‘They say girls’ friendship suffers in their marriage,’ said Raja Rao. ‘But they seem to prove the proposition false.’

‘Yet, they are so unlike,’ said Sathyam, gulping the drink that the bearer mixed for them by then. ‘Are they not?’

‘But alike at heart, I think?’ said Raja Rao, sipping from his glass. ‘It looks like their childhood affection took strong roots to grow into deep adult attraction.’

‘But, let me tell you,’ said Sathyam. ‘I used to be jealous of their closeness but now it feels divine watching them together. But I’m sore that I didn’t have a like childhood.’

‘Thankfully, I’ve had a great childhood,’ said Raja Rao dreamily, ‘though the memory of it is hazy.’

‘It seems happiness loses its focus in memory, even as unhappiness remains vivid in our minds,’ said Sathyam in all bitterness. ‘Unfortunately for me, I was handed out a bad childhood, what with my father believing in placing it in the locker of his experience. What’s worse, he didn’t grant me the freedom of an adult either. Left to myself, I would have been a better child and a less bitter man.’

‘But as it appears, there is no right kind of bringing up children, though there are many wrong ways of spoiling them,’ philosophized Raja Rao, as was his wont. ‘Having said that, I might add, the mediocrity of man gets reflected in the bringing up of children. You may know, Jean Paul Satre feels that but for a few, men are mere fools, and it’s not hard to imagine how such shape up their progeny. The problem with most parents is that they reduce their children to the toys of their joy. It’s sad they forget that their kids would be better off, if only they’re groomed to face the roughs and toughs of life.’

‘Why, it’s every bit true,’ said Sathyam, animated by the discourse. ‘My father all but treated me as his favored possession. When I wanted to study engineering at Manipal, he said I was too young to fend for myself. Oh how he ruined my career and all! Mind you, I wasn’t a bad student at all.’

‘I can understand your feelings,’ continued Raja Rao, to Sathyam’s solace. ‘But we can’t grudge our parents for having failed to come up to our expectations. The very fact that they hadn’t reduced us to child labor was in itself a favor. If they chose so, being hapless at that age, there was no way we could have resisted them in anyway.’

‘Whatever, my life would have been much different being an engineer,’ said Sathyam, gulping his drink in all bitterness.

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