the relief of not knowing
It arrives around age eight or nine: the question you cannot answer. Why is the sky dark at night if there are so many stars? What was before the universe? The child asks it from the back seat, between two entirely ordinary questions, and something in the parental chest tightens.
The tightening is worth examining. Somewhere we absorbed the idea that the licence to raise children includes an answer key — that "I don't know" will cost us something. Authority, perhaps. The child's confidence in us, perhaps.
The opposite is true, and the discovery is a relief on both sides of the back seat. Pata nahin — chalo, dekhte hain. I don't know — come, let us find out. Said cheerfully, it does two large things at once. It shows the child that not-knowing is a normal, walkable country — not a shame to be hidden but a place everyone lives most of the time. And it promotes them, instantly, from audience to expedition partner.
A child who has never once seen an adult not know something can draw only one conclusion about their own daily fog of not-knowing: that something is wrong with them specifically. The three words dissolve it.
Somewhere this week, the question will come. You are now free to be delighted instead of cornered — the honest answer was always the more interesting road anyway.