Vedika

I was eight years old the first time I decided to be the smartest person in every room I would ever walk into. I didn't think of it that way then. I just thought I was making a promise to myself that I would never be humiliated like that again.

My father was preparing me and my best friend for a state scholarship exam. He was my first teacher since I was three, we would stay up late together solving math puzzles and talking about the world. I loved it. Being in that room with him, learning, felt like the safest place. Until one afternoon, it didn't.

I misspelled a word. He asked my friend to correct me. And then he caned my palm until I got it right in front of the person I trusted most, beside the person I least wanted to fail in front of.

What followed was not a breakdown. It was a decision: I would become so intelligent that nobody could ever make me feel small again. I would know everything. I would impress everyone. I would never be caught not knowing.

"In trying never to appear dumb, I stopped being curious. And in stopping being curious, I slowly became what I feared most."

In 2020, I was doing a program for life that asked me to look at the stories I had been carrying the ones that were quietly running my life. This was one of them. That week, I also had COVID, isolated in a room, with nothing but time and a lot I'd been avoiding. I video-called my father and read him what I had written. This is the letter I wrote to him.

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Dear Baba,

I held your punishment and discipline so harshly over the years, and gradually started to go away from you, thinking that you are a threat to me and I need to protect myself by keeping myself away from you.

However I never realised the depth of love and care that must have existed behind such a harsh punishment.

That you were so committed to my excellence that it didn’t matter if I hated you for it.

You would still stand, and stand firm, for what you believed was the best for me.

"Whether correct or incorrect, your actions were only driven by deep love and commitment for your child's life."You would still

I forgive you for punishing and disciplining me, for having humiliated me in front of my friend. I see now the truth of where it all came from. I have much to ask forgiveness for. I have behaved deplorably — acting obedient and loving on the outside, while holding so much fear and anger against you in my heart. I'm sorry for holding onto this resentment for so long, and going away from you. I forgive myself for limiting my own intelligence for killing my curiosity, all born out of the fear that my questions would make me seem dumb. In the process, I became dumb. I forgive myself for distancing myself from people out of the fear that I'd be outed as dumb.

"The freedom I experience: the freedom to ask questions, to be curious."

The skill I am creating - Learning

When I learn, others can learn with me. When I teach, there is always a limit my knowledge will always be limited. But if I can learn with others and ask questions, then anything can be learnt and created.