Conversations always turn to children – especially when meeting other women with kids the same age as yours. With teenaged kids in the background, mothers end up whispering and sharing parenting horrors!
With a 14-year-old appearing for the dreadful Class 9 half-yearly exams, “second-guessing” is now my middle name. Meeting other mothers with the same doubts, of their kids not being smart enough to face the real world, took me back many years. Did I get special lessons as a young adult? How did I manage? One instance of learning to cope stands out prominently.
As a college student at Delhi University, I lost my most valuable DTC bus pass. If getting it issued in the first place was difficult, getting a duplicate was taking it four steps ahead. The college clerk asked me to submit an application along with an “affy-daffy”. I confidently came home and asked my father to get the legal document made but was disappointed to know that he chose to declare me an adult at that very moment. I was asked to visit the Patiala House court, find a notary, buy a stamp-paper, get the document typed and stamped!
It was a challenging adventure that I took head-on along with the unstinted support from my closest friends. All details were planned meticulously – from the bus-route to reaching the court complex to the grown-up Indian outfits to be worn. And there we were – outside the gates of the formidable courts – looking at the chaos inside. All our grown-up pretence vanished when we saw a police van with undertrials being parked at a distance. We exchanged nervous looks and gathered courage to ask the nearest person for directions to a notary. He was kind enough to escort us to one – while crossing unending rows of kiosks with typewriters and what seemed like thousands of people.
{{/usCountry}}It was a challenging adventure that I took head-on along with the unstinted support from my closest friends. All details were planned meticulously – from the bus-route to reaching the court complex to the grown-up Indian outfits to be worn. And there we were – outside the gates of the formidable courts – looking at the chaos inside. All our grown-up pretence vanished when we saw a police van with undertrials being parked at a distance. We exchanged nervous looks and gathered courage to ask the nearest person for directions to a notary. He was kind enough to escort us to one – while crossing unending rows of kiosks with typewriters and what seemed like thousands of people.
{{/usCountry}}I was soon explaining to a notary that the college had asked for an “affy-daffy” and he immediately got down to work. It didn’t take too long before the prized paper was handed over to me. It’s only after it was handed over to me that we foolishly discovered that it was actually called an affidavit! Nevertheless, it was a great accomplishment to hold the prized paper, beautifully adorned with bright round blue stamps.
On hindsight, it truly was a great learning experience. I’m glad that my father nudged me to get it on my own. A few years later, when I joined service and attested affidavits as a young executive magistrate, I remembered the incident fondly. I truly understood the value of the papers I was signing and how these would help the applicants meet important requirements.
And now as a teenager’s mother, I draw reassurance from this memory, knowing that my son too shall learn as he achieves small tasks in the “grown-up” world. parneetshergill@gmail.com
The writer is a Chandigarh-based Punjab-cadre IAS officer