When our stories boomerang on us

Years ago, while marking answer-sheets in college, I found that on being asked to use nightmare in a sentence, a student had written: Yesterday, my mother came in my nightmare. As I shared it with my colleagues, we had a good laugh but everyone agreed that technically the sentence was correct. Then it turned into a joke as one of us remarked, “It’s so sad. There was a time when mothers used to come in dreams, but today!”

Interestingly, this is not without truth. Children of the ’80s and ’90s were different from us, for whom mothers were no less than a demi-goddesses and their utterances gospel; and we tried to absorb and assimilate their anecdotes, personal experiences, stories, and harangues about moral values, with silent resignation. But it’s not so with the next generation; who always considered mothers to be spoilsports if not denizens of their nightmares; and I’m speaking from experience. Like all mothers, I too tried to pass on what I had learned in my own time to my two children, but most of the time, my stories boomeranged on me.

One story that I used to narrate to my school-going sons was about the late prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri that as a young child he used to swim across the Ganges on his way to school, as he couldn’t afford a ferry. Unwittingly, I repeated this story quite often; and one fine day, my elder son decided that enough was enough and said with a glum face, “No river falls on our way to school, what can we do?” That day, I decided to keep my stories to myself.

In our younger days, we were made conscious of the presence of God around us, keeping an eye on all our activities, both good and bad; thus, scaring us to desist from any wrongdoings. My younger son had always been choosy in his eating habits and detested eating dal. Nothing that I said could coax him into eating it.

Once at my parental home in Chandigarh, my younger sister and I were trying to pamper him to eat dal, I tried to argue with him that everything was created by Babaji (God) and we should not refuse anything as it might annoy Him. Watching his expression, we felt a sense of victory as he seemed to be coming around. But soon after, he was seen going into the prayer room; stood there with his hands folded, eyes closed, and murmured something. Coming out with a glow on his face, he announced, “I have told Babaji that I don’t want to eat dal.” “What did He say?” My sister asked. “He didn’t say anything, which means He doesn’t have any objection.”

Running out to play, he left both of us flabbergasted, looking at each other with our mouths agape.

LIKE ALL MOTHERS, I TOO TRIED TO PASS ON WHAT I HAD LEARNED IN MY OWN TIME TO MY TWO CHILDREN, BUT MOST OF THE TIME, MY STORIES BOOMERANGED ON ME.