Dear Daughter,
We just came to know about you today. I mean we knew that you were there since the last 20 weeks, but today we came to know that you are a girl. Sometime back I asked your mom whether she loves you and she gave me an interesting answer. She told me that she didn't had many feelings for Aakhya, your elder sister, while she was in the womb but started loving her once she was born. Seems like it is hard to have feelings (and love) for something abstract and we rather develop emotions as it takes a more concrete form. It is like we need a physical metaphor to connect to our emotional construct; and we indeed symbolize every emotions of ours in this physical world: Taj Mahal stands for love, Himalaya stand for bravery, Ganga stands for purity, Cow stands for selflessness, and every Hindu god of ours has his/her power linked to some form of nature. We need concretization to link and express our emotions. Today we learnt about a more concrete form of yours and so I suddenly feel a gush of emotions for you my dear daughter.
One thing you will see in this world is that sometimes people impose a concrete form in order to have the resulting emotions and feelings. For instance, doctor parents may impose their children to be doctors in order to be proud of them; school mates may impose a classmate to be dumb in order to bully her and have fun; colleagues may impose their counterparts to turn for or against them in order to indulge in office politics. This is a sad reality where we constantly cast each other into shapes that we like to see them in, without thinking about the shapes that they would like to be in. Unfortunately, I was guilty of this when we boxed you into a male form and expected to have a balanced girl-boy family. As a result, there was a tinge of unmet expectations when we realized that you in fact wanted to be a girl. But now that I think about it, we were completely unreasonable and this practice amongst Indian families should stop. A cow was not born because we need something selfless, rather we came to know about selflessness because a cow was born. I am looking forward to experiencing a new world with you now my precious dear --- not with precast molds but only with fresh clay for you to carve on your own.
Love you my little baby and welcome to your home!
Yours,
Dad
We just came to know about you today. I mean we knew that you were there since the last 20 weeks, but today we came to know that you are a girl. Sometime back I asked your mom whether she loves you and she gave me an interesting answer. She told me that she didn't had many feelings for Aakhya, your elder sister, while she was in the womb but started loving her once she was born. Seems like it is hard to have feelings (and love) for something abstract and we rather develop emotions as it takes a more concrete form. It is like we need a physical metaphor to connect to our emotional construct; and we indeed symbolize every emotions of ours in this physical world: Taj Mahal stands for love, Himalaya stand for bravery, Ganga stands for purity, Cow stands for selflessness, and every Hindu god of ours has his/her power linked to some form of nature. We need concretization to link and express our emotions. Today we learnt about a more concrete form of yours and so I suddenly feel a gush of emotions for you my dear daughter.
One thing you will see in this world is that sometimes people impose a concrete form in order to have the resulting emotions and feelings. For instance, doctor parents may impose their children to be doctors in order to be proud of them; school mates may impose a classmate to be dumb in order to bully her and have fun; colleagues may impose their counterparts to turn for or against them in order to indulge in office politics. This is a sad reality where we constantly cast each other into shapes that we like to see them in, without thinking about the shapes that they would like to be in. Unfortunately, I was guilty of this when we boxed you into a male form and expected to have a balanced girl-boy family. As a result, there was a tinge of unmet expectations when we realized that you in fact wanted to be a girl. But now that I think about it, we were completely unreasonable and this practice amongst Indian families should stop. A cow was not born because we need something selfless, rather we came to know about selflessness because a cow was born. I am looking forward to experiencing a new world with you now my precious dear --- not with precast molds but only with fresh clay for you to carve on your own.
Love you my little baby and welcome to your home!
Yours,
Dad
