So long a letter

In the beginning was the deed, and not the word, for the word came to name the deed. The human deed takes nine months to hatch; and after the joy, the feasting, and the naming, then the parenting (proper) begins. First, the cries, and the feeding, and the changing, constantly. Waking up at un-christian hours for one reason or another, and it doesn't matter whether we are ill or well, the cries, the cries are always talking, telling us something which we have to second guess. After a while, we become cry savvy, as we learn, however imperfectly, to put or ascribe a cause or reason to a cry. But this stage is only a short distance from, "zaks, stop doing that", "zaks, be careful, you might hurt yourself", "please, zaks I'm tired", and "Oh zaks! You have broken it" - you've got the picture, the life of a parent is quite, quite unavoidably difficult. But before long, all that would turn to memories, to reminisce over in calmer days. Or at least that is the hope: to reminisce in calmer days, when the brood has left the nest, confident and educated and shinning with refined rectitude, you know, a cultured upbringing.

However, "out of the crooked timber of life, nothing straight can be wrought", or, if you prefer a cliché, the road to hell can be paved with the smoothest, the most virtuous intentions. The correlation between input and outcome is devilishly murky. And that makes the parenting process slightly trickier.

I was in the delivery room on that Friday morning (02.27), nearly 11 years ago, when my freshly-clayed treasure was born, my 'sun', my one and only (for now). And this is what I wrote in my diary on that day: "Ah! Sylvia Plath hit the right note: they take their place among the elements with a cry; a cry as much a breadth of nature as the rustling of the wind. And as though the cry itself is a kind of wind, it sent a frisson of inexpressible, sob-pregnant, joy to my heart.

If I were a poet, I would have written a sonnet about how the midwife snatched ma baby's first cry, in mid air, wrapped it round the severed umbilical cord and coiled the cord around my heart (but I'm not a poet, so my joy shall be my sonnet)". Every parent, I think, feels similar sentiments with the birth of a first child. It feels like a rite of passage: son becomes father and daughter becomes mother, while still retaining the status of being a son or a daughter. This gives the ego or the self a sense of extension, the sense that we have thrown in our lot into the great flow of life.

As he weeks roll into months, the cry which first gave us joy, now would not let us rest, and as the months gather into years, we face at each step different challenges to our efforts to instil discipline and a sense of initiative in them. The nappies and the baby food and the baby clothes, and the toys (you continue he list), would also have taken their punishing toll on our pockets and purses, before they turn five. So, I repeat, the life of a parent is quite, quite unavoidably difficult. But I shall insist in this essay that the life of a child is twice score more difficult than the most dedicated parent's.

Their long-drawn - out helplessness together with "the psychological dangers of a physically intimate family life", leaves them entirely at our mercy. From the perspective of the child, the family is an "intensive care unit", and nothing short of a careful dedication by the parent would serve the child's interest. But, just as there are good people and there are bad people, so there are good parents and there are not so good parents. And perhaps more dishearteningly: even good parents can make honest, but damaging, mistakes. To a cynic, its all in the luck of the draw, the "natural lottery".

The values we put into our children, and the methods we use to put those values in them, are, in many ways, largely determined by the prescriptions and precepts of the society we belong to. As a grown up, now, I'm struck by the disquieting pun on the wollof word "yarr": it suggests both "cane" and "upbringing".

And as a kid, then, I had my share of lashings at the hand of this pun. Maybe it's a generational thing, because when I had my one, I decided to relieve the pun of its double-edged unease: I gave "cane" a retirement a well-deserved retirement, given that it's been at it for centuries; "straightening" generations of kids out, and from all the hard work, it s back gave in, and it became "bent" itself. In our "culture" it's apparently still OK to hit our children, when they misbehave. We do so, the wisdom goes, for their own benefit (spare the rod and spoil the child). And whatever we call "cultural", we often feel reluctant to critique. This view, perhaps unwittingly, assumes that the "wisdom" of my "culture" is complete and settled and timeless.

But should we stop for a moment, and look again, we might get to see that our culture or any culture, if it is to last into the deep future, may have to learn a whole lot of new things along the way. When we inherit a tradition, we do not commemorate it by tagging along behind it, and taking our orientation from the writings on its back; rather, we commemorate a tradition by giving it a new opening on to the future. Caning, or corporal punishment belongs to an expired mode of thought. It was born in a "geocentric world", and shares all the inaccuracies of that world. This is a typical father of that world: austere and remote, with a personality so immense that he has no need to be consistent, and yet never ceases to be right, for his "right is founded not in thought but in his person".

The letter in the title of this essay is a sealed one. We know only that it contains our childhood memories. And it is sealed because our childhood memories are "elicited only when childhood is already past". We get to know our sealed inheritance, as it were, when we're all grown up. We may not know what furies or mercies are sealed in our letters, so to speak, but we know that "memory discovers personality". And since Freud, we appreciate a lot more now the significance of childhood memories in the formation of the adult character. In general, "it is no longer possible to doubt the importance precisely of the first few years, of our childhood".

Our extended family system is a wonderful network of relationships which provides rich and fulfilling family life to many. But, like any institution, it is also susceptible to abuse. With our social hierarchies and stratifications, we tend to put some on a pedestal, and others, underfoot, as though the others were doormats. If it is not the jokey insults, it is the public embarrassments or the delicate contempt, or the clench-teeth tenderness, all of which keep eating away at one's sense of self. When a child finds herself in such circumstances, and later on opens her "letter" and be greeted by the furies, society will crown her with a blame all her own.

Our need for vigilance, as parents, has never been more urgent than it is today. The internet and satellite TV, for instance, have transformed quite radically the horizon of our kids' world. And "ideas" have a habit of surreptitiously creeping into kids' heads, without the parents noticing. Their emotional and psychological vulnerabilities make them easy prey to all kinds of influences. Furthermore, they are more self-scrutinising these days, and therefore more judgemental, whether of themselves or of others.

When the judgement is severe and is directed inwards, it is then all too easy for them to let the best of themselves slip away. The unfavourable opinions of grown-ups give them a bad opinion of themselves, and then they internalise the opinions to their detriment. Tradition will for a time resist the overtures of a new ethos, but we must stand our ground, faithful to the belief that, our process of social development can displace stock - responses and brings it about that people become averse to what they had previously tolerated.

Caning, and certain forms of adult treatment of children rob them of their confidence and turn them into timid adults; and other forms of treatment turn them into revengefully aggressive adult misfits. No doubt, we as parents deserve respect for all the pains we go through during the long socialisation process. But equally true, is that they also deserve our gratitude. And we show our gratitude by being gentler with them, "authority need not be authoritarian". Thinking outside the box is not necessarily a violation of the box but a mere extension of its boundaries; an enlarging of our experience. To modernise our attitudes is a sign of strength, not of weakness.