A parenting tale of lies & confessions
AS parents, we were usually trusting and liberal when our son and daughter were growing up. And they were generally candid and well-behaved. But, as we were concerned about their wellbeing, sometimes we resorted to ‘spying’ to keep tabs on their whereabouts. They also had their share of naughty deceits and lies. We often relive those hide-and-seek episodes whenever we are together and have much fun.
It was the landline age when my daughter entered adolescence and her telephone use increased. Secretly and randomly, I used to redial to check whom she had been talking to for a long time. Reassuringly enough, I always found her saheli on the other end. Almost two decades later, she confessed with a chuckle that she used to dial her saheli’s number each time after talking to her friend, in order to outsmart us.
Later, she did post-graduation from the US and got a job in New York City. When we visited her, she was living in a one-room apartment with a shared kitchen and drawing room. But when we paid a visit a few years later, she had a spacious two-room flat with a kitchen and lobby. It was about 100 metres from Broadway Subway station and we could see the RFK Bridge from her kitchen window. “Isn’t it a drain on your resources as you don’t need that much space,” I asked. “No, dad,” she replied, “I sublet a room sometimes and it comes to the same thing.”
Eventually, a marriage proposal for her came through a matrimonial website, and it suited us. The boy, working with an engineering firm in New York, was from Chandigarh. Coincidently, he had passed out from the same institution as my daughter. His mother told me that she had visited him last month and that he was living in a decent second-floor accommodation in Astoria near the Broadway station. Could she see RFK Bridge from his kitchen window, I was about to ask, but kept mum. As a John le Carré reader, I could instantly decipher the whole plot.
They returned to New York after a traditional marriage. But a day before they left, I confronted my daughter privately and told her that I knew she had been living with that boy in that flat for quite some time. “Sorry, dad, we lied to you,” she said in a regretful tone. “Our intention was not to deceive you, we just wanted to cushion our parents against a culture shock. And that is why we made it look like an arranged marriage.” And how did they manage when their parents visited them, I asked. “When you came, he shifted to his friend’s place in Manhattan and his luggage went below the double bed, and when his mother came, I went on a trip to the Yellowstone National Park and my things were dumped below the bed,” she said.
The moral of the story is simple: we should never try to outsmart Generation Next. If we are clever, they are imaginative. Kahlil Gibran was not far from the truth when he said that our children are the living arrows sent forth from bows. Yes, we, the parents, are simply the bows.