Vivek was in the midst of his senior secondary examinations. As I pulled up to our house in my Maruti Omni, I spotted him on the pavement, puffing on a cigarette. My immediate reaction was to look away and carry on driving.
Later, I told my wife what I had seen. She simply said, "Leave it be." And we did, for nearly twenty-five years. Then, at one of his birthday gatherings, his wife brought up our silence that day, mentioning that it was something Vivek had grappled with himself. We had let it pass at the time, convinced it was his first and last cigarette. Indeed, it was.
Looking back, I believe our trust in him was not misplaced. Decades later, Vivek told us that although the examinations had left him deeply stressed, he had known all along that studying was the only way forward.