Frank “My Way” Sinatra and Rhea’s new school

Rhea, my daughter; joined school recently. That in it may be routine; but not our experience. Outside the school, all of us parents may weigh ourselves in the usual social hierarchy…jobs, money, status, car, education, till you find yourselves in the same queue outside the school. The line that puts us all into place…a very humble place. A place where we all look at the school building, then at our children, and then towards the sky, asking for help.

Both my wife and I are non-believers, which puts us in a rather strange position in such circumstances. We have nobody to pray to, and so the results of what we do fall squarely back on us. We applied only to one school in Dehradun (against every advice), avoiding even the ones we ourselves studied in. We stood in front of the gates of the each school when kids walked out, and counted the number of smiling children. The highest scoring school got our kid. Our worry of course was, what if? Lucky she got in, lucky that we didn’t apply elsewhere. And imagine our added joy, when the principal asked Rhea how her first day was, and bang came her convincing reply “nice, very nice”. She was smiling; and we continue to be non-believers.

I grew up on Frank Sinatra and still have a photo of his on my visiting cards, and the following words from his song ; ‘My Way” on my desktop:
“I've lived a life that's full -
I've traveled each and every highway.
And more, much more than this,
I did it my way.”
The question is, is there any other way to smiles?

Vineet Panchhi owns and runs Audio Wagon, his lifelong passion and now a music company. He blogs at Unplanned Journeys , and can be reached at: vineet.panchhi@audiowagon.com