Ritika & Rajiv

Age 35 & 41 · Rediscovering bonding time with kids through reading.

Honestly, I don’t know when it happened. One day Rajiv and I were the most important people in our daughters’ world, and the next —or so it felt —they had their tablets, their TV shows, their school friends, their own private little lives humming along without us.

It wasn’t bad. I knew that. Kids grow. But some evenings I’d sit in the living room and watch the four of us in four separate corners, all lit by separate screens, and feel a quiet ache I couldn’t quite name.

It was Rajiv who suggested it, whichsurprised me, because he’s the practical one. He said, “Let’s just read together. No phones. Twenty minutes before bed.” I thought the girls would resist. Priya, who is nine, rolled her eyes. Little Meera just looked confused.

The first night was awkward.We sat on the floor with a picture book for Meera and the first chapter of a longer story for Priya. Rajiv did the voices —terribly, I must say —and Meera laughed so hard she fell sideways. Priya pretended she wasn’t smiling. She was smiling.

That was eight months ago. Now they ask for it. Meera drags her blanket to the living room before we’ve even finished dinner. Priya, our eye-roller, has started reading ahead and then trying very hard to look like she hasn’t when we catch up to her part.

What I didn’t expect was how much it would change Rajiv and me, too. After the girls fall asleep, we talk —about the stories, yes, but also about things the stories open up. Loss. Courage. What we want for them. We haven’t had conversations like that in years.

I keep thinking about all the evenings we were all in the same room and somehow completely apart. Reading didn’t fix anything broken —we were fine, really —but it gave us somewhere to meet each other again. A shared world we all walk into together, every single night.