'Sitaaron Se Aage...': If Fathers Could Say What Their Children Need to Hear

Read an imagined letter from a father to a son, written in the kind of language children might wish to hear.

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India has the world’s largest youth population, with over 360 million people between the ages of 15 and 29. According to the 2026 Status of India Working Report, the number of young graduates in India increased from approximately 5 million in 1983 to 63 million in 2023. However, employment opportunities have not kept pace with this growth. The transition from education to employment remains difficult, especially for graduates.

The education system is so ill-equipped that it cannot supply employable new labour.

Unemployment rates among the youth are nearly four times higher than those among the non-youth. Graduate unemployment among people below the age of 25 years is now close to 40 percent. The above-mentioned report states that 1.1 million out of 6.3 percent graduates aged between 20 and 29 were employed in 2023.

The precarity of youth can be gauged from the fact that barely 3.7 percent of graduates or post-graduates landed white-collar work, and only 7 percent could secure permanent salaried jobs. When young graduates are confronted with the fact that their unemployment rate stands at 29.1 percent as compared to just 3.4 percent among illiterate youth, the sheer demoralising impact cannot be overstated.

In this context, the pressure on young students to excel in competitive examinations to secure limited seats in government colleges is debilitating. Parental support and validation are of great importance in this regard, irrespective of what and how much children achieve.

Below is an imagined letter from a father to a son, written in the kind of language children might wish to hear from their parents—a vocabulary that allows them to feel intimate, validated, and accepted just as they are.

I really wanted you to become a doctor. To do, in part, what I could not do and wanted to do. However, never for vanity or stardust on loan. I have always been my own person, and I wanted you to become one, too.

I used to think I was a man advanced in age and perhaps wisdom too; but witnessing your struggle to become a doctor has enlightened me. I have become wiser than any book could make me.

A father’s love for his children is more ancient than any profession. It goes back to the time when God took a pledge on the site of Arwah from all the souls to come on earth. As your father, I will feed and care for you even if you do not buck up. However, when I saw you lift yourself up, I saw courage right there. Often, only the bold and boisterous courage of the winner is registered. But what about the courage of the crestfallen?

Is courage only about pushing and steamrolling one’s way to victory? It is also about pushing against inertia, morning blues, and automatic negative thoughts, even as one lies crushed on the ground. When I saw that you could keep your head when all others were doubting you, it dawned on me that your integrity will always hold you in good stead by keeping your heart warm, your back straight, and your feet anchored.

To be trailing and left behind, to have lost something and someone, and to wonder about what could have been. However, it fell upon you to stomach this loss, and your achievement was in forging a path ahead by reconciling with the bitter reality. It takes character to bear this kind of grief.

You have passed a much bigger test than a mere standardised test. A day will come when others will look up to you for courage and direction, and you will not have to prompt ChatGPT when your own children seek your help in writing a paragraph on bravery.

You were afraid to approach me when the results were announced. Even then, I could sense that you were more worried about my nerves than your own embarrassment, and something shifted inside me. This precarity bred an intimacy that we never had.

The proximity that was never enjoyed in regular days was forged in the throes of the sifting of fidelity: what was loved more, the man or his achievement? I am proud that you emerged as a man who can stare failure directly in the eye, outwit the naysayers, and eventually become a useful person. To be successful is to be a person of value.

Moreover, you do not have to prove your very existence on an OMR sheet. My love for you is not contingent on your capacity to solve a couple of multiple-choice questions. If a father’s love becomes expedient, what is such a success, devoid as it is of innocence and spontaneity? You are my drop and my clot. Never doubt its pull. Do not take this as a platitude, as I do not ask you to settle for less. Nor is it my intention to pacify your jangled nerves. All I ask of you is to never indulge in self-pity and keep looking for your path until you find one with all sincerity and integrity. The white of the coat and the blue of the collar do not matter!

It is enough for me that you are alive and still lead me in the night prayers of Ramadan. I thank God that I enjoy your mischief and innocence, for what joy remains in a world where you do not smile and beckon me with that vulnerability. Everything comes and goes, but life must prevail.

Parental love is not something that one deserves. It is something inalienable that attaches to every child, just as dignity attaches to every individual, irrespective of their endowments or possessions. Beyond the curtains of success and failure, there is a valley where I hear your laughter roaring through, bearing testimony to the event when a boy cried, then sobbed, then wailed, and got up in the end. To quote renowned poet and philosopher Allama Muhammad Iqbal:

Kya hua jo khasara hua,

Ye jo taaj tumhara na hua,

Sitaaron se aage jahan aur bhi hain,

Abhi ishq ke imtihaan aur bhi hain.

(Obaid Farooqui is a research scholar in the Department of Sociology, University of Hyderabad. He frequently writes mystical poems and memoirs in private and is planning to come up with a blog of his own. This is an opinion piece, and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)