Parent of Teens Can Be Really Unreliable!

"I am not here to tell you what you are doing is wrong or right. I just want to tell you that you be aware of what you are doing." Dad said to Anuj. He had been hiding in his bathroom for long and dad knew why! Wonder who else knows!

Anuj often hid himself in the bathroom. That was the only place in the world where he was alone. All other places in the house seemed to have spies following in his track. He hated to admit it, but there he was day after day, sitting in the bathroom. Sometimes flipping through erotic magazines, sometimes masturbating and sometimes just reading a good novel, once he even did his math homework in the bathroom.

Dad may have been firm but he also sounded understanding! Next time when he went to the bathroom he checked the whole place for hidden cameras. You cannot trust the parent of teens, they can be really unreliable, Anuj thought.

No... no cameras. Satisfied that he was alone in the bathroom he relaxed. His parents had changed of late. They did not treat him the way they did before! Anuj missed their love and blind trust, which was always bestowed on him. What had changed now? Why were they acting weird of late? What did they fear?

He was no more a kid and he had hoped that this should go in his favour and make his parents to trust him even more. But for the first time in his life, he felt like a stranger in his own home. He either would be away at a friend's place, where there were other sets of eyes keeping watch on them... his friend and him. He felt suffocated... in school his teachers had changed their attitude towards the class. Suspicion seemed to be written on their faces. If students kept a promise,  the teachers acted as if they got lucky for once and if the students acted irresponsibly, the adults made it known that this is just what was expected and that they were right in doubting them.

Life in short sucked. Adults can be really complicated. Specially parents. You never know when they will change tracks. It seemed to Anuj that his parents had shifted allegiance. And now they were in conspiracy against him and his contemporaries, with all other parents and teachers.

Anuj was back in the bathroom. He just sat on the commode, not wanting to come out. Life as he knew it was falling apart. But the shining tiles of the bathroom somehow made him feel a little comfortable.

And then there was a knock at the door, not the main door, the bathroom door. Anuj gathered himself up and decided to come out. He had been there for way too long. Dad was right outside, something just gripped him and he hugged his dad and said, I love you dad!

And it seemed that day Anuj became a real adult. Home began to look like home again, was this all that was needed? Anuj wondered!

Family Tree

I had it right there, pasted on the wall, the family tree. All people, just people, like all other people in the world, what is the big deal about this family tree? They are long gone and mostly forgotten. What is the significance of them? I had the family tree there on the wall, just to help me find these answers. I was not sure how they mattered. Those people were responsible for bringing me in my present form... or were they? If my great-great-great-grand parents never married, wouldn't I have a shot at being born?

And then I came back to the same question. Did all this really matter? And there were blank spots in my family tree. Some forgotten uncle or aunt. They must have been in the crime or maybe they killed themselves over lost love, or they just ran away too tired of the family tree. And now they were free of the family, because no one counted them in the family! how did that add up?

If those uncles and aunts who are excluded from the family tree, had kids, were they also aware of their family tree? And how would I relate to them? Were they also important to me? I did not know for sure. But every morning, evening and night, the family tree stared back at me mockingly and teased me.

It is the blank spots that mattered the most. If they are so important and if they are my family, don't they also impact me? Or is it that by rubbing their names off from the family tree, their impact on the future generations was wiped out. Then there is a point in wiping their names and memories out. I realised I was looking forward to be forgotten rather than being the cause of someone else's misery many hundred years later, many generations down the line. And then there was a wicked thrill in knowing that I could influence posterity. Not everyone with this wisdom is capable of doing great things to make their future generations proud of them, most of them suffice with the wicked thrill of ruining unknown lives by living irresponsibly, it gives them a kick.

I was one of those less gifted kind. It had to be one way or the there for me, forgotten or uglifyingt the family tree. So I decided I would not waste my time trying to remain in the family tree. Who cares for it anyway. Once I was gone would I really care?

And yet every-time I looked at the family tree, I knew I was on to something. The other day I saw a fly sitting on the family tree and I swatted it right there, and now it is part of my family tree too. That was a moment of epiphany. I reasoned that, if rubbing off names from the tree took care of the bad deeds of those disagreeable family members, adding names just randomly, would make some other more agreeable people related to my family, just the same. Because who really goes back to check the lineage.

And so this is what I did, I painted up some of the less likeable names from the tree and put in likeable ones there, making sure of conforming to the era of the persons life. Not that even that mattered, but I wanted to be meticulous in this game. And so my grandpa's brother was replaced with Rock Hudson. My grandma got a distant cousin named Audrey Hepburn. My dad became distantly related to Amitabh Bachchan and I got Keanu Reaves as my far removed cousin. At the end of the exercise, I began to fantasize putting Einstein and Subhash Chandra Bose also in the lineage. And also why leave Sachin Tendulkar and of course Marie Curie? But at the moment I was glad I had implemented my idea into three generations of my family and I felt much happier now. I just removed the fly from there. It was bothering me to see it next to Audrey.

Now every time I look at the family tree I look at it with a smile. Family is one that brings a smile on your face. And this one really really does!

Love, Trust and Other Luxuries

"You sure don't believe in love or trust?" Rhea's mom was sounding just a little on the edge.

"Well those things are luxury Naina, don't waste time in believing unreliable fantasies!" Rhea's dad said flippantly. She wondered what had made her parents to have this dated conversation so early on a beautiful Sunday morning.

"I can prove it to you," said Naina, argumentatively, "I married you because I loved you and I trusted you."

"And I was not a great catch? Haven't you seen my degrees? I was studying in the IIM when we first met." Anil countered, making a blunder he regretted immediately.

"And I? Was I doing home science? I was in IIM too. So you thought I was a good catch? Or you thought I joined the IIM to just find a good catch? Don't start your naive chauvinistic argument Amit, I know you find it hard to lose. But you are wrong today. There is love and there is trust and it is real. And please don't annoy me ever again with that 'Good catch' line. It is so typical and empty, you can't even convince yourself with it." Naina went on a tirade. She knew she was winning this argument and she wanted to clinch it and end it both at the same time.

Amit silently walked away. Rhea wondered what just happened. What was all this argument about and why did it end so abruptly? Rhea knew her parents picked up odd topics to argue over and fought each other like high school debaters, using lame examples to win the argument. It was rather cute. But usually it was about economy, politics or science. They were always in agreement over emotional subjects. They were both practical and diplomatic.

But today was different... What had changed since she slept last night? Had some meteorite stuck the neighbours and spared her home, she peeped out of the windows to check, but they were all where they were last night. Were they filing for divorce? No, that one she would know. Did they fight last night? Was one of them being unfaithful? No no no. Rhea knew her parents to be far more sensible.

A little later, Rhea's dad found her in her room. "Hey kid can I talk to you?" Of course he could, parents didn't need permission from their kids to speak to them. He was supposed to just knock her on her head gently, as he always did, and say what he had to say. Not ask for permission.

"Well, you see, I cannot understand why you would need me to meet this new friend of your's whats his name?" Rhea noticed a faint stammer in his voice.She ignored it.

"Ankit, for the nth time dad!" Rhea became irritated. She wondered why it was so important for her that her dad should remember Ankit's name! "what's up with you dad? You don't forget names! And why would you wonder about why I want him to meet you? I bring all my friends home! he is my friend too!" Rhea ended defiantly.

"This is different, I am not sure about it." Amit interjected! "I thought there were still a few years to go for this." He said a little hesitantly.

"Not again," Naina was standing at Rhea's door, hands on hips, "what is up with you Amit." Just let this be. Don't confuse Rhea.

Relieved at the timely intervention, Rhea shouted, "can you guys please excuse me, I have homework to do."

Amit reluctantly walked away, Naina walked in to hug and a kiss her daughter, way too big and warm a hug and way too gentle a kiss, and said, "remember what I have always said to you, love and trust are the most important things in life, just follow your heart and you will never regret your decisions."

Rhea turned to see her mother fade away from her room. All of a sudden she had grown up. She couldn't believe it, she had just had an adult conversation with her parents. It was a little awkward, but she could see that there was a large space created for her in her home that day, which she would learn to call her personal space. 

I Remained Silent

The birds chirped, louder and louder still. I could hear them but couldn't see them, I longed to go out of my cooped up room. The dogs barked and barked, I could hear them too. I longed to play with them. The street dogs were my favourite company, they bit when instigated, but they would not bite otherwise. I heard household sounds from my neighbour's, not just a distant muffled sound, but every word that they spoke. Not just one neighbour but a dozen of them. Our homes sharing just the thin walls which only barely separated us. 

In the night I could hear their yawns and moans and just quietly dosed off, without really noticing them. But today I heard them and I wanted to run away. They were just sounds for me till then, but today they were the only people I would see for days to come. I could not imagine myself seeing them face to face, I knew all their secrets and sorrows and fights and libidos, loud and clear, from within my house. 

I remained under my roof within the dingy room, They had never really seen me, I was always either going somewhere or coming back from somewhere. Once in a while a neighbour would stop me to talk, but it was so unbearable to talk to them like just a stranger, that I always avoided being caught with them in a tete-a-tete. What if I said something like... 'Oh well are you okay now I heard you crying last night', or 'oh so you are that woman who moans every night, where do you get the energy to do it daily?' Or 'well I did not know you were not home, I heard a woman in your house the whole week' or 'Oh which of those men who visit you is your husband?' It would be really embarrassing. I could not afford a home just as yet. A struggling actress, I was saving money on accommodation. Because after all, I spent all my time struggling in the high streets of Mumbai. And some days I did not even come back home. There were casting couches and small roles here and there. But I was going to make it big.

Today was different, my expensive perfumes and clothes all bundled and packed in suitcases under my bed, were to remain there for some time to come. This was COVID19 running it's havoc. Everyone had to be indoors. I envied people with real concrete walls and real roofs on their head. I had seen homes, comfortable cozy homes, One of them would be mine soon if my recent tryst with that big producer had worked out. I was not sure, I'd have found out this evening. But the evening never came, because we were all asked to remain herded in our homes and in my case in the coop where I lived. In my neighbourhood COVID19 was a real threat. Because the flimsy walls that some 300 of those shared, were all just a sham. Whether we liked it or not, we were one single family of over 2000, all stuffed into tiny tenements. And that is the reason most neighbours were really worried sick. We did not know who had spent the night with someone who just returned from China or USA or Europe. Even the resident themselves would not know. You don't go asking for visa stamping in the passports, when you have these trysts.  

And then I remembered, the producer had just returned from a shooting abroad, I checked my phone for news about him. He had it already. If he had it, I had it. 14 days is all I had left. And life came floating in front of me. I had run away from home never hoping to see them again. I was messed up and now I would die messed up. 

Every time I believed this would be the last casting couch. And then when I was cheated, I would decide to find a job, but then I wanted to be a star real bad, it was the only thing for me. And since I was so headstrong about it, I played by their rules. I remained silent and just went about my business. I did not care for anything else in the world. I did not have a friend or a boyfriend either. I did not mind cunningly taking over the role offered to my closest friend and I did not bother to get too close to any guy. Boyfriends try to take all your decision and I didn't want that. I was alive, but only I knew that. For everyone else I was dead. But one day, that big screen would give me the name and recognition. 

I locked myself up, instead of looking for medical help. I did not care much now. I got a mild cough first and then it worsened. I heard my neighbour talking one day, one of them said, "I think she has the virus. Wonder where she got it! She looks classy, this virus is killing the classy kind. She has only imported stuff, now she is dying of imported disease." The other person said, "don't try to help her, we may get it. leave her." But from then on, some days I heard a soft knock and when I opened the door, there would be food. I silently took it. Not thanking for the food was the best way to thank. The coughing kept getting worse and then I heard others in the tenement coughing too. And then I saw the first corpse from a little hole in my window where the glass had broken off. No one followed the corpse, just the family. Everyone shut their doors as the corpse passed. It was catching up. More than 2000 people cooped up and corona was there. I kept getting weaker and I kept coughing louder and now I was getting the knock at my door every day and sometimes twice a day.  

The stench was unbearable. I saw myself on the bed. I was not totally looking right. I heard the knock at the door and ran to pick the food, the beggar from the street was picking up the food already. He had his nose covered to avoid the stench. And then they came, the police and the ambulance, my body was decomposing. No one dared come near me. I would never know who put the food on my door, I knew no one and I was leaving nothing behind. My body was wrapped up in layers of clothes, my lovely clothes from under my bed, they decided to cremate me without waiting for my family, because I was heavily infected. They had no time to call my family. they said they would send my belongings to them when they found their address. They would never find them... 

"Remember, you are dead for us! we will never come looking for you!" were the last words I had heard from them. Before I left, I had mixed the poison in their tea, very small quantity. It would take effect only slowly,  no one would ever know. They loved their tea with the newspaper. Were they still sipping tea as they read the newspaper?

Dear Readers: I have tried a fiction without a moral this time, just like the stream that life is, and the stream does not have a moral or a meaning. Pardon me if it is not to your liking. Its just an artistic expression. Thanks for reading and leaving your comments.

How to deal with your habit to conform

My Journey is My Destination

It was the late seventies, I may have been six years of age, I learned the harshest reality of my life, the fact that I was a girl. I remember that day sitting with a piles of dirty dishes and washing them for hours. While my brother, though five years older to me, just bounced around with no care in the world.  That day I separated in many ways from my parents because I felt denied of their love, from my brother, because I felt cheated by him and from myself, because I was just a girl.

Deep within, unbeknownst to me, there was a fighter. And as house work kept piling on me over the next few years, and as my marks kept deteriorating in school, I promised to myself, that if this was going to be a fight, then fight I would. Not knowing the outcome of this innocent pledge, I embarked on a journey of endless fight backs against those who were supposed to protect and nurture me and sorrowful outcomes of those fights.

For those who take the challenge of life head long, life comes head on to them. And so it followed, fast forward to the early nineties, I noticed little girls being subjected to the same indignity growing up. I made another promise. A promise to help... And just like that, I had a purpose to my life.

I was in my most productive years. Life took over for a while, I got busy with building a career as a CA. But back in my mind, I was subconsciously constructing a plan for my chosen purpose, not aware of it myself at that time. As I battled through life's many quirks, I learned a few secrets. Here are three that are resounding:

Secret 1: Nothing in this life happens without reason. There is an outcome of every event.

Secret 2: Everything in this life can be taken positively, no matter how painful, unwelcome or heart wrenching it may be.

Secret 3: Across those painful moments there is new vigour for life awaiting for us. We just need to stay committed to get past all that pain.

Folks, to cut the long story short, I found myself supporting my friends to dream new dreams and to be fiercely independent. The path that I had chosen was slowly getting paved and readied for me to take that big leap towards my dream.

Does my story ring a bell? Does it resonate with you? I would love to hear from you. Please message me privately so we can connect.

I Have a Cool Mom in Law

I don't mean to offend people with mother-in-law problems. But my mom-in-law (MIL) is cool. Damn cool. Well for once she is not the permanently offended elder. The kind who perennially abhor the present.

She does not have a resume, a Linkedin profile or a Facebook account, an email ID or even Whatsapp on phone, to show for her coolness. She is just a hard-wired cool young woman in an aging skin. And of course she has many stories of success to back my claim of her coolness... But today we will not talk about her stories. Today we explore how she is / became #mytribe!

So is she not the mother-in-law material at all? Don't jump to conclusions dear readers, why would she waste her time being a MIL in that case? She is that too. And she is full to her brim with the nuances of every relationship, which she has handled over the lifetime, with a lot of effort and dedication.

Did you just say I am bloviating? I wouldn't disagree just yet. This is how I interface with people. And this is how I interface with her too. I see her as just a person. Her strengths, weaknesses in short her SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threat) all taken together. She is, in the end, just another person, among the many I know. Besides the fact that she means a world to the one person I love, my husband. So she is indeed a massive backdrop to my life. And therefore quite important. But we have a couple of moms and dads on both sides, mine and his, all equally important.

Let's get straight into the topic #mom-in-Law, #mytribe! Well she became #mytribe when... ah ha… caught, you are dying to know the answer. The fun is in meandering and not in reaching the destination. I cannot pinpoint that exact time, here is a piece you will love. 

Place is Amritsar, we had just completed our circuit of original touristy things. Not exactly touristy, it is the place of the pious Golden Temple and the gruesome Jalian Wallah Bagh, in the midst of narrow, crowded, broken roads with no sidewalks. The rickshaw drivers, besides honking continuously, also curse the pedestrians walking helplessly in front of them, so they can reach their destination at an average speed of 10 kilometres an hour. Going awkwardly, like an air filled balloon, left astray, to lose air, making the burping sound through the small vent and going unsure and awry. You get the picture? 

Crowd oozing from everywhere, tourists and locals alike, walk on the streets like toothpaste oozing out of its tube. They fill every inch of the place, even the streets, escaping one fatal accident after another, by a whisker, every few steps. Non-descript, traditional style shops, with their doors opening on to the narrow busy streets, each have a person sitting right there at the doors, soliciting people to walk into their shops, all of them at once. 

Locals have no patience at all, fights erupt between strangers, at the slightest provocation. People here are loud and expressive. I get reminded of my favourite comic, Asterix and Obelix and their village of Gaul!  It is only Lord Guru Nanak who keeps this place together. Like the Druid Getafix does it for the Gauls. How else can you explain the commotion, the endless street fights, all resulting in a peaceful holy city? This place is a pilgrimage for the Sikhs. Gateway to the Wagah Border, this is also the place where Indians go, to get a fleeting glimpse of our estranged neighbours. 

In this city where independence came with heavy cost to lives of the innocent, first in the insane massacre at Jalianwallah Bagh and then during partition, at the massacre of the Gadar. Time has turned backwards here. The city remains purely traditional, with modern transportation, gadgets and technology. It is a gruesome combination. We tried navigating the place on two rented Toyota Innova, and we found ourselves mostly walking long distances on foot through the narrow streets, bumping into other tourists at every step. 

We were a group of 7, My daughter, then eight, counted in. MIL, her Sis and I had been pining to go shopping, in this land of countless shops. We had planned to pick phulkaries and patialas, (punjabi embroidery and punjabi style salwar suit). But the three of us wondered how we would get past the non-shopping faction of our group. FIL (Father in law), hubby, his uncle and my Daughter. We were 3 against four. The hot afternoon sun, the constant street fights, the pollution and the travails of being on foot in this suffocating atmosphere, was taking a toll on me. I was beginning to change my mind about shopping. 

Just then, I realised how much MIL wanted to shop, when she came up to me and in a childlike tone said, 'Reema (my pet name), only you can convince them to let us go shopping, please do something.' And I, slightly embarrassed and quite amused, used my women liberation dialogues to get our way. Basically I announced, 'I want to shop, so I am shopping.' And then we shopped, fortunately our drivers agreed to drop us at the shop door and park the vehicles somewhere nearby. And MIL shopped the most, not just for herself, but for her daughter and her daughters in law too. And as always she picked only the super fancy pieces. Now readers, do you get it? She is certainly #Mytribe. And if this is not proof enough then #Idon'tcare, #Smle!Smile!

Some of her qualities, I truly appreciate are, bringing up a functional family. It is not a joke in today's fragmented families, living in a world, fast becoming a global village. What an irony. She has kept her family functional, even after all three of her children got married and had children of their own. Who wants to bet that this is a feat, which deserves a standing ovation several times over. She adapted to the changes in her family and just kept it together, regardless of the set backs. That sounds like the skill of a leader. Yes, she has had the help of FIL through this journey. Tell me though, how many people can boast of accepting their fault, when pointed by their spouses? That is a high order skill too. Even today my soon to turn 80 MIL and past his 80 FIL, live on their own terms, not feeling deserted, but empowered. They are certainly #ourtribe.

And now I see you asking, how can I forget the hurts? In-laws and hurts are like a package, isn't it? And all our other relationship are so well sorted out and absolutely without any dischord! NO? Did I get that wrong? Yes, you are right, all our relationships are quite messed up. Including that friend who we don't talk to anymore, the parents who we never agree with, the spouse who causes hurt only because we expect the world from them, those colleagues who are bent upon beating us to the next position or job at work, those neighbours who make your dog look inferior to theirs, just to get the kick out of it. Well we are beings of twisted associations. 

But MIL, she is different from those others, isn't it? My complaints about her are socially endorsed and globally empathised. So here is my rant. My MIL, she has an influence over my husband. Sometimes it can be totally to my disadvantage. We disagree and we openly disagree with each other at times. She has a totally different way of handling things around home, than me. But here is the problem, I am a liberated modern woman not without reason. I also remember the times when I have been quite a quirk, if not a jerk and then times when I have been a jerk too. Oh don't even remind me of her shortcomings. It is a package of collective shortcomings of every member of my family. Lets leave that package packed away and forgotten.

Here is why she keeps infiltrating #mytribe more and more. You should see us chatting on phone. We talk for hours about things of no real significance. And we appreciate each other's qualities and give advice to each other and complement each other, like one would expect two women in a family to do.