Long ago, for some work, I went to Shivaji Park in Mumbai, from where players like Sachin Tendulkar have emerged. For this reason, the mother of every child who comes here for cricket coaching started seeing ‘Sachin’ in her child. She would sit on the sidewall for hours until her son completed his practice. There I heard a mother shouting towards her son, ‘Go…run…you can.’ As soon as the child reached the bowling end and completed the first run at Shivaji Park, which the mother was recording the video of, he looked towards the mother for praise. As soon as the mother reacted, the boy left his place and ran towards the mother as if he had achieved something great and asked for water to drink. You should have seen the eyes of other parents, which were fixed on the mother. Whereas the mother’s eyes were constantly warning the son not to do so. The coach knew that if even one child ignored his instructions, chaos would soon spread across the field. That mother was caught between two competing emotions of parenting at that time. On one hand, she wanted to see her son in the number 10 T-shirt one day, and everyone has the right to have such a dream. On the other hand, as a mother, she wanted to test whether her son could learn this difficult game while standing in the scorching heat. Later the coach told me that the kid finally got out of cricket coaching and started playing tennis in the indoor stadium. Then I imagined the mother now dreaming of her child becoming Roger Federer – a quiet but brilliant player who has won many titles. I remembered this incident when on Monday I met Arpit, Durgesh, Aman, Nilesh, Jaideep and Vishal and 10 other students in a leading university. All six had one thing in common – they came from farming families and were probably the first graduates in their families. He was brought before me to give direction to the lives of those 16 students, who were wandering here and there without understanding what they had to achieve after graduation. As soon as I entered their room, I realized that these boys were wearing ‘dandelion crown’. The meaning of ‘crown of dandelion’ in this English idiom can be divided into two main topics. First- Dandelions are very strong and the first plants to grow anywhere. They even break through concrete and grow. In Ayurveda it is called Dudhfeni or Dandelion. And second, in the cold, mountainous regions where it is most commonly found, poor children can be seen wearing crowns made of its flowers and playing the game of king and queen. Thus they celebrate the struggles, joys and emotional peace of life. It reminds me of the carefree days of spring in my childhood. Wearing it is like an invitation to play, relaxation and reconnecting with your natural self. For those 16 students, reaching such a big university was an achievement, just like after scoring a run in Shivaji Park, that child felt that now he was entitled to a glass of water and left the serious game in the middle and ran towards his mother. I had to spend 90 minutes with those 16 students and explain to them that they would be judged only on the results of the next three years. When he promised that he would make significant progress in the coming months and would keep in touch with me, I felt that my words had made a good impression on him. The bottom line is that students ‘wear the dandelion crown’ even on small achievements because we parents constantly expect them to perform. Whereas in such times one should remain calm and say that ‘this is the first step towards success.’
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N. Raghuraman’s Column: Why do children wear ‘dandelion crown’ on small achievements?
