Stay relevant . fight

Reinventing yourself is so bloody important. Reinventing relationships are important. Reinventing your passions and your reasons to be are important. Nothing is constant as you grow older. Everything changes, the relationships and their interplay change over a period of time.

We need to keep evolving on everything and this can sometimes, many times cause stress. When Indians go abroad many a time they can be accused of being in a time capsule. They notions of India and Indianess is define by the time they left shores. They have been unable to move from their last notion of India.

Similarly, every time I wake, I start from where I left off yesterday. Parenting Jispa for one. It’s a question of constantly reinventing oneself. By merely having by birth the right to be a father is the stupidest thing that one can want. You have to earn it every day. This Saturday I was teaching about margins to my kids in college. What is margin and what constitutes margin. It is not as easy subject to grasp. People will constantly make the mistake of missing one component for another. When you look at the supply chain you will realize that margin compensates the component of the supply chain in line with its role, risk and reward. I was thinking in my head that while a lot of kids got it wrong, I would assume that a lot of these concepts Jispa would intuitively get right. Jispa probably doesn’t know what kind of dad she has. She probably underestimates the breadth of experience and wisdom I bring to the table.

These days while studying etc, she doesn’t need/ take my help. So yesterday I was talking to her while we were watching the swim races in the stands. We were waiting for her races. It was too much fun. This is the interschool races for the international schools. It was a national event. This gave Jispa a chance to directly enter the all school nationals through a much easier route. International schools are few and far in between in the country and most of them have very small classroom strengths and total over all student strengths. You can’t expect too much competition with these numbers. So while we were watching the races, I was enjoying the rank amateurs swimming in the nationals.

In in one race you will see national level medalists swimming alongside swimmers who haven’t ever been in 50-meter pool in their life, let alone swan at a stretch for than 20 meters. You can make out by the way they stand at the stand and their body structures. Young fit six pack athletes in their advanced costumes standing next to podgy fatted kids wearing their summer swimming costumes. I was dissing them for 10 minutes, in a very stand up way and laughing with Jispa at these kids. Yes, I was being very mean and very unfatherly. But these kids had no reason to be in this national competition.

I was also explaining to Jispa that once upon a time, I too was like this as a kid. I went for a swimming competition and almost drowned in the process. I had no business going for a race. Sometimes, we just force these kids into participation for a certificate that we participated at a national level race. But hell.

This is not the point of this story. What is the point of this blog? It is something totally different. Jispa and I were talking and we spoke about how till 7^th grade I was still largely involved in teaching her stuff. She said that now dad, you can’t even help me with anything on studies nah. I am way too advanced for you. AH… nopes kid. I am still a smart guy. I can help you with some of your studies. English and psychology for sure. and the mental aspect of sports science. Anything you do in the technical side, I am not that good. Bio, math etc – you are way ahead but in English and other similar stuff, I am still relevant and awesome. She was like – no you don’t know things like juxtaposition and stuff. We do analysis of vogue covers and stuff and you are not good for that. I had to tell her, not forcefully of course that I can still help you, but its your call.

Sunday evening at home she comes to me and shows me the explanation of the Vogue covers. She has to analyze them. She and her friend wrote a very superficial analysis of the covers. I explained to them that this was bad shit. I helped her understand core values of Vogue. Then who are on the cover – what is the intended effect of the celebs. What are the personality traits that the celebs lend onto the cover and the articles / themes of the cover? I explained how the Venn diagram of the vogue and the celeb intersection is what the cover is about. I basically took her analysis to a whole new level altogether.

At the end of this – I then told her – I am still relevant in your life kid. I am still relevant.

I have to fight every day. Struggle for being relevant in people’s lives. If you take your role for granted, then you are doomed. Fight every day and stay relevant. Else get consigned to the sides. Same for office, spouse, father, friendship, mentor – whatever shit you do. Stay relevant and keep changing.