A letter to 21st century Indian parents

Dear 21st century urban Indian parents,

We understand. As we grow up and shoulder the burdens of being responsible and faking coherence, we understand.

It must be hard on you to learn things about your children which you didn’t administer. It must hurt somewhere inside of you to know that your child does in fact have their own brain. Seeing your little child of three walk on their own feet is almost always a bittersweet memory. That was the first time they learnt, but that was also the first time they walked without you.

It must have been slightly easier for earlier generations. Their children were either dying in wars or were busy protecting a family honour that did in fact exist in the havelis and minarets that they inhabited. They would have had filtered influences that you and the well meaning community you lived in passed on to them. Sadly, that’s not true anymore. You are no longer our only teachers, and the community is no longer our only haven. We transgress and leave, simply because we can.

But the process of leaving is not as easy as it appears to be in a Bollywood movie. Threats of suicide, and the romantic sagas of abandonment do not appeal to us. That obnoxious relative who gossips about our very existence is not funny, because we grew up sipping tea in their houses, sharing our little games and secrets with their children, who later did betray us. When you lovingly convince us of what must be done simply because it has always been done that way, we agree. Not because you’re right, but because we’ve been raised with a love and reverence that we cannot let go of at 22. There are extreme forms of sheer torture that we can quote to you, but in all fairness, that’s not what you’re doing to us. You let female children be born, you educated them, and loved them. The consequences of forced choices, and choices limited by love and support might be the same, but we cannot be as disrespectful as to say it to you.

We are with you when you say, it’s a complex world these days. We have our set of difficulties with this age, so we’re sure you do too. But there is a reason why the Garden of Eden was not sustainable- it was too simple to supply enough energy for life to flourish.

So why am I writing this letter to you at all?

I’m writing simply because I want to invite you to be active participants in evolution. Times will change, and entire societies will perish. Divorces will become commonplace as people seek more fulfilling lives which they now know are possible. Gradually, love will be something that happens to middle class families outside of wedding albums without the convenient threads of caste and religion to bind them. There will be a time, and it’s almost here, when leading a happy life for the sake of it will become a thing.

The desire to let your children be infants is a powerful one indeed. They’re cuter, harmless, and a reminder of everything that’s still beautiful and innocent in the world. But just like the physical growth of a child cannot be blocked, the evolution of an age is an inevitable process, which won’t pass you by. The sustenance of old rituals and beliefs is an enticing endeavor indeed. But we must never lose sight of the larger image: they were invented to allow the community to get together and share, not vice versa. Sustaining ceremony at the cost of happy lives, is to miss the point. We can choose to be happy about change and actively bring it about, or we can sulk as it happens anyway.