I hear it a lot.
“You have sent such a tiny little girl all that far away!!”
The refrain comes from various quarters, family, close and
extended; even friends and those seeing her for the first ever time.
My reaction is uncertain. I am never able to pin the
proportion of concern, blame or awe in that phrase. Is it an exclamation? An
accusation? Or plain, good old disapproval? They could even be marvelling.
It is true that she has flown a distance and most certainly,
her frame might be called petite. Add to that her chronological place in the
family; being the younger will always peg her as the junior, the little one,
the kid sister, and the smaller, irrespective of the passage of life she might
be traversing at the time of these observations.
She has been travelling yes, living with strangers, moving
over unfamiliar territory, discovering her pace in alien cultures, sustaining
on exotic fare and foreign air. I have gone over the map of strangeness she
must have to traverse over and over. Are there moments of crushing loneliness
that first night in a strange bed? How often do the bouts of anxiety strike
over the local security systems and formal procedures? What is the degree of
denial that takes place in situations she is not at ease enough to seek help? How
wholesome and healthy are her emotional negotiations in spaces she has no prior
knowledge of?
It takes a lot. There is the pre-departure preparation. The
mandatory drill of Visa acquisition, pondering over luggage content and weight,
airport transit Visa where needed, currency exchange, baggage tags, first aid
box, online familiarisation with the country she is approaching, establishing
some form of contact with what will be her nodal host agency, working out her
international communication protocol over differing time zones….it is
unending.
Would it have been easier to have her closer home? For the family, most certainly, that would
have given us a greater degree of control and ease of operation. Her cheery, tongue-in-cheek presence would have
buoyed up the evenings. There would have been the joy and pride in her steady
growth and accomplishments. One doesn’t need J K Rowling’s imagination to
fathom the bonus reason there would have been to spring up from the bed each
dawn. But the thing to ask is, “Who is this about?” Is it about the child and
her unpainted canvas or the parents who would be wary of risks? What is owed,
how much, by and to whom?
What will it be for our young? Order, safety and convenience
or lives free of fear, guilt, shame and self-doubt? Years lived inside high
walls of custom and tradition or the core autonomy of being? The excuse of having
borne external decisions or the consequences of one’s personal courage and
conviction? A morbid hark- back to what might have been as against an edgy
touchdown amidst unfamiliar challenges?
It is the reason I go clinical on the drive to the airport.
There are the constant backward glances at the passenger seat, in vain attempts
to frame imprints of her face. The goodbye hug is over before the mind is able
to record her aura sharp enough to last until her next visit home. As we re-
enter the silent home, echoes lunge out from spots she has just vacated. There
is nothing left to do but to track her flight. It is only when she lands safely
that the slackness comes.
It emerges all over again that parenting really is in
letting go, in allowing them their spaces to evolve, in making it possible for
them to meet life at the front door, in acknowledging that flesh of your flesh
they might be but they are individual persons with a life map their own.
Attachment, need, togetherness are merely the illusory fuels that crank the
business of living. Truth be told, there is a song that they hear in their
heads, a path uncoiling ahead. There should be happiness enough just over some
shared notes. Not to bemoan or sigh therefore, but to cheer and whistle them on!
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