What Naisha Told Me That I Didn't Hear?

It’s not about what she didn’t tell us; it’s about what we didn’t hear her saying. It’s about how we discounted her concerns because it didn’t scale up to our measurement of a ‘real problem’ and therefore it wasn’t given the attention it deserved while we measured it on a yardstick of our experience than with a scale of her size of life!

Naisha is in 2^nd grade; she is our darling girl at home, and a darling child at school too, for her friends and teachers. A compassionate little girl.

She’d been telling us how she dislike going to the same school she is now when the school re-opens. And the reason is, that she had formed an image of her maths teacher as one who will beat, less friendly and compassionate compared to her teachers now. She is not one who would mind someone being strict on homework and discipline etc., for, she has always been one who always met the standards of that sort, and also was good in maths. Her concern was in that teacher not being friendly, and that she’s at times caning the students!

Natural for any child of that age.

What we didn’t hear was the loudness of that concern. A week ago, she brought that up again in one of our conversations, and we tried to make her understand that her concerns are out of place, and that she will begin to enjoy her class etc.

That was the end of our conversation on that subject.

But it was only a beginning of her debate in her mind to find a solution that her parents couldn’t convincingly find!

She might have thought of different strategies; she might have drafted and erased in her mind different plans that would work or not work. And perhaps one morning she would have woke up with a decision, and that decision was to go and handle it by herself.

Little though it might seem to the eyes of us as grown up, that would have been a major decision for her little mind. She decided to go and ask her own maths teacher about what will it be like in the 3^rd grade? She asked “ Sujata miss, who will be our maths teacher in 3^rd Standard?” Sujatha miss – her maths teacher would have felt the concern in that little heart, and bent down , hugged her, and jokingly said “it will be Gayatri miss, and she will give you all nicely!!” and she added “darling, it could be either this teacher or there is another teacher, but both of them are good teachers and you don’t worry about it”

Naisha came back home, and hugged her mother and told her how happy she is and explained what happened with Sujata miss.

The incident disturbed me a lot. It made me reflect on what we are not listening but are just hearing. I heard Naisha’s concerns, but perhaps failed to listen to her feelings beneath. And then, we as parents were oblivious of her little mind working out plans to solve that concern. What would she have experienced with this thought of what to do in 3^rd Grade maths class nagging in her mind? When would she have thought about the different possibilities, and what would have been her experience of that thinking process? Why didn’t we see them; were they not leaked through sighs? Were she watching television in front of us, but her eyes seeing in her mind the images of her interaction with that maths teacher she dreaded to be with? Were she not sleeping, or behind her closed eyes were the flashes of thoughts on how to relieve of this concern?

It appeared to me that it would have been really causing her discomfort which is why she decided to find her own solution the other day.

The whole thing for me is an example of how she faced a situation – big for her size of life – that caused disturbance in her, how our support as parents was not enough and convincing for what she was facing though we thought otherwise, and how she formed a strategy to find another resource to solve her problem.

I wished I knew what she was going through.

I realize more that our children are telling us their life’s experiences, through their silence and through their words. Not everything do we decipher in the midst of our busy life – a busy life that is initially meant for the welfare of these very children. It is for me as a parent to think why she is sleeping early – for it’s not sleeping, but an escape to think of her strategies, mull on her possibilities. It’s for me as a parent to look deeper on why she is not eating her food – for it’s not lack of hunger, but the fullness of concern in her little mind.

It’s not what we see. It’s beyond.

It’s not what we hear. It’s even beyond their words.

It’s about having that ability to hear what they didn’t tell us, to see what they didn’t show us, and be there for them, in their little struggles of facing the challenges of losing a penciil sharpener or sitting in the class of a particular teacher, the ability to see them in the same size and dimension as they see, than as how it appear to us.

Dear Naisha, I just want to let you know that we are sorry that we didn’t hear you; I also want to let you know that I am proud that you are able to find your way; that’s the girl we wish to see you as growing.

Love

Papa

25 March 2011

A Dying Art

At least once, everyone would have experienced the anxiety of that wait for the postman to appear with that precious little thing in his hand, or for the sight of that little envelop in your post-box that has travelled a long distance, or perhaps a few lanes of the town, carrying your name, written with so much of passion at an hour when the world around must have been asleep and the shadow of pen on the paper from the lamp on the table appeared as the hands of the beloved, holding yours!

What a wait that was then!

The joy and excitement of writing a letter; the conversations that takes place in the backyard of mind as we sit down to write, part of which flows on to the paper as words and part of which evaporates into the midnight air as sighs and smiles, the aching to capture them and squeeze through the nib of pen as words and the anxiety from the inability to express in words the lava of emotions boiling within.

You then read it once, through your own eyes. You read it next through the eyes and minds of your beloved. For a moment you attribute to it the voice of your beloved; the next moment you hear your own words; the images resurrecting from the page, senses arousing as the eyes sifts through the words again, again, and again, beginning a conversation of hopes and dreams shared sitting beside, suddenly erasing all the distances of streets, lakes and hills that divided you till a moment ago!

There is a ceremony of closing that envelope, but before that a moment more spent on the page, with a loving smile at a moment in future. The carefully folded page is slide into the envelope, to be sealed with love. The only time you would have spent that long writing a name would be perhaps on the first day when the schools reopen, when the text books are all new and must carry your names, the first writing on them are written with such a care and determination; such and more is the care when the address of the beloved is written on the envelope!

What follows next is the paradoxically delightful and aching wait for the letter to reach the other end. Moments of its journey through the different post offices are calculated in mind, and the imaginations of it reaching there, the moments of it being read and the wait for its reply – adding richness to the experience of living!

On the other end, what a moment that is, to be receiving that letter! There is an urge to open it immediately, at the same time a dictation of mind to simply adore that moment of holding it and looking at your name being written with not-so-artistically-artistic curves and dots and strikes of y’s and I’s and ‘t’s; what would be the closest metaphor to compare the care in which the envelope is opened! And what a battle of mind and heart is to follow when the letter is taken out of envelope! Should I read this word, or see what the next word is? What is in the next line, or is it written in the paragraph that follows? The curiosity is at its height with every word that’s read and every sentence that’s remaining. To read them all at once is the desire on one end, and it should never end is a silent prayer on the other end.

That follows the special moments of writing a reply. Sometimes it's nice to delay, for selfish reasons though. In the space of that delay occupies the words of our conversations, the sharing of thoughts, the laughter that fill, the smiles and sighs that punctuates…. There is warmth in that space, where I know I am conversing and there is an imaginary conversation back to me too…

Anything that can represent the moment of that writing will find space in that reply, in words or in other forms; a lock of hair, a bristle of brush or teeth of comb, a piece of a shawl or a petal of rose, they are all divine forms of insanity when letters are replied to their beloved!

A beautiful letter is a string that connects hearts from distance; it’s a story you would wish to read again; it’s a piece of heart that you would love to embrace in the absence of your beloved; it’s a narration of love when expression of it is hard; it marks the milestones of the journey in love, and it represents the aching of hearts on one end and it presents itself as its cure on the other end. They are with which you wake up. They are with which you sleep. At times, they appear as your only reasons to live, when that’s the only thing you open your windows for.

A dying art that once carried the pulse of loving hearts!

Shahir

March 04, 2011