I returned home at 2 AM. My parents were waiting, the food still warm, the dining table quietly set for me. I ate a little. When my mother said I should take care of my health, I burst out, telling them they could not possibly understand what an IT job was like. After I calmed down, I said I was tired, and went to bed.
My parents finished the meal together and spoke softly about how hard I was working, how I must take care of my health. What they did not speak about, and this is the part that stays with me, is how much I had hurt them that night.
This was the story I wrote in February 2011. I wrote it as an observer. I was not yet the father watching the clock for his child to come home. Now I am.
The Shawl
My father once shared a story I have never forgotten.
A young man was going to be felicitated at a public function. He had bought new shoes for the occasion. As he stepped out, his father noticed the cold and went inside to fetch his most prized Kashmiri shawl: the one he had never let anyone else use, not even his wife. He handed it to his son without ceremony.
The son took it, said goodbye, and walked to the venue. A patch of mud splashed on his new shoes. Without a second thought, he pulled the shawl from his shoulders and wiped them clean with the inner lining.
This is how much weight we give to what we own, compared to what we have been given.
My father told me this story because he saw me doing the same thing: in different ways, with different shawls, on different mornings.
Observer’s View
The son in the first story is not a villain. He is simply someone who has not yet developed the capacity for gratitude that comes only through loss, or through becoming a parent yourself.
I see this pattern in professional life too. The team member who inherits a well-built codebase and refactors it without once asking why the original design was made that way. The manager who takes over a high-performing team and restructures it within a quarter, without sitting with what made it work. The leader who benefits from the institutional knowledge of a long-serving colleague and quietly treats it as a given.
We use the shawl to wipe our shoes. We do not even notice we are doing it.
The Age-Wise Reckoning
There is a pattern I included in the original post that I keep returning to:
Age 5: My parents know everything. Age 10: My parents know a lot. Age 15: My parents know nothing. Age 25: My parents know a little bit. Age 35: My parents know a lot. Age 45: I wish I could ask my parents. They knew everything.
Life gives us opportunities to say thank you. But those opportunities are time-bound. Miss them, and the window closes quietly, without announcement.
I am at the age where the list of things I want to tell my parents keeps growing. And I am fortunate, still, to be able to tell them.
Today, when my children are old enough to make their own decisions, and they feel we cannot understand what they are going through, or why they are doing what they are doing, or why I should step back and not ask questions, I understand. I understand this process and its cycles.
My wife asked me recently: then what should we do? I said: nothing. Just sit back, relax, and watch the cycle take its turn, as it has for millennia.
A Question Worth Sitting With
Whose shawl are you using right now, at work, at home, in life, without recognising it for what it is? And is there still time to say something about it?
Originally written in February 2011. Republished with a son’s reflection, and a father’s gratitude, 2025.