Remember how fleeting childhood is, so enjoy your second chance at it

Mahi was looking out of sorts. It was not like her normally sunny self. So I ask her why she’s blue. And she replies “I miss Acha! Don’t you know daughters always miss their fathers?” I assured her that I understood how bad she felt this time since her dad was away three weeks continuously.

Her father had been spending on an average, ten days each month at home out of which he probably had just a few hours with the kids. It’s a fairly recent development having started last June, so Mahi does not like it. She insists that it’s not fair. She prided herself on having a dad who was always there for her.

So Mahi decided to have a serious chat with her father who was in Doha, over Skype. She asked him why he was always working and why he couldn’t come home to see her and Appu. He replied that he had to make money to get her nice things and send her to a better school and the like. She ran downstairs, opened her piggy bank and asked me to help count her money. We found that she had seven hundred ‘moneys’.

“Acha, I have seven hundred moneys. That’s enough. Don’t you know that makes me rich? Can you come home now please? You don’t have to stay in Doha!”

Her dad had no answer. Neither did I. I had a lump in my throat when I read what she had typed in the chat session with her funny spelling and a hundred emoticons. This is perhaps what Appu too wanted to say if he could just express it — instead he would just rebel and refuse to listen to me at all when his father was away which was the very opposite of his nature.

What do children know of start-ups and the stress of trying to make a dream come true? How could they understand the compulsions of adult life? The simple fact is all this doesn’t matter to them — they want their parents in their daily life — it anchors them and makes them feel sheltered in a huge and confusing world. When all is said and done, how much would you have to pay to get your kids’ childhood back — all those moments missed because we were simply too busy to be there?

Kids do not expect you to be with them every moment of the day. But they want to tell you about that painful fall from the monkey-bars. They want to show off their growing swimming skills. They want you to simply share a box of pizza and listen to their favourite music even though you hate both the pizza and the music.

Instead we tell them to hurry and wake up, hurry and eat, hurry and study, hurry and sleep because we simply don’t have the time. So let’s take a step back and remember how fleeting childhood is and enjoy our second chance at it just that little bit more.