My son is 28, a journalist, a squash player, a foodie and a young man who has mastered the art and science of owning a car in New York City. Those are his qualifications and descriptors. Even as a child, he had simple needs. One toy series at a time, for two, even three years. His obsession with Thomas the Tank Engine was so strong that we had a Thomas birthday cake three years in a row.
My son is what most describe as a good soul, a gentle human, a person who listens to you with keen interest…but if he doesn’t agree with you, he will persistently try to change your mind. He will not give up. He will throw arguments, logic, facts and some badgering at you for what he truly believes in.
The boy was born in Fairfax, Virginia where we were living at the time. When he was almost a second grader, a well-adjusted young boy at a public elementary school in the suburbs of Denver, we moved to India. Six-and-a-half at the time, he took well to India, learning when to suppress his well-formed ‘R’s and when to roll them to great effect.
For my part, I have done my best to raise a young man who can communicate beautifully at all levels, who is respectful and kind to everyone – unless they cut him off on the highway – who respects women and the role they play in his life. At one point, he believed that women were the bosses in society and not men, surrounded as he was by bossy women – maasi, buas, grandmother and multiple grandaunts who doted on him.
I hope I have raised my son to think critically, to not stress about things he has no control over, and to forever wonder if a hammer is in fact a screwdriver (my fault – he wanted a toy hammer when he was young, but I couldn’t find one, so I told him that the toy screwdriver was a hammer).
I hope I have repeated enough times that there is a spot on your tongue that has no taste buds, and that’s where you place nasty-tasting pills before you swallow them, that he will forever search for that spot, and teach his children to do the same thing.
I hope he will continue to lie on his left side to let the farts out and on his right to keep them in.
I hope he will learn to tie his shoelaces without making the two-loop knot and stop slipping his shoes on and off without untying them. That he will read without purpose, stories that make him think and smile.
I hope that he has realised now that the school bus waits for no one… except when his mother stands in front of it as a human barrier.
I hope he realises that there is no substitute for hard work, but that touching wood, crossing fingers, running through the Gayatri Mantra and Ek Aum Kar quickly before a test will not hurt.
I hope I have raised a boy who is loving and caring, but with peripheral vision intact. A healthy dose of cynicism never hurt anyone. He must treasure old friends but never close his heart to new ones, and never be afraid to walk away from those who sap his mojo.
I hope he will realise that long hair on men can be stylish but only for a while, and that a steady career is only steady until it is not. Changing course is not a sign of weakness, but a sign of strength, for change is not easy, mediocrity is. He must never settle for mediocrity but always strive for excellence, which itself is an illusion, but still better than mediocrity.
I hope he finds a caring partner, a nutcase like himself, who finds joy in little things, shares his goofy sense of humour and embraces him just as he is, for he was mine only for a while and is now out in the world, spreading his unique blend of good sense, humour and light.
Hajela is the author of Ladies’ Tailor and is currently working on two books, a historical fiction set during the British period and a non-fiction account of the Sikh Gurus
