Ah! those pesky little things called “children”

First day of vacation to celebrate the impending passage of Natasha’s next step in life – leaving us to join college. While many parents have gone thru this phase in their lives, for Sharmila and myself, this will be our first. It will be interesting to see how each one of us internalize this passage of our own lives – the balancing of the joy of seeing her grow to be her own woman on one hand and then breaking out in sweat at night realizing that if we walked over to the other room, she is not going to be there, on the other…

Today, she is going to see some of our very old friends who often helped us manage her when she was a mere baby. Many of them have not seen her since those days (and have never seen Nikita!). It probably will not make a big mark in her mind, but for me, it will be momentous watching those “intersection points”.

There is a fascinating poem by the great Lebanese-born American-settled poet Kahlil Gibran called “On Children” that does an exemplary job of setting the parent – children perspective in the larger context of Life.

——

“Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
Which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
But seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
As living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
And He bends you with His might
That His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
So He loves also the bow that is stable.”

Category: Musings, My Family, Vacations | 7 Comments

19 July 2016

Open letter to my first wife, Sharmila

Sub: Why I am worried that we are Facebook friends

Sharmila,
I am moved to enough concern observing a pattern from my Facebook friends (whose posts are also visible to you) that I feel compelled to write to you. The aforementioned pattern relates to seemingly unending torrent of my friends congratulating their spouse(s) on their (and I assume this is meant to be their spouses’) anniversary.

Let’s start with the circular nature of the congratulations first. At the risk of exposing my naivete, I would go out on a limb and suggest that a friend and his/her spouse are almost always guaranteed to have the exact same marriage anniversary. I have come to this conclusion – after much head scratching, I must hasten to add – by sticking to my rather empirically backed observation that a friend and their spouse has had the same exact marriage. Kind of a definition thing. Therefore, I have concluded that congratulating you on your anniversary would be really congratulating you on making your choice – me!!! And that gets within a spitting distance of being Donal Trump-ish.

What however, causes me particular consternation is their declaration of “best wife/husband in the world” or some such superlative use of adjectives. Elementary grammar dictates that for anybody to declare another person to be the “best” spouse”, one has to have enjoyed a minimum of three spouses (or is the plural “spice”?) in their life. So far, most of those friends has had, to the best of my reckoning, (see, I can use “best” because I have had many reckonings about those friends) – or would at least admit to having – only one spouse. Declaring that one to be the best is like a Sierra Leone guy claiming it to be the best country in the whole wide world without seeing any other country. Some, admittedly has had two spouses, but even in those cases, I would submit that “better” would be a proper word. Not to speak of the danger of tooting one’s horns with a batting average of a meager one in two.

Then there is that small point of our relationship being nothing like the description of their relationship I read on their FB posts (and their anniversary congratulations). You fight with me, you throw tantrums at me, you insist I clean up after myself and even after I have promised to do something, you unnecessarily keep reminding me of it. Repeatedly. Every six months, in fact. Nothing like the charmed life I read about my friends on their Facebook congratulatory note.

Between us, one of us can’t even remember our anniversary date. No point taking names. We are a team. But let’s agree it is not me. Initially I thought your reaction after reading all those self-congratulatory notes from my friends would be “Oh! okay, it is not our date today. So, he did not send me a FB post”. Now I think you are going everyday “Maybe it is today. How come he did not send anything. He always forgets. You know what – that is proof that is is TODAY. Wait till he comes home. How can he do this to me?”

There is only one thing I will admit to – and even that after you have injected me with a healthy dose of truth serum (or a couple of glasses of red wine in my currency – whichever is easier to procure). I will readily admit that I always wanted somebody who is not like me – who is willing to fight, throw tantrums, box my ears to clean up stuff and remind me of my “Honey-dos”. And if I were to live life all over again in real life – not on social media – I would not want anybody other than you to be that person that would constantly nag and irritate me.

So, happy anniversary to me. Now, you go figure out the date!!

– Rajib 🙂

Note for the readers: In case there was any curiosity, I refer to Sharmila as my first wife since I am absolutely confident of that fact. I have no empirical evidence to suggest she is my last wife. Elementary logic would suggest that I cannot establish that till I die. It would be extremely difficult for me to post any blogs at that point of time though.