It is 12pm IST. I am outside one of the most renowned schools in the city which also happens to be my 14 year old daughter’s alma mater. The road outside the main gate is lined with cars manned by chauffeurs, some in crisp white uniforms and other more informally dressed. I am waiting in my car for my daughter this afternoon as I was informed that she was unwell. The frequency of these calls has reduced drastically in the recent past and they don’t have the same effect on me anymore. That is to say, they don’t scare or bother the mother in me any longer. If you are/have been a parent to a teenager, you would understand my anxiety. Drishti, our only daughter had always been a happy child. She loved people! At the age of 2, we decided to enroll her in a play school for her love of company. I distinctly remember another senior mom “warning” me then that as children grow, they evolve and their likes-dislikes change constantly. But none of these casual waiting-lounge chats had ever prepared or forewarned me about the unexplained transformation of this full-of-life toddler into a withdrawn, body conscious 10 year old. Her father and I constantly struggled to understand if it was a consequence of our (flawed) upbringing or was there an external stimulus. Answers did not come easy. And almost never from Drishti. Silence was her constant companion. While most in our peer group encouraged us to talk more and create avenues for sharing, our interactions continued to be monologues and extremely exhausting ones sucking out every bit of optimism from our aching hearts. Our little girl no longer allowed us inside the confines of her self-imposed solitude. To our horror, we discovered that her social interactions were limited even at school. Life went on at a very slow pace inching from days when she refused to go to school to others where we were summoned to pick her up as she was not feeling too well at school. It was during one such visit that a well meaning teacher mentioned about a child counsellor who had just joined the school and was known for his work with “young minds” – as he referred to them. We met him and shared our concerns after which he instantly offered to help. His prognosis was too simple to accept – Drishti was “bored” and her weight added to her woes when it came to bonding with physique conscious classmates of hers. She needed some kind of an anchor in life to hold her interest and to make her look forward to things and life, at large. It took some time for us to accept that there was no real issue with our daughter. It happens! In a world where words like “depression” have become a part of our living room conversations, simpler problems pose a bigger challenge. Because one struggles for solutions. It if were something like depression, a therapist would have helped. But what do you do if you were told that your child was plain “bored”? We did not know the answers too. The counsellor at school advised us to help our daughter add more meaning to her life. We heard the word “passion” multiple times during our chats with him. I could not think beyond gadgets as she had never shown much interest in sports or music or even painting! We have not been the kind of parents who enroll their child in activity classes for the heck of it. This had possibly prevented her from exploring and discovering her passion. The need to act urgently beckoned us. But we seemed to be a hitting a dead end. Drishti kept refusing to co-operate showing no interest in almost all options we came up with. The counsellor meanwhile proposed a two pronged approach – one for her heart n the other for her health (read weight issues). Having sensed our anxiety, one day during our drive back from school, Drishti hinted upon exploring karate as what she had heard about it at school appealed to her. The implicit need to get comfortable with her own body finally seemed to get the better of her. I was thrilled… My baby wanted to fight! But the matter of heart took longer… Much longer than we expected. Drishti had been demanding a new mobile phone for a while now. She seemed unhappy with limited storage on her existing handset and was always clearing her phone’s storage. More than chatting or surfing, Drishti had used it primarily to click pictures. I managed a sneak peek into her phone’s gallery and these pics were waiting to be revealed..