[The following post is a personal
and subjective take on the issue. Any offence is deeply regretted, or maybe
not. Read it till the end and you might understand why. Forgive me for the irony and paradox used.]
We belong to the Indian culture where we respect our elders and love the
ones younger than us in our family, by default. I am simply stating a fact,
without raising this culture to greatness or demeaning or comparing it to any
other culture. If you are born into a conventional (Hindu, as I cannot speak
for other religions) Indian family, you know you are supposed to touch the feet
of the older members of the (extended) family, join your hands on the road if
you meet the neighbouring uncle or aunty, share your personal belongings with
your siblings and so on and so forth as gestures of respect and love. If you don’t,
then either your parents are blamed for not giving you the correct upbringing
or you simply become ‘that’ kid whose lack of such gestures is taken as naughtiness
but talked about in grave tone in his/her absence. To be clear, I was a good
kid, and at home, I try to be a good kid even now because (as difficult it might be
for me to accept) you cannot reason with your (extended) family. (Although, I keep trying.)
During my graduation a friend asked, “What do people mean by ‘respect
women’?” I kept wondering, what does 'respect' really mean? I remember feeling
the sense of respect for the same friend when he was suddenly given the
responsibility of the theatre society of our college and he did it really well
in the absence of the president of the society. That was the first time I
developed respect for that part of him, if not entirely for him. I realised
then that respect in true sense is always earned. Of course, it comes with the
roles played by that person in your life, but it also comes with his/her being.
You might become the best kid by performing all the gestures of respect, using
the right words while addressing people, but in the end, you might not really
respect that person. And to answer the above question, I think when people say respect women they
mean, ‘understand and acknowledge women as human beings instead of treating
them as your property or nobody.’
I spent my last summer at home wondering, “Can I respect and love my
parents as humans if I take them out of the roles they are playing for me?” To
be honest, my thoughts were conflicting. With such an attempt, my complaints
became fewer when I saw their flaws. As much as I respect them for making me a
privileged kid in my friend circle with the freedom they provided, the need to
love, care, and protect came only after I saw them as imperfect vulnerable
individuals fully capable of getting hurt. To take your parents out from their
‘perfect’ platforms, analyse them, and then, accept them as mere humans before
feeling the sense of respect is mind boggling and tiring. A task I took up
knowing the consequences that I might not see my family in a similar fashion
ever again.
With Raksha Bandhan coming closer, I felt the compulsion to send out
Rakhis to cousins I do not talk to, have never bonded with. Forget analysing the
reasons behind the celebration, even if I see it as a simple gesture of love, I
couldn’t make myself want to do it, unlike my childhood days when I not only
sent rakhis, but also added a short
letter asking about their well being and advising them to eat a lot of sweets
on that particular day. It was an act that I did unconsciously voluntarily.
Given my obsession to be the ‘good’ girl, I would have probably done anything
then. Now, I have about one brother and eight cousins in the family (for
avoiding the use of ‘real’ brother). I share a very conventional bond of love
with one of them, thanks to the time we got to spend last summer finally
getting to know each other. I share an unconventional shout-and-fight-but-supportive-in-my-own-way
relationship with my brother, finally giving up on the idea of constant sharing
of emotion as I had seen among my friends’ siblings. We share in our way and
are far from expressing love directly. There is another cousin that I looked after
when he was one year old, but right now I do not recognise him anymore. With so
much distance, and no ‘real’ communication, am I supposed to send out Rakhis as
a sign of my love? Really? How about we get together and know each other bridging
the discomfort between us?
In a social gathering recently, when an aunty mentioned the prospect
of my marriage, I joked, ‘I am the girl who is capable of breaking families,
good luck finding a groom for me.’ This is something I strongly believe in.
People have often told me, to not use my mind when I am home or with my family
because those are off-limits for reasoning. I do what I have to do, bow down,
join my palms when I meet a (distant) relative, I ask about well being of my
siblings, and even though I was adamant on breaking the tradition, I did send
out rakhis this year to avoid family drama with my grandparents. But honestly,
with my paternal and maternal family scattered all around the globe, with
minimal communication between the kids of my generation, how am I supposed to
feel any sense of love?
As much as people tell me, I am over thinking, isn’t it something we
should all be thinking about? I mean, what good is it, if we respect people out
of social norms and feel nothing for them at all? How honest are we being in
this age-old society that seeks truth in its mythology? When tried respect and
love can be earned with a mere observation of actions. Why do we take the basis
of our relationships for granted then? I want the society to be a better place,
and I want to see at least a minute change in my lifetime. My parents keep
saying, do something to change the world if you so want to, conveying that the
outside world needs changing. What they fail to understand is that my idea of
change starts at a grass root level. After an individual comes his/her family,
doesn’t it?
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Image source: www.riveroakchurch.org
Image editing: Slow running Picassa in my PC.
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