My loving faithful daughter apologizes to her elementary school staff for speaking the truth…

Dear Sakshi,

in December 2012 you made a fateful video that brought your video producing “career” to an abrupt end.  Below is the video she posted on Youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-wbwR209Pk&feature=youtu.be

But oops – there is no video – because it got “censored”.  And why did that happen?  In that video (posted in a Youtube account controlled by your mother), you had depicted one of your elementary school teachers (without naming either school or teachers) as crazy enough to have mood swings and verbally abuse the children and another teacher putting her feet on the children and twisting their arms during PE class.

You caved in to the pressure (despite my total support, telling you to stand your ground) and wrote a letter of apology to all and sundry (see your apology email and my email to you about it above) and the video was taken down.  And, as I feared, you did not make another video – and you budding video “career” came to an abrupt end.

Now you are in journalism school and the Chief-Editor of your college newspaper. I know you get pressures from all quarters from people who have a problem with what you publish or don’t publish in your paper. And it does appear that you are standing up well to those trying to twist your arm.

It does seem to me that you learned your lesson from what transpired with the video and that you do NOT have to apologize for speaking the truth to power.

And I believe, whether you acknowledge it or not, that I contributed to you growing a spine since the fiasco with the self-censored YouTube video so that you no longer cave in to pressure. In the process whether or like it or not, people who know both of us see you as a piece of the old block!

Hopefully, one day, your eyes will open and you will be able to see from where you got the qualities that make you so successful today.

Best wishes.

Venky Venkatraman
B.Tech, MBA, JD