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My Goodness, your eyebrows !




Dear daughter,
Of the many words and phrases you've championed in your cute little way "my goodness !" is by far the cutest (yet). I don't know if its your sweet pronunciation of it ( I dare not try to recreate it, lest I spoil it for myself) or its the fact that its a fairly heavy exclamation for shoulders your size. It puts a smile on whomsoever hears it, coming from you, with or without context.

A few days back, we were playing and you uttered these sweet words " my goodness!". I just repeated it, without realising that in doing so I had just lured you (successfully) into our game of 'mine versus yours'. So off you went defending your goodness by saying " No Dad, its my goodness". And we kept at that for a few times, responding with "my goodness".

Suddenly, for no apparent reason, your eyes focussed onto my eyebrows and you burst out saying "Your eyebrows". Immediately, in the flow of our game, I blurted out "your eyebrows, my goodness!". Without skipping a beat, you went on to repeat "your eyebrows, my goodness"
And so the game went for a while.

Dear daughter, while that was a fun little im-promptu game, without much rhyme or reason, there is a battle between goodness and eyebrows as old as civilisation and as pervasive as bad breadth. For every time there is a hint of your goodness, you would notice someone else's eyebrows arching up to take aim at you. Especially in this world of ever more disconnected discussions and expressions. Opinions are cheap, words even cheaper and intellect as precious as the sorcerer's stone.

Your dad's way of life and humble advice would be to go back to that little game of ours - trust and follow the good-ness of your own heart and politely but firmly ask the raised eyebrows to stay with the eye of the beholder.
There is a little phrase in India - हम नहीं चंगे, बुरा नहीं कोई - loosely translated, "I'm no saint but no one is evil"

People are not evil but more often than not, they have agendas to either see you weak or get you to succumb to their own convictions. Listen to them but believe your own instincts.

Your good-ness, your own common sense is the best friend you'll ever get.

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