Your Children Are Not Your Children

Khalil Gibran      Daily Sabah

Kedar was about twelve then, and declared that taking the school bus wasted too much time during the examinations, when the paper occupied just a couple of hours of the school day. The sub-text was - why can’t Bir Singh, our trusted chauffeur, ferry me to school on exam days? Kedar went to a school peopled by children of extreme privilege; for his cohort, this would not be an extreme demand. But both Premila and I resisted the default slide into indulgence, and said we would show him how to use the metro.

On his first solo trip, we drove him to the Hauz Khas station, bought him a metro card, and walked him to the turnstiles, from where we watched him take the stairs down to the platform. 

“I hope he doesn’t have a problem getting a rickshaw at the other end.”

“He’ll be fine.”

Either of us could have said either of those sentences. It just felt like they needed to be said.

A few days later, after a meeting of the parent body, the Principal said,

“Kedar is the youngest child to take the metro to school.”

I wasn’t sure whether this was meant as a reprimand, so I just grunted. But she continued,

“I think it's a great example to parents. I wish others would encourage their kids to use the metro - not just for exams, but for after-school activities as well.”

I told her that the only deterrent in our head was the last-mile problem, from the metro station to the school and back. If the school could run a shuttle during exams, and after sports programs, kids could be encouraged to use public transport. 

Komal was always responsive - “I’ll do that”. 

Thus nudging scores of children into greater independence.

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.

In far away Chicago, Kedar turned 25 a couple of weeks ago. Last night, as we warmed up dinner in our snug mountain kitchen, Premila reflected on the asymmetry of the parent-child relationship,

“A mother will never forget that feeling of a soft little baby snuggled against her breast, drawing sustenance directly from her body. But the child? His earliest memories of his mother will be from a few years later, returning home, perhaps to drink milk, but from a glass.”

Similarly, Kedar won’t forget swimming with his Dad from the ship to the shore in Galapagos, or jumping off the jetty in Menjangan, to be surrounded by the coloured fish of the Bali Sea. But he won’t remember the times he clung to my back like a limpet - “Hold tight”, I would implore him, as if he could hold any tighter, as I stroked into the cool waters of Sat Tal, Premila’s heart in her mouth, thumping with the fear of deep water she inherited from her parents, and their parents, but resolute in her prayer to liberate him from those bounds:

But seek not to make them like you

Not in your fears, not in your desires, not even in what you perceive to be your wisdom. Each of us have our unique access, our individual way of tapping into the lessons of the world. I had a meeting in his school that day, and was driving Kedar home. At age eleven, he was obsessed by cars, and gushed about the new Mercedes his friend’s father had just bought. 

“Kedar, we could buy a Mercedes. But we would have to choose between an expensive car, and the holiday we take to a new country every year - we can’t afford both. Which would you choose?”

The little wheels spun. It was not a pat answer, but it came fast.

“The holidays.”

I looked to him for an explanation.

“See, Papa, after a few days, the car - it would become normal, it would not be exciting any more. But the holidays, the new places, we will remember them for a long time.”

For they have their own thoughts

Their thoughts, their actions, are worth learning from, if you have the humility to do so. Kedar was something of a Lego fiend, and on the way home from a conference in Kuala Lumpur, I had bought him a set designed for children three or four years older than he then was - this would make for great father-and-son bonding, I thought. I showed him the set when I opened up my suitcase, and chatted with him while he ate dinner. I went down for dinner with the adults, and we lingered over our meal. When I went back up, Kedar was on the floor, turned into a corner of our room, studying the Lego pieces with a focus that was forbidding. 

When Premila followed me up, I put my finger on my lips, urging silence. We changed into our pyjamas, read way past our bedtime, and looked up from time to time. Kedar beavered away. It must have been about eleven when he stood up, turned to us, and said, 

“Done!”

I wish I had a fraction of that focus.

Today, Kedar works with a hedge fund in Chicago, so there is some overlap with my amateur dabbling in the world of finance. The American dollar rules the world, and the US Federal Reserve controls the spigot of global money flows. That much closer to the center of the financial universe, to its innovations and trends, his observations of business developments now inform my understanding, and my decision-making.

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, 

which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

Khalil Gibran, the Lebanese poet who gave us these words, was a wise man, of profound words and deep thoughts. Last night, we slept with the curtains parted, to let the full moon light our dreams, and it was as if we were experiencing it anew - 

A traveller I am, and a navigator, 

and everyday I discover a new region within my soul

This morning, as I begin to think about writing this piece, I refreshed my memory of Gibran’s words on children, which begin,

Our children are not our children

I read on, to the next line that throbs with mysticism, with a sense of the Universe,

They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself

I went back a line - our children, not our children? I can’t bring myself to say that. Gibran, I discovered, had never been a parent, and so to him I say, 

Our children are our children. 

From love and longing are they born

And with love we rear them,

With the little learning we possess.

Their souls dwell in the wisdom of tomorrow

And through them, we glimpse those other worlds.

We are the bows from which they fly,

And seek to bend, nimble and true,

To loose them on the path they will traverse,

And pray they travel swift and far.

But our children are our children

Forever etched upon our hearts.

Poem Hunter