgency they must have applied themselves to bring the world its life-saving remedy! To what lengths they must have stretched to throw a safety net across the world!

We live in times of unmentionable difficulties that often have no quick solutions. There is suffering and pain everywhere. But we are also living in times where a disease that threatened to wipe out communities en masse was reined in by collective human effort. It shows the indomitable spirit of mankind, its desperate urge to survive against all odds and our eagerness to evolve into something better.

Even in the direst of times in future, and in times when the world seems to fall apart riven by differences, I will think of these days of my mild illness. I will remind myself that it wouldn’t have been mild but for the people who came together to find the formula for the jolly good jab that saved millions like me.

To all those unknown men and women who came through for us, I spare a thought of heartfelt thanks. It is for moments like these that I keep my vault of gratitude wide open. You never know who or what might earn a place there. Or when.

PARENTS MUST HAVE CANDID CONVERSATIONS WITH CHILDREN

Parenting is not a pushover anymore. In our times, parents didn’t ‘raise’ us. We just grew. Parents did what came naturally to them in their capacity as our guardians with no instruction manuals to follow, and we crossed growth milestones without serious red flags. As the world began to display its plurality and the insecurities grew, a lot changed. Good parenting became an arduous goal. Raising successful children became a relentless pursuit, and in the process, there were more predicaments, for both parents and children.

A significant shift that I have seen in the recent years is the way traditional boundaries in parent-child relationships have broken down. It was unimaginable for us to consider our parents our pals, but children now easily categorize them under the friendship tag. While this may be encouraging in parts, there are some vital areas that still need serious mending. Candid conversations being one. Children today aver that they ‘talk’ to their parents without restrain, but how deep are the conversations? How revealing and useful?

In my casual talks with young people, I have gathered that children are ‘cool’ about sharing daily events and activities from their school and college life with their parents but have a long way to go in expressing their true emotions. The bonhomie, more often than not, is superficial, with a majority of children choosing not to divulge their deepest fears and concerns, the inner turmoil caused by an unforgiving world, and the disturbances brought by their own biological changes.

They filter their emotions and present that which would please us and give us the smug satisfaction of having been good at our parenting job. But our children have a lot more bottled up inside than we can imagine, a lot that they themselves cannot comprehend and sort. And as parents and guardians, it is upon us to offer them a space to be what they inherently are by building equations of trust and understanding.

A majority of children have fixed notions about their parents and adults, which range from adults being annoying to prying to over-bearing. Instead of establishing ourselves as confidants in whom they can seek recourse to their problems, we in our eagerness to carve out prototypes of perfection, have become their mere conscience keepers.

Many children confess that they refrain from baring their heart to their parents for the fear of being judged and reprimanded. I know youngsters who have endured bullying at school or were abused and didn’t summon the courage to divulge it to their parents. Such experiences can cause severe mental disturbances which parents miss to see until it is very late.

When in trouble, children seek alternate places to vent themselves – chiefly friends and strangers on the internet. Needless to say, both are dangerous and counter-productive. Friends give them the comfort of knowing they are not alone in their emotional battles, but offer no solution, and strangers drag them into a deeper mess.

There is no safer place for our children than their home and no better people than us to talk and listen to their problems. Our responsibility as parents doesn’t end with meeting their material needs, giving them the best education and badgering them with our reprimands and counsel. Our first responsibility is to make our children feel assured in our presence, to converse with us without fear of taboos and promise them that we have their backs, come what may.

Let us open up our discussions – about everything from intimate life secrets to normal growing up pangs – and get them prepared for the world out there. Convince them that we are committed to protecting them. Their problems are our problems too and together we can find safe passages whenever they are in a fix.

Instead of sneaking up on them to know what is going on in their lives and performing helicopter parenting or yelling, get them to share thoughts with you from an early age by showing understanding and appreciation. Let them know that we have all travelled the same routes to reach where we are, and we understand what it means to have crushes and heartbreaks, to get punished in school, to feel lazy and unmotivated, to be distracted and anxious, to be curious about the birds and the bees, to be depressed and sad, and to harbour anything that threatens their inner stability and peace.

What our children need at this point is our promise - that we are not here to put them down when they err, but to keep them from stumbling, and if they fall at all, lift them up to be good to go again. So, talk about everything there is. Let there be no walls between us and our children.

A GIFT FOR SOMEONE YOU LOVE

Buying a present has always been a vexing task for me. The tedium starts from a preliminary question – Is it necessary? Although the answer to it is a vehement ‘yes’, thanks to an over-zealous heart that is looking for constant ways to share and display love for fellow human beings, a wretched thought soon sneaks in to derail the spirit. That nothing I buy will be good enough to please the taker.

Let me put down the hard facts and make a confession. It’s not as if we are flush with cash for a pricey, niche present that can make their eyes pop out. I only allocated a modest number for the present and I desperately looked for options that fit the bill and worth. Add to it the thought that in all probability, the gift might be ‘unwanted’ and will occupy some anonymous corner of their house until it is pawned on to someone else or cleared off during Spring. These damning concerns were such dampeners on my enthusiasm. And there was no way I could let material considerations dilute my affections.

Which was how I slowly I began to disassociate the ostentation of presents from the sanctity of sentiments. It dawned on me that if love carried a price tag on it, then it was no love at all; if the quality of our endearment is measured by monetary factors, then there was no genuine engagement at all; if giving and receiving had a material band-width, then we were involved in a trade deal and not human connections. All that mattered was, from what depth of our hearts we loved and remembered each other.

Slowly, I began to lodge memories of people in odd things like gift bows, empty sweet boxes, hamper baskets, old hand-written letters, pieces of broken bangles etc. I still use the apron a friend and room-mate sewed for me more than three decades ago with my name stitched into it, the book mark my 5-yo student made for me two years ago, and several other things that have no utilitarian value except that of reviving and reminding me of the love they had/have for me.

Now, I don’t wrack my brains thinking about gifts. Those who know my sentiment for them and its profundity need no proof of it. Those who don’t, will not have a need for it. Yet, I find my own ways to tell them what they mean to me by investing my time for them. I write poems for them, I make small paintings, doodle on cards with positive lines, send flowers, bake cakes, rustle up special dishes, gift my books, write mails, make surprise calls, record a song and keep looking for new ways to let them know that I care more than I can show or tell.

I now find people’s affection in small, spontaneous gestures that come from their heart, unhindered by external influences. I melt with gratitude when someone goes an extra mile to help me or make me happy. It takes no effort to recognize true fondness and affinity. It manifests in unimaginable ways.

And as I ride through the alleys and highways of life, kind words, small acts, solemn thoughts and pristine love are all that I would want to give and take from the world.