Some Things Never Change

How things change but still essentially remain the same....

?I still remember it was afternoon of 9th May 1994 when I had just come back from office and along with my mom was getting ready for lunch time waiting for my dad who would come home for lunch around 1 pm... I was staying with them at Amritsar post my engineering and was doing a bit job while preparing to chart future path in my career...

?Around 12.30 pm, we heard our doorbell and saw a courier guy on our well-guarded doorstep... well-guarded as those were days post terrorism days at Punjab and my dad, who was a senior bureaucrat, was given armed security at home as well as at his office...

?I received the courier and opened the envelope as it was addressed to me... and lo behold, it was my final offer letter to join the haloed precincts of an IIM... the dream that I had been living for last 2 years. While my mom was still soaking in happiness with me, I decided that I needed to share it in person with my dad...

?I took out the car that was our prized possession... a green colour Maruti 800 that had come a few years back on my mom’s birthday... my dad’s office was hardly a few minutes’ drive but that seemed like some distance that day...

?When I reached the heavily guarded office of my dad, I got a walk through because of our green Maruti and when I walked into his office, his assistant gave me a happy smile and understanding my eagerness to meet him, let me go into his office though there was a meeting going on...

?I still remember when i entered my dad’s plush office, he was seated on his chair holding an important meeting with his directs of 4-5 senior officials. I waved the offer letter excitedly from the entry... I still can vividly recall that he immediately left his meeting and came towards me in an equal, if not more, childlike excitement as me and hugged me in fatherly appreciation & contentment of a lifetime. His colleagues were equally happy and congratulated me partly to please my dad but partly also as they too could not control their excitement at what was happening in the midst of a serious meeting.

?The official meeting ended almost abruptly and very soon I was on my way back home with my dad to have lunch at home with my mom who was waiting eagerly for the two of us to come back.

?Cut to 9th June 2021, I am sitting in my chair working on my laptop when my elder daughter walks in announcing that NIFT merit list has been announced & is available on the portal. Excitedly, she tries to log in using her phone but the network is poor. I tell her to hold on & jump into NIFT portal using my laptop. In great excitement, I enter her roll number instead of date of birth and was unable to login. But soon, we composed our wits and entered the right credentials to get to the dashboard.... But before I could realise, I heard a loud squeal and saw my daughter sitting on the floor crying with happiness. A quick look at dashboard & it hit me that she had scored one of the top most ranks in her NIFT entrance which would make sure that she will get into the best of the campuses with the choicest of courses that she wanted to opt for. Within a few seconds, my wife & my younger daughter too had gathered there with all of us hugging each other... and soon we found our pup too joining us & jumping in joy trying to hug all of us with equal, if not more, feverish excitement.

?Today, when she got her final offer letter, I looked back at what my daughter & in turn all of us have gone through while getting to know of the news of her stepping into her dream institute... memories of almost 3 decades ago came rushing back... the same excitement and same happiness all around the house... and I was left wondering that ‘some things never change...’