Abdul Rahman (name changed) was a man shaped by routine and restraint, raised in an era when endurance was praised and emotional excess was quietly discouraged. He had grown up believing that fatigue was physical, not mental, and that hardship could always be overcome by discipline. Complaints were luxuries; survival required grit. These beliefs were not cruel in his mind. They were protective, inherited wisdom passed down from fathers to sons, polished by time and necessity. His son, Ayaan (name changed) was twenty three years old. When Abdul Rahman was of that age, he was newly married, working long shifts at a local manufacturing unit, saving every rupee he could. Ayaan’s life did not resemble that road. He held a university degree that remained unused, framed not on a wall but buried in a drawer. His days were irregular, his sleep fragmented. He delivered food through a mobile app, drove for hours and returned home exhausted. To Abdul Rahman, it looked like idleness. He saw a young man who woke late, lacked urgency and appeared content doing work that did not build status or security. He mistook withdrawal for apathy and quiet for comfort. What he did not see was a mind in constant motion, measuring failure in automated rejection emails, counting losses in unpaid internships, watching opportunity retreat behind invisible digital gates. Their conversations followed a familiar pattern, and criticism was its constant rhythm.
Abdul Rahman corrected Ayaan the way one corrects a habit—frequently, automatically, without malice but without pause. If Ayaan slept late, Abdul Rahman remarked on wasted mornings. If he woke early, Abdul Rahman asked why it had taken so long to develop discipline. If Ayaan mentioned an interview, Abdul Rahman asked why it had not already turned into an offer. If days passed without news, Abdul Rahman warned him that employers sensed hesitation. Criticism threaded itself into ordinary moments.
At the dining table, Abdul Rahman commented on Ayaan’s posture, his silence, his distracted gaze. While watching the news, he spoke aloud about young people who lacked resilience. When neighbours’ children succeeded, Abdul Rahman mentioned it casually, as if observation were not comparison. He believed these remarks were guidance. He believed repetition would harden resolve. He did not notice how each comment, small on its own, accumulated into a weight Ayaan carried quietly. Abdul Rahman spoke of responsibility, self-respect, and perseverance. Ayaan listened. When he spoke, his words were careful, often apologetic. He mentioned about the job market, the cost of rent, the impossibility of entry-level roles demanding years of experience. He spoke of applications sent daily, of interviews that never came, of wages that dissolved into fuel costs and loan interest.
Abdul Rahman heard these explanations as excuses, shaped by a generation he believed had grown too comfortable blaming systems instead of confronting them. He reminded Ayaan of his own youth. Of the years when men did not talk about anxiety, when security came from loyalty to a company, when homes were modest but attainable. He spoke of a time when hard work felt like a contract with the future. Ayaan did not argue. He rarely raised his voice. His resistance took the form of silence, a silence Abdul Rahman misread as indifference.
One day Ayaan was sitting in a kitchen. Abdul Rahman asked if Ayaan had just woken up. The irritation rose easily, practiced by repetition. Ayaan replied that he had just returned from work. He had been making deliveries since morning. The word work landed poorly. Abdul Rahman dismissed it without meaning. Delivery driving was not a future; it was a pause. He spoke sarcastically, comparing it to a hobby, measuring it against the milestones he himself had reached by that age. He spoke of marriage, responsibility, and independence. He asked why Ayaan could not even cover his own fuel expenses. Ayaan placed the spoon down carefully without even touching the food, he was fed up with these unsolicited advices. He felt an uninvited guest in his own home. He looked thinner than Abdul Rahman remembered, his face pale, his posture slightly folded inward. He spoke about employers who wanted experience no fresh graduate could possibly have. He spoke of trying, of running from pillar to post in search of a job which never was offered. Abdul Rahman interrupted him. He said the math always worked if effort was honest. He said hardship was not new. He dismissed the idea that the present was uniquely difficult. He compared eras as if they shared the same terrain. When Ayaan said he was tired, Abdul Rahman reacted with disbelief.
Tiredness, to him, was earned on factory floors and construction sites, not in working as a delivery boy. He criticized Ayaan in front of his uncle and aunt. Tears stared rolling down and he felt deeply hurt. He had an unpunctuated faith in his papa and expected that he will voice his concern and defend him when others choose to be the mute spectators. With his limited income he had brought winter cap and gloves for his father it was shelved with a cold and unappreciative response. The kitchen fell quiet. Ayaan did not defend himself. He did not explain that his exhaustion lived in his thoughts, not his muscles. He did not say that waking each day felt like dragging himself through invisible mud. Instead, he apologized. He said he was sorry for not being the son his father had been at that age. He said he was sorry that the world no longer responded to effort the same way. Then he hugged his father. It was not a strong embrace. It was a surrender of weight, a brief resting of a tired body against someone he still hoped might understand. He promised he would not be a burden anymore. Abdul Rahman went to bed that night believing he had succeeded as a father. He believed firmness was love. The next morning, the silence felt different. Abdul Rahman woke early, ready to force a new beginning. He planned to take Ayaan with him, to search for work face to face, the way things used to be done. He knocked on the basement door. He called out. There was no response.
On the pillow lay Ayaan’s phone and a folded piece of paper. Fear arrived before comprehension. The note explained everything Abdul Rahman had refused to hear while there was still time. He wrote that he had no fight left. By the time Abdul Rahman reached the old bridge, the truth had already hardened into reality. Emergency lights reflected off the river. Ayaan’s dead body was being fished from the river. In the months that followed, people offered comfort in familiar phrases. Abdul Rahman listened politely. Slowly but painfully, Abdul Rahman understood that Ayaan had not been weak. He had been weighed down. Ayaan’s tiredness had been a warning, not a flaw. Six months passed.
On Fridays Abdul Rahman visited the grave of his son and spoke aloud, recounting ordinary things he once took for granted. He apologized repeatedly, though apology could no longer repair anything. He began to see Ayaan everywhere—in young men working endlessly without progress, in graduates burdened by debt, in faces lit by screens and isolated by circumstance. He recognized a generation pushed to run faster on a road that no longer led forward. Silence, he learned, is never empty. It carries unsaid fears, unmet needs, and quiet desperation. It demands to be noticed before it becomes absence. Abdul Rahman no longer believes that toughness alone builds character. He believes compassion is its companion. He believes presence matters more than lectures, and understanding more than pride. At the factory, Abdul Rahman began noticing younger workers differently. There was Zoya, a graduate working below her qualification, quietly sending small money home each month which was appreciated by her parents. Her exhaustion mirrored what he had dismissed in Ayaan. As Abdul Rahman walks back through the gate, one truth follows him home, heavier and clearer with time: a struggling, imperfect, living child is worth infinitely more than any lesson proven too late.
Listen to the silence—before it becomes eternal.
Dr Showkat Rashid Wani, Senior Coordinator, Centre for Distance & Online Education University of Kashmir
