Last weekend I was trying to get my son Sanjiv to get ready for a competition. After his bath, I was trying to get him to apply oil on his hair. He was doing his best to avoid it. That is when I thought that my big moment had arrived. “Look at daddy’s hair. It is still jet black and that is because I have applied oil on my hair all my life. If you want to have black hair you too must apply oil,” I said with considerable flourish.
My son wasn’t to be denied his say though. “If you don’t have grey hair now, you will have grey hair eventually.” Words of wisdom from a six year old which stumped a 46 year old.
Now one of the things of which I am inordinately proud of is my black hair. Naturally black, let me assure you. None of the fancy hair dyes that are available freely in the market have ever found their way into my hair. The truth as they say is as dark as it gets. Except that this time the dark truth is a fair picture of things.
Now I am a person who hates to lose an argument as much as my son likes to win one. “Come on Sanjiv, my hair is not going to grey anytime soon. People younger than me have grey hair but your daddy hasn’t got a single strand. My hair will remain black forever,” I said with considerable glee if not triumph.
Now Sanjiv had an answer for this one too. “Daddy you will have grey hair at the time of my marriage,” he said with conviction. I was again stumped for an answer. Granted that this is a generation on the fast lane. Agreed that we live in the Web 2.0 era which is charecterized by user generation content and interactivity. But a six year old speaking about his marriage and being able to co-relate it with the colour of his daddy’s hair. At one level I was amused. At another level I was stunned and even apprehensive and it also raised questions in my mind about my ability to be a good parent. Reinvention I have realized is not only the norm in the workplace but also at home. The Web 2.0 parent can respond to user generated content by only being interactive. Words like empowerment, delegation which have become a part of the workplace lexicon now have found their way into parenting too. As I steeled myself to be a different kind of parent, I caught my reflection on the mirror. The face may have looked grim with the dawn of new realities but the hair was still jet black. The years of applying oil on my hair-not even subscribing to the fad of dry hair during my teenage days- had paid off. My lips creased into a smile with the realization that Sanjiv’s marriage is still some years away and only at that time we will see as to who has won the final argument. Till then it is back to the next dab of coconut oil.
