Ask my bodyguards, my assistants or the cat outside our office. All of them will agree that Shora is charmingly bossy. So imagine my distress when out of the blue, my tiny chatterbox shuts down and becomes withdrawn. Moreover, she began to visit the bathroom at an alarming frequency. I asked Aaliya what was wrong. Being too caught up with our second child, Yani, who was then an infant, as well as our firstborn, Aaliya had no mind space to register this as being odd. Exhaustedly, she passed it off as being perhaps another phase in a child’s growth. But I could not ignore it so easily. This oddness gnawed at me. Investigation revealed that her teacher used to scold her and had recently resorted to hitting her. I was shocked. This was not the sarkari school in Budhana. This was one of the best schools in Mumbai. It was not just my daughter, the teacher took out her temper on several children. So, we parents complained collectively to the principal. The matter was taken care of. Slowly, Shora emerged from her shell and was back to her old vivacious self, bossing everyone in sight. I cannot express how relieved I was to get my naughty Miss Bossypants back.
I was especially cautious because there had been another brief period of time when she had become a withdrawn child. Aaliya and I had quarrelled once again over something petty and again she had left the house. We lived separately in Mumbai for about six months or so. Shora was approximately a year and a half old. I used to go visit my wife very often, especially for Shora. Whenever it was time for me to leave, she would stand at the door with her arms spread out barricading the door with her body as I wore my shoes. There was so much agony in her big, pleading eyes. There was so much sorrow on her baby face that it had shrunk and become like a tiny animal’s. It broke my heart. I made amends with Aaliya and begged her to return home because we could not do this to our daughter, we could not live separately and watch her wither due to our egos. She agreed.
When she returned home, my little girl was back to her confident best almost overnight. She developed a deep sense of security which became obvious in her eyes, in her gait. She became the bossy Shora everybody knows today. What if Aaliya and I had not buried our differences? What if we had not come back together? I shudder to think about it. Then this hyper-confident daughter of ours would most likely have become a depressed, withdrawn child. The nature of a child’s mind is determined tremendously by her nurture, her environment. The foundations are laid during those early years and make their personality for life.
Today Shora is a leader. She thinks she is special. The realization that she is a star’s child is slowly sinking into her. The privilege it brings is slowly dawning upon her. She sees everybody talking about her father. But I keep insisting that she lead a normal life. That she travel by bus or an autorickshaw or even walk instead of taking a luxurious car every time she needs to go somewhere. She should not be born into privilege. She must work hard and find her own place, just like we did. I keep telling her tales of Budhana where we hailed from of just how hard I have worked and how she too needs to work hard to carve a place for herself. Diligence is sacred, perhaps the most sacred thing in the world.
Fortunately, she is very disciplined. Perhaps it helps that in our world where the norm is to rise late in the morning, all of us are early risers, welcoming the dawn at around six. Even on days when there is no shoot or school, we wake up very early. The habit that Ammi instilled in me which I passed on to my brothers is now being relayed to the next generation of Siddiquis. It sounds trivial but it makes a huge difference to the day, to one’s productivity. The best way to train your children is to become an example they can follow. Seeing how hard I work and how deeply disciplined I am about my work, is helping her to imbibe this quality.
When she saw the film Dangal, like so many girls in India, she too was inspired. She wanted to become a wrestler and practised for hours on me. She fought me for hours, ensuring that no matter what, she would not let her back touch the ground (as she had learnt from the film) because it meant defeat. She is an extremely active child, a powerhouse of physical energy inherited from her mother’s tireless, resilient physical vigour and sporty genes. For up to four hours, Shora used to wrestle with me in the name of honing her craft. My nicotine-filled lungs have stained my own history of pehelwani. So I would get exhausted but she would not.
I don’t want Shora to grow up in the air of Bollywood. Our home has no whiff of it. There are no posters, no talk of films. I want her to grow up just like any other child, and with a lot of options to choose whichever field she is drawn towards. For instance, these days
