New Delhi- The father who had decided he would have only one child is now saying, “I wish I had one more daughter.” K. Sharad Haksar of Chennai wrote an open message to Neha Bora, the JNU researcher who fasted for 23 days over the NEET paper leak in July this year. The message, which came to light through a post by senior advocate and activist Prashant Bhushan, is moving many people on social media.

Haksar writes that when he got married, he had decided he wanted only one child, and in his heart he hoped for a girl. He was blessed with a daughter. When he first held her, he made a silent promise: she would never have to share his time or wait for his attention.

He had seen families with four or five children, where parents ran from morning to night and still some child was left waiting. He also felt the country’s population was too large and that nature was paying the price. One child felt responsible to him. For years, he never questioned that decision.

Haksar says that this year he read about Neha Bora, 29, a PhD student at JNU and a theatre artist from Khatima, a small hill town in Uttarakhand. After the NEET paper leak, she sat down at Jantar Mantar for students she did not even know: children who had studied for years, and parents who had spent their savings on coaching and still lost.

Neha went without food for 23 days. She weighed 66 kilos when she began and lost more than 7. Near the end, doctors were drawing her blood three or four times a day.

Haksar writes that he could not sleep the night he read this. He kept seeing his own daughter in her place, on a hot Delhi road, thin and tired, with a doctor holding her wrist. He says he could not have stood there and watched, and would have begged her to stop. But Neha did not stop until the work was done.

After the fast ended, Neha said her body had forgotten how to eat and would have to learn again, like a baby. Even then, still weak, she did not go home to rest. She went to Bihar to meet more than 600 arrested students who had stood by her.

Haksar notes that Neha’s father was in the Army and the family kept moving from one posting to the next. His wife’s father was also in the Army, and he never calls him father-in-law, only “Papa.” His wife studied in 13 schools: 13 first days, 13 times walking into a class where nobody knew her name, and 13 goodbyes to friends she never saw again.

Army children, he says, learn to smile, pack their bags and start again, and nobody asks how much it hurts. He sees that same strength in his wife every day, and he saw it in Neha too.

In Ranchi, Haksar writes, a man threw ink on Neha’s face and called her anti-national. She replied that she had already faced pellets and lathis in Delhi, and ink would not scare her.

In Haksar’s words, ink washes off. In energy work, he says, what people throw at you stays only if you take it in. Neha seems to know this without ever holding a pendulum.

Neha’s family did not agree with her path, and there were fights at home. But during the hunger strike, her mother came to Jantar Mantar. Haksar says he does not know what they said to each other and does not need to. As a parent, he knows what a mother feels on seeing her child weak and thin on a road, and still standing. Every argument is forgotten, and all that is left is: this is my child.

Neha has said she has not yet spoken to her father. Haksar writes that he does not know the man, but as a father he knows how hard it is for men like them to say some things out loud. So, he says, if the father cannot say it yet, he will say it for him, from Chennai:

“Beta, we are proud of you. Now go and eat something properly.”

“I wish I had one more daughter”

Haksar admits that a thought came to him that he never expected: he wishes he had one more daughter, one like Neha. He is clear that this takes nothing away from his own daughter, who is his world and always will be.

But Neha made him ask himself a hard question. We spend our whole lives keeping our children safe and helping them get ahead, but do we ever teach them to look back at who is being left behind? And if one day they stand up for someone else, will we stand next to them as Neha’s mother did, or will we ask them to come home and stay quiet?

Our job, he writes, is to protect that light, even when it scares us.