Girl meets world, writes Shweta Bachchan Nanda

The thing about thresholds is, you never really know when you are on one or about to cross one. The lead up to most momentous occasions are calm and I daresay, dull. We busy ourselves with the mundane as if nothing cataclysmic awaits us. Like I was this morning, sipping on my green tea, catching up with the news online, periodically enquiring whether my daughter had risen from her sleep, wiping crumbs of toast from my laptop, still in my pyjamas, still oblivious. 

From the day she was born, pink and pulsating, my daughter became the axis around which my world danced, I wasn’t old enough to be given this responsibility, I hardly knew how. It would take years for me to learn, and I am learning still. There were many firsts — tooth, haircut, steps, and I dealt with them like any young mother would, with heightened hysteria, like it would be the first and last thing that would happen to her, of course it wouldn’t. We celebrated every little thing she did to the point of exhaustion. As I grew older, I sometimes wondered if this exaggerated ebullience wouldn’t set her up for a lifetime of disappointment. The world wasn’t going to celebrate my little girl the way I did, the world was waiting — a spider in its web, luring her with gossamer strands — and all my attempts to waylay her have been in vain, she marches on, firm-footed. 

Yesterday, while we were out, the two of us in perfect sanguinity, she on her phone, I on mine, (Welcome to modern-day equations this is how it’s done these days) just happy to be near each other, I steal glances at her. She is absorbed in making plans with her friends, oblivious, so oblivious to the raging emotions in her mother’s heart. We are shopping for a dress, a graduation dress. Tomorrow she will graduate high school and one more tie that binds her closer to home will break free, as slowly she makes her way into the world. She is on a threshold and we busy ourselves with “What’s for breakfast today?” 

Is this all much ado about nothing? Then think about this, every time you educate a girl, you arm her with tools or weapons, it depends on the task at hand, and she will wield it to make a place for herself in a world that sorely needs more women making big, life-changing decisions. For the world, too, is on a threshold, and we are oblivious of its coming.