Q: On a personal note, you’re a father,
and you’re a grandfather. From your own
experience, how has being a parent and
then a grandparent changed you?
Well, I’m the father of two sons and the grandfather of
one granddaughter. It’s a big difference raising sons and
raising a grandchild, especially when she happens to be a
girl. Maybe it is different for a mother or a grandmother,
but I find a great difference raising children and
grandchildren. And another great difference I find is in
raising a girl child. So much of tenderness is involved in
raising a girl, because some sort of vibratory level comes
into play. There is much more that can logically be explained.
I have started thinking, “What will happen to this little
girl?” who has not crossed even two years. “Where will
she marry? Whom will she marry? How will she be treated?”
Things like that. “And how should she be prepared from
now on to love the world the way it is?”
When I was raising boys I didn’t worry much about them.
Though now, in retrospect, I think that one also has to
shower a lot of tenderness while raising them. We cannot
take things for granted with boys either, as they are also
vulnerable. I see already that a girl who is less than two
years old bounces back faster than boys when she is sad.
When boys are too ecstatic, also, it is difficult to bring
them back to a normal state. It becomes quite challenging,
whereas a girl child understands a lot better, so less energy
is invested in correcting her course. This is what I have
found.I have observed another interesting thing, while holding
her on my lap so that she can watch rhymes being played
on my computer. She scans through a dozen of them and
already, at this very early age, she chooses which rhyme
to listen to and watch. She doesn’t speak yet, but she
expresses herself. She’ll gesture “Not this.” Earlier, she
used to just look up, trying to say, “Let’s move to the next,”
but now she demands. She gestures, asking me to fast-FOCUS
12 Heartfulness