You're The Bows from Which Your Children as Living Arrows Are Sent Forth
By Sumit Paul, New Age
Islam
25 June
2024
"My father was a renowned medico. But I opted for literature. He never insisted that I should also follow suit. This is what I want the Indian parents to understand. Never impose your will and wish on your offspring. Let them do what they want to. You've lived your life. Now let your children live theirs. Read Kahlil Gibran's immortal poem " On Children " as an everyday ritual for ideal parenting."
Actor Saeed
Jaffrey in his autobiography, Saeed: An
Actor's Journey (1998)
--------
This
pertains to Nava Thakuria's NEET-UG 2024. In fact, this has been going on for many years. Apart from large scale
corruption, governmental apathy, involvement of coaching centres, abysmal
standards of education and monomaniac desire to become only doctors and
engineers, overwhelming parental pressure is also responsible for this fiasco.
Indian
parents use their kids as the flag bearers of their (parents) unfulfilled
ambitions and aspirations. They can go to any length for the fulfilment of their
unfulfilled aspirations and broken dreams. So, they keep pressuring their kids
to join coaching classes and study hard to become doctors/engineers without
ever bothering about the natural inclinations of their children.
These
over-ambitious parents never realize that their kids may have seeds of becoming
a writer, musician, actor or a singer. Alas, children become carriers of their
parents' dreams and join coaching classes to become doctors and engineers, much
to their reluctance.
After the
NEET-NET paper leak incidents, many students, on condition of anonymity, are
telling the reporters of newspapers that their parents contacted the agents and
gave them money to leak the papers so that they (students) could crack the
exams and become doctors. Now students are suffering because of their parents'
unethical dreams, desires and demands. They're being sacrificed on the altar of
parental dreams which is absolutely unfair, nay, criminal.
Is becoming
a doctor or engineering the sole purpose of one's life? Aren't there options
beyond that? People in India seem to have conditioned themselves to become only
doctors, engineers and IAS officers! They splurge money and resort to all
unfair means to become doctors. Imagine what will these people do after
becoming doctors? They didn't choose the profession out of passion. They became
doctors because their parents wanted to make them doctors. Saeed Jaffrey
rightly advised these parents to read Gibran's poem 'On Children' as an everyday ritual:
"Your children are not your
children.
They are the sons and
daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not
from you,
And though they are with you
yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love
but not your thoughts,
For they have their own
thoughts.
You may house their bodies
but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the
house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams."
We need to
change our collective mind-set. All such cases of corruption in the field of
education will come down drastically, if not vanish overnight.
-------
A regular columnist for New Age Islam, Sumit Paul is a researcher in
comparative religions, with special reference to Islam. He has contributed
articles to the world's premier publications in several languages including
Persian.
New Age Islam, Islam Online, Islamic Website, African Muslim News, Arab World News, South Asia News, Indian Muslim News, World Muslim News, Women in Islam, Islamic Feminism, Arab Women, Women In Arab, Islamophobia in America, Muslim Women in West, Islam Women and Feminism