Failure is not something to be dreaded but appreciated as it hides the ladder to success, papa would tell me to soothe my despondent mood. And if this bit of psychotherapy didn’t work, he would say failure is propellant and success stagnant. Did these clichés have any therapeutic value or did they reflect a transcendental truth that lay beyond my mental boundary? I could never discern.

My grade VII exam results were dreadful. I had terrible jitters walking to school for the report card with papa. Though I put a brave face, maintained an impressive exterior, my heart was pounding with fear. The class teacher scanned the mark-sheet and curled her lips at me which was enough to send a chill down my spine. “Prerana fared badly. She should work hard” were her consoling words. I stood dumbfounded, my heart sinking. My exterior had become gloomy by now. A terrible sense of anguish engulfed me. I felt like a thief about to be guillotined for stealing the queen’s necklace.

I wished if the earth could tear open and swallow me as it had devoured Sita, Ram’s consort. My sorrows would only aggravate the longer I stayed at school. I could hear my exultant classmates frisking about and congratulating each other. I stood like a statue with my feet nailed down to the ground. I had neither the energy nor the courage to move.

I returned to my senses after an affectionate pat on my shoulder from papa.

I raised my eyes to meet his. My eyelids were struggling hard to hold back the tears. A single word of compassion or sympathy from papa would have broken me down.

Papa knew how to handle children’s sensibilities. I had noticed this for umpteen times. He put his hands on my shoulder and we walked briskly to the gate where his bike was parked. Not a word was uttered. We sped away. Papa was in such a hurry that I thought he had an important rendezvous. But we had not been on the road long before he turned his bike towards a cafe.

There, comfortably seated on the open-air terrace, he ordered Black Forest and the ice cream of my choice. Then, he said: “Each passing second is new and precious. Do not allow your sterile past ruin your fertile present.”