‘Parenting is like a reality show’

HYDERABAD : Are there really dos and don’ts in parenting? Sri Charan Lakkaraju, CEO and co-founder of the Hyderabad-based stuMagz,  an online discovery platform that connects students, faculty and corporates around India, believes parenting is like a reality show where one needs to expect the unexpected. And his debut book titled DAD - Do’s and Don’ts does gentle hand holding for parents.

Says the Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia listed entrepreneur about the 102-page book available in print and Kindle version (starting `199), “My father has taught me a lot in life and he has done a lot of things that have taught me and shaped me into the person that I am today and yet I am nothing like him. It is also what he wanted of me. When a child is born, a father is born too.

As much as a child learns from a father, a father also learns from the child. This book covers what a person usually experiences with his/her father and the learnings a father and child give each other, in addition to the joys, tears, mistakes and triumphs.” Charan’s dad Ravinder Lakkaraju, 58,  is a retired state government school teacher who was a devout, practical and charming family man. 

Charan himself is a hands-on dad who dotes on his four-year-old son Sree Devansh Narayan and has won hearts about posts on his son. So it was not surprising for him to come up with a book titled DAD! The book deals with how a father continuously challenges his child, making the child want to achieve more and more and strive for excellence, how he doesn’t want his child to fail but is always ready to support the child’s failure and hold the child’s hand out of failure.

It ends with throwing light on how a father always strives to give the child what he didn’t have himself, opportunities.  An edu entrepreneur turning into a parenting author? What propelled him into donning this new avatar? Charan says that there hasn’t been any one particular incident that propelled him to turn into an author. Rather, constant interactions between his dad and him which always had its own share of arguments.

“I felt he had lot of guts to talk about his failures which made me think about Dos and Don’ts.” Like we have personality development or soft skills training institutes, does the debut author think the world also needs parenting institutes? “More than an institute, its more about community living which can help us learn and unlearn from others. These skills aren’t taught but learnt.” Dad, entrepreneur, writer, podcaster... which is the toughest role? “Dad, of course. One can never prepare enough for this role.” 

Daddy Cool’s key takeaways
Do: Use mistakes as opportunities to teach values
Dont: Freak out about mistakes

— Manju Latha Kalanidhi kalanidhi@newindianexpress.com @mkalanidhi