Sharada is alarmed and confused. She has just come out of a long and loud altercation with her teenage daughter. What happened to the sweet child who lighted up every minute of her life? Why is it that her daughter is now responding to every suggestion or comment of hers with a sarcastic or dismissive statement? Sharada finds herself at the end of her tether. She sometimes wonders if she had caused her own mother so much distress.

She remembers with nostalgia, the most breathtaking life changing event that happened to her, seventeen years ago,. She gave birth to the most amiable baby ever. She still remembers every minute of that day- the anticipation, the desperate plea in her mind that she should have a girl, the fear when no one said a word as soon as the baby was born, that momentary despair because she thought that they were not telling her because they did not want to break her heart and that giddy, unreal contentment which flowed over her when she realized she had her long awaited daughter.

My daughter! How the words insinuate themselves into every living moment of hers, and wait patiently in a corner of her heart, to bedazzle her when she suddenly thinks of them. My daughter. How lovely, how precious, how enchanting and at the same time, how alarming when she ever thinks of separation. My daughter - how warm, how tender, how luxurious to be able to say these words.

Her daughter grew and in the blooming of this young child, love lodged in her heart and her throat. She mooned over her daughter as she watched her smile light up the universe. Fear stalked her every breath as she thought of the unspeakable terror of losing her child. Truly, you learn the meaning of fear when you first let the love of your child permeate your being.

The teenage years

And then come the teenage years! Adolescence has been described as the period when children are certain they will never be as stupid as their parents! Adolescence is a terrible phase - a cosmic joke played on both the child and the parents. It pitches the child against the parents in a psychic upheaval of seismic proportions which leaves them both off-balance and nauseous with vertiginous emotions. Maybe it is needed just so that we can truly enjoy and embrace the peace that follows. The only consolation is that it happens to everybody, but, like being in the middle of an accident, we are unable to see it whole and in perspective.  

Unfortunately, in our educational system, the extraordinary pressures of board examinations collide with the maelstrom of adolescence. In addition to having to cope with the hormonal changes churning them up inside, our children also are harried to perform well in their examinations which are projected as the most life altering events in their lives.

Sharada’s daughter is at the precarious age where she vacillates between assurance in herself and mind-numbing loss of self-confidence. What is tilting Sharada off balance is this periodic loss of her daughter’s self-worth, this miasma which is bogging the child down. It is important to remember, that this too shall pass.