00:00Pranam Achharji, I am the father of a high school daughter.
00:05The pressure that she feels is that some of the other girls are more better in,
00:14I am unable to come up with the word adayen.
00:17If I do not know what kind of highness is possible,
00:20then any kind of lowness will become the gold standard for me.
00:25The danger is very real.
00:27Some Pari will become her idol.
00:31I want to be like Pari.
00:32And then she will drop her dancing, her sports, her recitation,
00:36her poems, her elocution, her passion, everything she will drop
00:40and she will just start chasing boyfriends
00:42so that she can stand up to somebody like Pari.
00:45I call these nodes of evil.
00:47They are not too many, but they are highly influential.
00:54Pranam Achharji.
00:57I am the father of a high school daughter.
01:00And I have just one daughter.
01:02And probably I have tried to raise her exactly on the lines that you have always told me.
01:08She is very good at studies.
01:11She is a fantastic dancer.
01:15She completed her Arangetram and graduated in Bharatanatyam already.
01:20She is in her high school basketball team.
01:24She knows how to play musical instruments.
01:29She wins poem competitions every year in her school
01:33and amongst all the regional school districts.
01:38And she was recently selected into one of the top high schools by clearing an entrance exam.
01:48And you won't believe the pressure she has.
01:50Because in the school that she was selected, there are more girls than boys actually.
01:56So the ratio is a little squid.
01:59And the pressure that she feels is that some of the other girls are more better in...
02:10I am unable to come up with the word adayen.
02:13That the other girls have boyfriends in there.
02:17But you know, but she is more focused in all of that thing.
02:20And how do I convince my daughter?
02:23I would say, you know, how do I raise my daughter so that she doesn't feel that pressure?
02:28Even though she is doing better in all the life.
02:32And second thing is just related exactly to that is how women are unable to do is think about it.
02:40At the same time when the soccer world cup was happening last year.
02:44Okay.
02:45Everybody was glued only to the men's Argentina in cricket team and how Messi was playing, which is great.
02:51I'm not I'm not against Messi here.
02:53Okay.
02:54But at the same time, the Indian women's cricket team was also doing really well.
02:59Okay.
03:00And nobody was discussing that at all.
03:02And I feel sometimes it is not.
03:05I feel that women themselves do not watch whether it is women's cricket or women's basketball or any of the women's sports.
03:14The day when women will start watching women's sports and support women's sports activities, they themselves will do well.
03:23So, you know, that's that.
03:26So there are two questions, one at a generic level and one at a personal example level.
03:30That's that's what my question was.
03:33You see, the standards have to be set very high.
03:39It's like when you exercise with 15 kg weights, after that the 5 kg ones just stop mattering.
03:58Because the standards have been raised.
04:02Similarly, she has to be introduced to women who really are worthy of being remembered.
04:14And then her internal standards will rise to a point where she'll stop caring for the stylos and the hipsters.
04:25Otherwise, if she feels that these are the only ones available in her world to compare herself against, obviously she'll feel left behind or disadvantaged.
04:44The standards have to be very, very high.
04:47And why must you allow your environment to dictate your standards?
04:51Let those standards come from books and documentaries and videos and other places, books primarily.
05:00If she, for example, spends an entire week reading the life story of Marie Curie, how after that will she afford to give respect to a certain, let's say, let's say, Pari.
05:21Pari in her class, who is a dimwit from here, but is fantastically regarded because of her body and her style and her dressing and her boyfriends.
05:36After you have been with Curie, how will you respect Pari?
05:42That's why education is the real thing. Give her real solid role models and then she will become not just disregardful but disdainful of all these typical teenagers.
06:11That's what, if I do not know what kind of highness is possible, then any kind of lowness will become the gold standard for me.
06:23That's why reading is so important. Otherwise anybody in your environment will come and influence you and boss you from within.
06:36And it happens a lot in school and in college. Some local kind of stud, just becomes the dominant hero. And who is he? Worthless chap.
06:52But he can take away a very large chunk of your mind and life. We all know of these people from our college days, don't we? Some random worthless fellow, but he dominates the scene in the school, in the college, in the university.
07:09And he dominates it so much that he can influence a lot of his batch mates to take wrong kinds of decisions. Inductive effect, no? One wrong role model, one very wrong kind of, very mediocre but powerful.
07:31Mediocre but powerful and attractive and glitzy. And this fellow becomes the impression creator, the goal setter and he induces a lot of batch mates into the wrong kind of attitudes, lifestyle and ultimately wrong life decisions.
07:55And that can be taken care of very easily. Just give your daughter the right role models. Right role models. Give her great books. See what her preferred mode of assimilation is. If it's visual, take her to the right documentaries, the right movies. See how she likes to absorb information and give that to her.
08:21And there are just so many names, so many names. We have talked of them frequently even on AP Circle. Women worth respecting, women worth even worshipping. And they exist, they have existed in history. Why must we not take note of them? Why must we not introduce those glorious women to our daughters?
08:46But that's not being done. Mainstream education is not doing that. Alright, let fathers and mothers do that. Otherwise, the danger is very real. Some Pari will become her idol. I want to be like Pari. And then she will drop her dancing, her sports, her recitation, her poems, her elocution, her passion, everything she will drop and she will just start chasing boyfriends.
09:15So that she can stand up to somebody like Pari. I call these nodes of evil. They are not too many. But they are highly influential. They set the bar. They have to be fought against.
09:45They have to be fired against. They have to be Cristo. They are not too many. They have to be rescued. But they have to be murdered. But the reality is, yes even teenagers can be evil. A fifteen year old can be evil.
09:58that does not mean that the 15-year-old has to be killed. That means that he has to be corrected.
10:07Maybe, maybe as parents, you and her mother, you need to sit together and first of all figure out
10:14who are the names you must introduce your daughter to. Right?
10:20Is she reading something from Sarojneen Aydoo? If she is interested in Hindi, has she been brought to Mahashwata Devi or Mahadevi Verma?
10:35The names are comparatively fewer when it comes to women. Fewer, but they still exist, don't they?
10:45For 10 male poets, you will have 4 female poets as well and 4 is sufficient.
10:51You introduce her to these 4.
10:54You have freedom fighters, you have scientists, you have politicians, you have sportspersons.
11:00In all walks of human activity, you do have women role models and young girls must be introduced to them.
11:09Otherwise, they will simply chase boyfriends just as boys chase girlfriends.
11:15And they'll dress up and try to act adult and get into all kinds of nonsense.
