Thread by @warikoo

Life lessons my childhood taught me

A thread...

Lesson 1
Dad had just lost his job.
We were down to our last few thousands.
He went to the bank to withdraw 10K, and on his way back someone robbed him of it.

We plunged into chaos.
Financial debt.
Personal favors.
Collectors at our doorstep.

That 10K made all the difference

I learnt that the difference between bankruptcy and survival is often not that big.

Difference between chaos and stability is often not that big.

Lesson 2
My sis and I used to play a game every night before going to bed.
"Aaaa main mar gaya" ("I just died")

One had to pretend to be dead.
The other had to crack jokes to awaken the dea.
If the dead smirked/smiled/laughed, they lost!

I learnt that as a kid, one of the hardest things to do is to not laugh.
And then somehow, we grow up.
And get better at not laughing!

The hardest thing then becomes, to laugh.

Lesson 3
At the peak of our family financial crisis, we received news that the govt would pay a compensation for dad's house in Kashmir, which was destroyed by now.

That money saved us.
Dad would never have the home he grew up in.
But he had miraculously saved his family now.

I think dad cried that day.
I could not tell.
And I have never asked.

I learnt that money by itself is emotionless.
But it makes you feel and do things that are almost always driven by emotions.
Money generates emotions.

Emotions that you may like or not.
But can't ignore.

Lesson 4
During my summer holidays, I used to read the same books and comics over and over again, because that is all we got.

Ma one day, frustrated by the scene, pleaded to her cousin to lend me all her childhood books.

At 14 I got a collection of 14 Enid Blyton books :)

I learnt that the best thing a parent can give their kids, isn't money or knowledge or manners or shelter or even love.

It is encouragement.

Lesson 5
Dad was working with a pharma company. While at it, he got an offer with twice the salary and a car. He took it.
That company shut down in 6 months. He was jobless for 18 months.

His original company was Ranbaxy, where if he had stayed, life would've been very different

Everyone mocks him for making that "poor choice"
But I know he would still make that choice all over again, because you only know AFTER the choice is made.

I learnt that risk and failure is a state of mind.
It cannot be measured.
We define it.
For ourselves.

Lesson 6
I looked up to my elder cousin.
His habits and choices drove mine.
His music was my music.

I was close to my landlord's daughters.
They only spoke in English.
I learnt how to speak in English from them.

My best friend was my younger cousin.
His friends were my friends.

I learnt that as kids we are constantly looking for role models.
We learn from them, we imitate them, we want to be them.

And that means we are today role models for some kid out there.
What will they learn from us?
Who they become, through us?

Lesson 7
I was in Class 7 and had just got the scores of my Physics exam.
With 33 as the passing grade, I had score 39/100.
This was the lowest I had ever scored. In anything!

Came home crying.
Ma consoled me and asked me to ask the topper "How do you study?"

When asked, he replied, "I study it like a story book. I make a story in my head around the concept. That helps me remember it."

I learnt that we all think in stories.
We all react to stories.
That is how we got to understand the world in the first place.
Stories.

Lesson 8
My Sanskrit exam was in a week.
And I was certain I would fail the exam.
Our teacher was so boring. Uninspiring.

Ma saw that I was scared.
She wrote a letter requesting the daughter of our temple priest to tutor me.
She had a master's in Sankrit.

I topped the exam!

I learnt that a good teacher can change your life.
And that good teacher needn't be found in school or college.

Lesson 9
For the longest time we had a scooter.
But my sister and I were big now and the 4 of us struggled to fit onto it.
So we bought a really old second hand fiat.

And spent 10K on repainting it, changing seat covers and making it look new.

It didn't last too long!

I learnt that how things work is far more important than how things look.

And that isn't true just for things.
It's true for us too!

It is amazing how much of who I am today was shaped up by my early experiences in life.
And I guess that is true for most of us.

Sitting today, I can explain why I think the way I think, do things the way I do, because of how I was shaped up.

But the biggest lesson of all is that whatever it was that made childhood precious - isn't lost upon us.

We have suppressed that child.
But it is still alive.

You can still laugh, learn, fall, fail and not care about what the world thinks of you.

Being an adult doesn't have to mean saying goodbye to the child in you.