Parenting…#3

My Parents

This is my third article on parenting. This was an incident which happened with me when I was in College. At that point I felt it was funny and my dad was cool. But today when I see many of my friends and associates having a strange relationship with their parents where the parents do not know what the kids do, who they meet, or the fact that kids drink and smoke to glory but at home pretend to be all saintly, I realise what I had got from my parents. A trust which is so rare today among parents and kids. Both my parents had a rule for me that there should be nothing they hear about me from someone else, and today I realise the worth of that trust. This incident was one of the few examples of the trust my parents always had in me, and touch-wood always will.

Well you know how it is in India..a boy and a girl are seen out together and immediately tongues start wagging….now i had a lot of male friends in college…there was no other choice as there were 45 boys and 5 girls in each specialisation..anyway nevertheless fact is i had loads of male friends…and of course when i bunked classes i used to go out with them…
Now one day a neighbour saw me with a male friend in a crowded mall area…and promptly in the evening when he saw my dad he went and told him..”today i saw your daugher in this area…SHE WAS WITH A BOY” (with a lot of emphasis on the boy part). So my dad looked at him and shook his hands and said and this is quote unquote my dad “Thank you so much for telling me this. I was always worried my daughter has become invisible and people cannot see her. Thanks for telling me she can be seen. Next time when you see her go and say Hi. That way you will clear one more myth I have that my daughter can even talk when she is outside?”….
LOL…you should have seen the look on the neighbour’s face…never again did he try and tell my dad anything about me again 
That day this incident seemed funny to me but today when I look back I realise what amount of trust and faith and liberty was given to me, something now nearly a decade after college I still find lacking in parents of many of my friends