Of mothers and fathers

Mine has been a life of immense dependence upon these two people. Both have been my pillar of strength at every point in my life. Today I sit and I wonder what would life even be without them and it just seems like a blank page I cannot fill.

I have always had a very balanced relationship with both my parents never favouring one over the other. They both bring in my life a sense of balance in different ways. My mother is an epitome of grit, confidence, fighting spirit and maturity. My father is an epitome of love, of moving with times, of balance and of understanding. I don’t know what it is like to have parents who don’t understand.

With my mother I share everything on this planet, we giggle, we laugh, we gossip, we share stories, we fight and we say sorry and make up. It’s like having the best girl friend you could have. My father for me has always been the formidable picture of strength, whenever I am down and out in life and feel under confident about anything I write to him and he writes back with the most heartwarming words that give me another push to keep moving. While there are lots of things we joke about but somehow when it comes to serious things like sharing my heart out I am more comfortable mailing my father rather than talking to him. And we both somehow have realized that we express better in writing than while talking to each other. We also have been gaming partners and so as a kid whether it’s playing outside or playing board games at home he has been always around. After growing up the board games continued but we have added conversations about movies, more importantly sharing books with each other.

From childhood to now, every decision that I have taken has been welcomed by my parents in the most mature manner possible, so every choice that I have made has only taught me to gauge the right and the wrong in those decisions that I have taken enabling me to take better decisions the next time around. The various landmarks decisions of my life - 

• Moving to Bombay instead of Delhi for further studies,
• Not forcing me to live in the Girls Hostel in my college, instead going by my choice of living in a girls hostel which had girls from different colleges and streams in Mumbai as they felt that it would only help enhance my exposure rather than restrict me to one college one world.
• Taking up Arts as a stream of education in undergrad,
• Enrolling into MBA coaching classes and quitting them in a week after having realized that it wasn’t meant for me. The fact that my dad had paid 15000 bucks for me to enroll in these classes made me guilty but he ensured I didn’t pursue something I didn’t like just because he had spent so much. He told me ‘look at it this way – maybe all this money was required to be spent for you to realize this is not it, so what next figure that out’.
• Graduating and only being clear about the fact that I wanted to do Advertising and having applied to just one college XIC Mumbai. And if that didn’t work out then look for work and then do my post grad after some work ex. My parents only helped me to try and figure as many contacts they had sitting far away in the state of Assam so that in case the college didn’t work out then I had some entry points into the Media industry.
• The very first time I informed them about smoking, it went down very smoothly as both my parents said trying things don’t harm you as long as you realize that these are not habits you got to keep around yourself for too long. Of course they did not approve of the habit but they did not bring the roof down as they knew that doing that would only invite more rebellion or lies from me. So they’d rather know and guide me out of it than be completely clueless.
• Working in the organizations I wanted to, quitting when I didn’t feel it was right anymore never made them question my decisions. They would only ask me the reason why and leave it to me to figure the rest.
• Choosing the Boy I wanted to end up with. I still remember the first time I mailed my dad about Russell my husband; I had also attached a picture of him. Funny enough the query that came back from him was not about his family, background, education, religion, etc. but a one line that said ‘Oh so he wears glasses, God your kids are going to be blind at this rate’. It just completely busted all the nervousness I had about this whole thing and I then knew that it was upon me to embark on a journey of discovering the relationship and deciding for myself as to what it was going to be like for life.

These are few of the million instances in that they have surprised me in many ways. They have always made me understand the importance of the bond that a family needs to create in order to create a healthy environment and upbringing of children. Free to discuss, Free to Question, Free to learn and Free to challenge the norm has been the way as long as it only enhanced you as a person and taught you to face life with every determination you have in yourself. They have taught me that eventually when I reach a point in life where I have to carry their role forward with my kids, its more important to understand rather than influence, more important to let go rather than hang on, more important to keep moving rather than get stuck in time.

More than anything else they have made me the person I am today and they have only helped me face the world and life with utmost zest and without questioning the why’s and how’s instead taking all of it in my stride and only making the best of it.