How should a father react when his daughter achieves a distinction that is a dreamer’s delight? How does he control his emotions when he reads a message that not only has his daughter emerged a winner in an examination that is known to break many hearts but has also got the first rank in the country? Should he let the magnificence of the news sink in and choose to savour the soothing success story, privately and inwardly? Only with his family, loved ones and close acquaintances? Or should he pretend that this is just another feather in his daughter’s cap and try to give a nonchalant shrug, faking to be unruffled by the flutter and waves of excitement?
Should he take a U-turn and use the platform of social media to boast and brag about the performance of the apple of his eye till the audience is bored to death? And if chooses to do so, how should he overcome his fear of being accused of blowing his trumpet a bit immodestly and loudly? How should he walk a tightrope as to whether he should look solemn and sublime or pretentious and boastful?
Difficult choices. Daunting options. But when the occasion came, these choices simply melted away and we found ourselves wet with feelings—pure and pristine.
Last evening as Bhavana and I saw our daughter walking up the stage to receive her gold medal in the hallowed hall of Vigyan Bhavan, we had tears of joy welling up in our eyes. The certificate and the medal said that she stood first in the country. And we stood there, almost frozen: our hearts, bounding; our lips, quivering.
The occasion aroused emotions that ran the gamut of joy, happiness, excitement, and may I say, pure bliss.
This was the moment we were anxiously waiting for—the culmination of her decades of diligence and stubborn single-mindedness. A pinnacle of our happiness.
Congratulations, Amrita. This time I am fumbling to pick up more appropriate words to describe how I felt watching you reach the crowning glory of your career. But do I really need to draft a nice note, full of overused cliché, to describe my feelings? I don’t think so. And I know you understand it too.
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