How society is an invisible editor

When I asked Dr. Shalini Mullick what she saw — not as a neuroscientist, but as a mother —after reading my memoir, ‘Tell My Mother I Like Boys’, I expected observations. She sent me an invitation instead.

She wrote that she would return to certain passages whenever she needed courage, peace or perspective. She told me she had fallen in love not only with the child in those pages, but with the mother raising that child. Then she shared a collection of essays she had written over the years — meditations on parenting, neuroscience and identity. Reading them, I realised that science has quietly begun proving what the best parents have always practised: love is not merely an emotion. It is an environment. It is biology becoming biography.

Her essay, ‘Parental Love: From Poetry to Biology’, begins with ordinary moments that alter extraordinary lives. A child dares to dream aloud. Another is gently corrected into conformity. A sentence here. A silence there. The smallest interactions begin sculpting neural pathways, emotional resilience and a lifelong sense of belonging. Childhood, she reminds us, is not remembered only by the heart. It is recorded by the brain.

As I read her words, I found myself travelling backwards. I was born into love. That remains the first sentence of my life and, perhaps, its greatest blessing. My mother never believed children arrived in the world needing repair. When relatives and teachers suggested my lisp should be corrected, she refused. “This is his voice,” she said. “This is his identity.” When others worried that I spoke too little, she smiled. “He understands everything,” she would say. “He is simply taking his time.”

Looking back, I realise how extraordinary that was. She never confused difference with deficiency. She never mistook quietness for failure. She trusted that identity unfolds at its own pace. Long before neuroscience began speaking of neural plasticity and emotional regulation, my mother understood something far simpler and perhaps far wiser: children bloom; they do not need to be forced open.

But even homes filled with remarkable love exist inside societies that are still learning how to love. I grew up in India during the 1970s and 1980s, carrying a truth I could feel long before I possessed the language to express it. I knew I was different. I did not know why. There were no stories that resembled mine, no public conversations that offered reassurance, no mirrors reflecting back the possibility that a child like me could grow into a happy, healthy adult.

Home embraced me. Society had not yet learnt how.

That distinction has taken me decades to understand. For years I thought something inside me had fractured. Today I know something else had simply not yet formed: the world’s vocabulary.

Dr Mullick writes that children flourish when they are not merely protected but recognised. Affection matters, but recognition matters just as deeply. When children feel truly seen, the brain responds. Neural pathways strengthen. Confidence grows. Curiosity expands. When important parts of the self remain unnamed, they do not disappear. They retreat quietly, waiting for language, safety and belonging.

That was my childhood. Not loveless. Not lonely. But waiting. Waiting for words. Waiting for mirrors. Waiting for a future I could imagine inhabiting. Like so many children, I became an editor of myself. Not because my parents asked me to, but because the world gently suggested I should. I lowered my laughter. Softened my gestures. Read every room before I allowed myself to simply exist within it.

Children learn astonishingly early what earns approval and what attracts discomfort. They begin pruning themselves long before they understand why. Society becomes an invisible editor, quietly marking certain parts of their identity for revision. Yet through all of it, my mother remained constant.

She did not always have answers. She could not have. The questions themselves had barely entered public conversation. But she possessed something more valuable than certainty. She possessed trust. She trusted that I would become who I needed to become. She trusted that love did not require complete understanding in order to remain complete.

Reading Dr. Mullick, I realised science has finally begun catching up with mothers like mine. Research now tells us what instinct sometimes knew generations ago: the developing brain does not need constant correction nearly as much as it needs consistent connection. Children are not asking adults to predict their future. They are asking for enough safety to discover it themselves. That feels like a profound shift.

For geerations we believed parenting meant shaping children into predetermined identities.

Now we are beginning to understand that perhaps parenting is something gentler. Perhaps it is creating the conditions in which identity feels safe enough to unfold. A gardener does not command a flower to bloom. They nourish the soil. Trust the seasons. Wait with hope. Children deserve the same grace.

As I look back today, I no longer see my story simply as that of a gay child growing up in India. I see it as the story of every child who has ever sensed they were different before they knew how to explain why. The child who learns differently. The child who speaks differently. The child whose heart or mind refuses the categories waiting for them. Identity has many languages. Belonging should speak every one of them.

That is why Dr. Mullick’s response to my memoir moved me so deeply. It reminded me that stories do not end when we publish them. They continue inside other people’s homes. A memoir becomes a conversation. A conversation becomes reflection. Reflection becomes different parenting. Different parenting changes another child’s future.

Perhaps that is how societies evolve. Not only through laws or landmark judgments, but through living rooms. Through dinner tables. Through parents willing to pause before they pronounce. To listen before they label. To wonder before they worry. Today, I think less about the nights I lay awake questioning who I was and more about the remarkable woman who never questioned whether I was worthy of being loved.

That was my inheritance. Not certainty. Not explanation. But unwavering faith. Perhaps that is what both a wise scientist and a wise mother are really teaching us. Love is not measured by how successfully we shape children into our image. It is measured by how courageously we allow them to discover their own.

The brain remembers that. The heart never forgets it. And somewhere tonight, a child is lying awake carrying questions they cannot yet ask aloud. My hope is that there is also a parent nearby who, like my mother and like Dr. Shalini Mullick urges us to be, will offer the greatest gift any child can receive: Not all the answers. Just enough love to let them take their time.