Dear Clementine,

Happy new year to you. Wish I could be there but here I am with my feeling wrapped in words that can hopefully guide you further in life.

As a child of around 12 years, I used to play with these two friends who were brothers. One day, one of them lost badly to me in a game and as a result both the brothers beat me up. Pretty weird, right? And my response? I came back home crying and complaining to Maa about this incident. But her response surprised me.

At first, Maa was trying to calm me down and wiped my tears, but as soon as she understood the reason why I was crying, she stopped sympathizing and told me to fix the problem myself. Now, my sadness was turning into anger. I remember shouting, “Do you want me to kill him and his family!” Of course, I got a slap from Maa. She told me, “If this is the first fix that came to your mind then you never learned anything I have ever taught you…” She proceeded, “In life, many people will hurt you. Does it mean that you will kill everyone? Just think about your own words.”

While I was still confused, my tears had stopped and I was seriously thinking. It was here when Maa hugged me tight and told me, “Do you remember about Gandhi? An eye for an eye will leave the whole world blind.” Maa put me in a tough spot. She wanted me to resolve the situation but also not hurt the other ones the way they did to me.

Anyway, since these kids were my friends, we inevitably got together to play the next day. But I had a great idea in my mind (at least that’s what I thought back then) which would have quenched my anger as well as kept my promise to Maa. I simply told them that you need to slap each other, and only then will I play with you otherwise forget it forever. And to my surprise, they agreed! One of them even slapped the other one pretty hard. Hahaha, it seems pretty funny in retrospect but I guess that’s something only children are capable of. Within a few moments, we were playing together again and left it all behind. But what I never left behind was the attitude that Maa inculcated in me.

Today, I look at problems as a way to get stronger, but not just for myself but also for the ones I care about. In the face of a problem, I knowingly step back sometimes, be it at home or work, and let others dependent on me solve the problem on their own. Just like we cannot swim freely if stay dependent on swim rings forever, we need to go beyond our boundaries of safety to grow to our full potential.

Maybe now you can understand why we ended up raising you the way we did. And if you don’t like it, you should hate your grandma, not us 😉 But you know that we are happy for what you are becoming.

Love you my star!