“I keep telling my children, ‘You are my real wealth.’ My husband always makes fun of me at this by saying, ‘Great then you must have the BSES bills and all of that covered’,” says Shernaz Mehernosh Turel, giggling at the idea like a little kid, a Parsi mother who is more of a friend and less of a parent to her children.

It is on a solid camaraderie that the foundation of their relationship is made, a parenting gem that Shernaz has inherited from her late mother. Like she shares, “My mother gave me the kind of space where I could tell her anything. She knew me so well that she could read it from my body language if something was amiss. During those times, she’d often look at me with an all-knowing grin and say, “You are caught one way or the other. So why don’t you tell the truth right away and save yourself from all the stress?”

She adds, “I have brought up my children exactly that way. We don’t hide anything from each other. I share a very friendly rapport with them. If anything happens, good or bad, they can come and confront me. Similarly, if I have some problem, I do the exact same, reach out to my children, share my problems with them and they solve it for me.”

Shernaz hails from a traditional joint family and thus has seen and learned everything being done with perfection in the traditional Parsi way and has made it a point to pass it on to her children as well. “I come from a very culturally rooted family,” she says as she fondly talks of how the smallest of the occasions or festivals are a matter of celebration, which is never taken lightly in the Turel household. “Everything is done as per the proper Parsi rituals. My children respect and cherish all of these small things as much as I do,” she shares.

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