Its just like mom to set me near impossible tasks - like washing the dishes properly or eating breakfast or packing lunch, and now this, writing about my thoughts on being brought up in 'The Family'. "...you can be brutally honest" she said. So here goes. Two words come rushing to mind - Tough Love!
I am a Prasad. In this case it means a weird 'Tiwari-Rao" concoction! I will, in this blog, only elaborate what it means to be a Prasad in the Prasad family and not go into the broader, extended version (we could well be the Corleones!).
Anyone who understands the true meaning of tough love would appreciate this. Our parents love my sister and I - fiercely! It is not the kind of love that makes you dependent on them but rather the kind that makes you want to get out there and do things! It is not a warm blanket but rather an armour. It doesnt make you go fuzzy on the inside but rather steels you to face anything and come out victorious. We have been taught to fill time, not telling one another how beautiful life is, but how much better it can be and how one must strive hard to get there. Sometimes there is no time for niceties and other times there is impatience and intolerance of mediocrity but most of the time there is a yearning for creative outcomes. When one is seven or even seventeen one cannot appreciate this 'conform or cease' atmosphere but when the mind (and not just the body!) reaches twenty seven one understands that it was all with good intent. I was the child, so of course I took it all the wrong way! Of course my parents favoured my sister more, of course I was never allowed to do as I pleased, eat or wear what I wanted and go when and wherever I wished. What I see now is that it was a restraining love but never a constraining one. We were taught to make our own constraints but restraint was dictated to us - and we followed, albeit grudgingly at times.
My father once told me that 'the soldier has not been abandoned in the battlefield, he has been given all the arms to fight - and win' and indeed we have!
I will not go into what I have learned from my parents - if it is only that I want to be like them, I think it enough. People learn different things from their families - mostly for the best.
I can almost see my mother shaking her head at this blog and thinking that I was being much too 'flowery' for the benefit of my readers, but just for my parents - Thanks Mummy and Baba!!
btw Happy Anniversary!
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