Living the 'What if'

Some families are harassed by dental problems. Others tormented by dodgy plumbing. My family is plagued by the Whatifs.

Most of you may only have encountered the Whatifs in the poem by Shel Silverstein – and probably wonder what the fuss is about.

Whatif I flunk that test?

Whatif green hair grows on my chest?

Whatif nobody likes me?

Whatif a bolt of lightning strikes me?

Whatif I don't grow taller?

Whatif my head starts getting smaller?

Whatif the fish won't bite?

Whatif the wind tears up my kite?

For the longest time I too lived happily in a Whatif-free world. Then my eldest daughter Aaliya came along and, around the age of eight, revealed herself as a Worst Case Scenario Girl. A child who could spend an hour discussing "What if my finger had got jammed in the door" or "What if I had studied the wrong topic for the Science test". A little girl who took no solace at all from the fact that her finger was fine, or that she had gotten full marks in Science.

She'll grow out of it, I decided, and waited for that to happen. I'm still waiting.

And still the Whatifs strike with aggravating regularity.

"What if," Aaliya sits up bold upright in the middle of the night and does her zombie impersonation, "What if a truck had hit Naima when she crossed the highway in Himachal Pradesh when she was just three."

"What if," she comes home from school, drooping and dejected, "Naima had gotten badly hurt when she fell off the slide as a baby?"

I wince. There are some things I'd rather not think about, thank you very much. I am a Sweep Under the Carpet person, and plan to stay that way.

Still, I have to play my part. "But it didn't happen, Aaliya. Now just go back to sleep."

"But mummy, it could have happened. I'm feeling awful. Say something to make me feel better." And I quickly fudge statistics about the non-serious nature of playground injuries. And slowly Aaliya becomes calmer.

Once, just once, I decided to be brisk and sarcastic. Aaliya woke up all heavy-eyed, because the Whatifs had struck at night. "You remember the time Nisha fell out of the window into the plant tray and cut herself near the eyebrow? What if she had hurt her eye instead?"

I should have been the comforting mummy. Instead I was in a wicked witch mood. "What if," I asked, "there had been no plant tray at all?"

The twins, Nisha and Naima, found this delightfully funny. Aaliya did not. Her shrieks and sobs were probably heard in Malad. Ouch.

Years ago, I'd interviewed a psychologist after a disaster that shook the country. I'd been told to write a small piece about how people carry on after tragedies. The psychologist explained that human beings are born with a streak of optimism. They assume that things will work out – that the fan will not fall on their heads, that a pothole will not open under their feet, that earthquakes will strike elsewhere. "That's the only thing that allows us to cope," she said. "Otherwise we would just keep worrying about the things that could happen to us. And it would be impossible to function."

Those words echo in my head every time the Whatifs strike. The only problem is that – while we know that calcium builds bones and sports builds character – we don't know what builds insouciance.