A2Z Challenge: F is for Fikar Karein Fukrey

Don't you think our Bollywood lyricist have been secretly dispensing top notch life secrets subtly (and at times not so subtly) via these songs? Consider today's choice:

दुनिया फिरंगी स्यापा है, फ़िक्र ही गम दा पापा है 
अपना तो बस यही जापा है, फ़िक्र करें फुकरे 

(The world is a foreign nightmare, worry fathers sadness
This is our only motto, only pretentious people worry)

Or consider this gem

जेबों में रख ले यारा, कंघी हैं तरकीबें

Anyway, much about the greatness of Bollywood, you must have noticed that I have taken a creative license today and not started today's song with the exact alphabet but this phrase 'Fikr hi gham da papa hai' has since I heard it, stuck a chord with me. How true it is that we worry and we invite sadness! Long back I wrote a poem about the little things I worry about.

And I, at least have begun to worry too much about my daughter who exhibits certain worrisome qualities. This is really an offshoot of what I wrote yesterday but today I want to pour out what that inane worrying does to my relationship with her. Worrying is futile. One realises this as one grows up and moves along life, seeing that certain things happen exactly the way you had worriedly wanted them not to happen.

When I worry incessantly about how my kid is going to turn out or how she might get harshly treated because of her soft nature, I am maybe forgetting the fact that as a parent I do not really know how my child survives/ fights her battles when I am not around. I do not have a macro viewpoint. I am seeing too closely and finding faults, because that is what I am looking for-the lacunae- that I have somehow convinced myself to look for ,to see and remedy before she goes out to face the world without me.

But she is already doing that and surviving quite well. She spends 6-7 hours in the school where I am not present nor do I have any control on what happens. She again spends 2-3 hours in the playground with strangers, her friends and acquaintances, and I do not know everything about those interactions as well.

In my bid to fill the lacunae I see in her persona, I try to give her the taste of the world's harshness. I have, over the years realised, that it is absolutely wrong. I don't have to teach my child that world will treat her badly. I have to give her the comfort and knowledge that whatever might happen, I and our home are her refuge. Even if the world treats her badly, we are not going to judge her for the calls she takes. We are not going to make her guilty for living her truth. 

But in my.constant worry I forget to do that. I rather cause bitterness and sadness in both our hearts giving myself the solace that at least she would be prepared for nasty, even if she feels mad at me for the moment.

And I see how wrong it is to believe that. Children are meant to be loved. Unquestionably, irrevocably. their tender hearts need protection and not exposure. We are not supposed to teach them any lessons in how life is going to treat them and we make a big mistake thinking that that is the foremost task of being a parent. I am to be the support structure. The bamboo base tied with grass rope that sways because she is a person after all but then when the moment of forgetfulness of this fact passes can still be sturdy.

To somehow teach them lessons and prepare them for what might come their way. Though I am still trying to find out where I stand on preparedness but I have made my peace with the fact that I am not too teach them any lessons.

So though I still do the fikar (worry) but knowing that it will father to sadness and because I am no show off I don't let my worries worry me.  Also reading this wonderful book helped.