How to lose an argument, twice

What’s she petulant about?’ I asked when I saw my granddaughter, about eight years old, stomping her feet and nagging my daughter. ‘Papa, she wants her ears pierced before her birthday, which is just a fortnight away. And I’m busy with my work. I have no time to spare,’ she irritably remarked.

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‘Oh! That’ll be painful!’ I told the kid. ‘No, my friend got her ears pierced and she said it didn’t hurt,’ she argued. ‘So, you want to be a copycat,’ I teased her. ‘No, but I like it,’ she replied with visible anger. I was with my daughter during the time my son-in-law had got posted out.

I recalled the lengthy debate with my wife when she planned to get our two daughters’ ears pierced. They were then only six and four years old. I was posted at Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, Mussoorie, on deputation.

‘When we go to Haryana during the coming winter vacation, we’ll get their ears pierced,’ my wife brought up the subject one day. ‘It’s best done at a tender age as the ear lobes are soft; it’s less painful and chances of infection are minimal,’ she reinforced her argument. ‘Why should we force our wishes on such tender kids?’ I protested and started off with my ideological polemics.

When I was growing up in the 1960s, the world, especially the US, was experiencing several movements challenging old social mores — the civil rights movement, women’s liberation movement, and last but not least, the Beat Generation’s Hippie movement. So many ideas came crowding into my mind.

‘Women have been in shackles in almost all societies. Let there be no discrimination against the girl child,’ I raised my voice. ‘Come on, you’re not in the academy delivering a lecture. It’s a simple job to be carried out. Why bring in your lofty ideas?’ she flattened me out. ‘What about the numerous seminars on gender equality that I’ve been participating in,’ I frowned. ‘That’s your official business,’ she quipped. But I was not the one to give up easily: ‘Do you remember on our first visit to my mother’s village, right after our marriage, how it upset you when you were asked to pull a ghoonghat before my orthodox maternal uncle?’ ‘I didn’t believe in that,’ she countered sharply. ‘I too don’t believe in it and that’s why I supported you then,’ I replied.

‘Nana, where are you lost?’ my granddaughter shook me out of my flashback. ‘Let me look for a good sunar,’ I tried to pacify her. ‘Paediatric clinics do this procedure now,’ my daughter updated me. ‘In this new age, not only girls but also many boys get their ears pierced as a fashion statement,’ she laughed.

‘Okay, let’s look for a clinic while I’m here,’ I said, shrugging my shoulders.