By Trini Ahmed
“Has your daughter done anything that shocked you?” I asked, hoping there was a story to be told. I was in conversation with Samita Seth, and from my previous meetings with her, I knew she was too open-minded a parent to allow trivial challenges of parenting to shake her.
“Uh, not really….” she began, “But…”
And that’s when I knew I had it.
No matter how permissive a parent we try to be, there is always a moment in which our child acts contrary to our expectations. This jolts us. And rightly so, I would argue, for isn’t parenting about setting at least some rules our kids are bound to break?
“It was only once, in America, when I called up Ananya.” Samita had raised her son and daughter in Mumbai, India, and at age 19, her daughter Ananya moved to the US for university.
“I said, ‘Who are you sitting with?’ She said, ‘No one.’ I said, ‘I know there’s somebody in your room.’”
If we were in a movie, this would be the moment when the reel changes, and the perspective shifts to the next character.
We now shift to Ananya, and let the story unfold through the eyes of both mother and daughter.
“So basically I was hanging out with him in his room,” Ananya said, “and nothing really was happening. He was not one of those friends that I’d talk to my mom about. She called when I was hanging out with him, and from my ‘hello’ she’s like ‘You’re with someone’.
“I’ll tell you what was going through my mind. I saw the phone and I was this close to not picking up ‘cause I thought ‘I know she knows.’ And so James (the boy in question) looked at me and said ‘Why aren’t you answering? It’s ridiculous, just pick up and say hello.’
