Fear

Becoming a parent gives you lots of things - the gift that keeps on giving, as they say. It gives you...a sense of wonder every day...a reason to laugh...a magnetic attraction to wherever the kids are...but most of all it gives you stark, cold fear. ShahRukh Khan who's extremely articulate, once said that having kids is like letting little pieces of your heart run around free in the world, and I couldn't think of a more apt description. So given how much you protect your heart, how much more crazily protective would you be of these delicate little pieces?

I was remembering my childhood days and how free and easy they were. When we lived in Pandara Road, I used to walk down to the Mother Dairy about a kilometer away to fetch milk from the time I was seven. Mom used to send me on errands to Pandara Market and every so often down to Khan Market, which involved crossing Humayun Road, all by myself. When we travelled to the South by train, we'd make friends with other kids sitting nearby and the entire gang would roam up and down the length of the train to amuse ourselves. I used to travel to school by public transport when we lived abroad in a country whose language I couldn't speak, and when I was 14, dad used to send me downtown to send off telexes for him.

When I even think about doing things like that with my kids, my blood turns cold. I don't know whether it's an outcome of being an overprotective mom. I don't think I am and usually teach my kids to laugh when they fall down and encourage them to climb trees or swing on gates. But the thought of letting them go off alone and unprotected anywhere is quite daunting. Maybe it's the world we live in today?

You can't open a newspaper without seeing some horrible article about a child being molested, or beaten up, or, in Gurgaon, shot. Young children are being kidnapped by their parents' employees for ransom. Perverts are running about raping babies as young as a few days or a few months old. Not just perverts but even boys and girls in the peer group of the victims are up to all kinds of things, whether it's stealing a car and running away to Goa or luring a classmate to a suburb to kill him for money.

I worry about how to keep them safe and I worry about how to make sure they get a realistic picture of life. I worry about protecting them and about not over-protecting them to the extent that they can't be normal, healthy human beans. Someone said, in a schmaltzy movie once that God created mothers because he couldn't be everywhere himself. My question is why he didn't clone dozens of me which, while destructive for the planet, may be my only way to keep'em safe.