How owning up to the faults of my overbearing parenting is helping me become the good father, I thought I was

The New Normal 3.0

You see him off to board the bus. The school has arranged it. The test centre is far away and even if you wish to be with him, the school has a strict ‘no parents’ rule. They want all the students to be together in their care before and after the tests.

You can’t blame them.

Most of these kids have just turned 18. The others are adults in their minds, nevertheless. They don’t need, or want parental proximity/supervision at this time.

You look at your child’s face. He is sitting at a window in the middle. Other kids are out-shouting each other. It is cool for them to project themselves as mini-geniuses who score 95% with little or no preparation.

Your child’s eyes are fixed afar. His refresher book for Chemistry has been open all the while in front of him for the last 30 hours.

He barely slept. He barely turned pages of that book, either.

You had seen his teary eyes and shivering body on the night before his Physics test and how he slept the day away.

You took care of it and arranged with the school to continue taking the other tests. You and your brother-in-law, who flew in just for this, have convinced him over the last two days to take this test.

You now know that with one test missed, there can be a complementary test later. With two tests missed, there would have been no hope this year.

You never thought that you will have to learn about complementary exams. You never thought that such things would happen to a bright kid like him, or you.

After all, everything so far had been about you but you will never admit that. As a parent, you have become a master in convincing yourself and others that everything you do is ‘for his future benefit only’.

He knows this now. He said this to you during a violent outbreak preceding the exams.

You have been very careful for the last three days, as if handling a premature newborn baby.

He is raw, vulnerable, sleep deprived, afraid and anxious. Anxious enough to not respond to your ‘best of luck’ once the bus accelerates.

How can he believe in the phrase “best of luck” when the “luck” has outgrown him?

“I don’t believe in luck any more,” he said when you used the same phrase before the last qualifying tests.

He doesn’t bow to God anymore.

You realised it this morning when you habitually asked him to ‘thakur pronam karo’.

He didn’t respond, neither did he flinch.

Like a robot he dressed, picked up his bag and sat on the breakfast table.

You are exhausted with the rigour of the last three days but you don’t let it show as you know that your child is more so.

Your brother-in-law is confused.

“I never knew that there can be mental disorders like this. For me a mental disorder meant when someone loses all control and needs to be admitted into an asylum.”

Clinical depression is a term that has been googled recently by your entire extended family.

You blame yourself day and night for not being the good father who takes time off from a busy work year to be with his child. No expectations, no pushing, just be there.

Love and care are your teachers now.

You learn to be gentle. You learn to ask open questions. You cease to give instructions. You now know that overbearing parenting has brought him to the edge of the precipice.

It is late, you know. You cannot go back in time and change it.

Although your child has given up on the Gods, you cannot.

You close your eyes as the bus races away to a point and mumble the Gayatri mantra — 12 times.

You persevere.