Sunday, August 14, 2011

Letter to 15-year old self

Hi SM,
 You are now working really hard to achieve your goal..Yes, your goal right now is to fare very well in your exams, sail through the admission process in the best colleges , fare well in the colleges and get a job at hand through campus interviews and be able to stand on your legs (literally!) . yes, you are tired of the almost constant fights between your parents, you are sick and tired of dad controls the house and mom has no say over anything..Your hormones are raging, and your emotions and feelings are going unrecognized..You are even beaten up in the middle of the night for some silly reason..You cry buckets almost everyday, you pray loads pleading the Almighty to give you the strength to study well and do well in the boards..You want to be independent and you think that once you are on your own, you can question your father who is ruling the house..You are under the impression that once you start earning, you can be bold and courageous with your opinions..

Now, the results: Yes, your hard work is going to pay off.You are going to come off your boards with truly flying colors..You are going to be showered with many firsts and many awards and medals..Dad and Mom are going to be proud of you..You are going to get admitted in one of the prestigious colleges in India, its a merit seat..Your dream comes true now..Hurraay..You go to a far off land to pursue undergraduation..You'll make friends, foes...you'll move closely with boys for the first time in life..You'll be proposed, you'll have a good time and before you know, you'll be in the final year and have a job at hand..and before you know , you'll be married..It'll be a little late when you would realise that you had a child marriage..You'll experience 3 miscarriages which would shatter your world and it will be 6 good years before you realsie what you've wasted, what you have failed to relish and experinec, and with great efforts , you will try to recover and accept those that you cannot change..

Now, the main point of this letter is to let you know that the fire that you had in you : "to be old, to let out your opinions/suggestions, to give a piece of you mind to your dad once you are no more dependent on them, " all will be gone and you'll still be at the receiving end of their tantrums..You'll marry a wonderful man who doesn't believe in going to temples..Thanks to the miscarriages and trying to conceive saga, your parents will force you to convince your partner and to visit one temple after another because every astrologer your parents visit will prescribe a temple ..You'll turn to become a mridangam which will receive beatings from either ends..On one hand, you'll have to face/manage your parents who literally torture you to visit one temple after another, and on the other hand , you'll be at the receiving end of your husband who questions the very logic behind going to temples , asks you questions for which you have no answers, questions you on the effects that visiting temples have brought on your life..You'll still be controlled by your parents and many times, they will turn out to be the reason for the fights between you and your partner..For a long time, you wouldn't realize this, for you would always think the mistake is on your partner, for why can he not just come along to temples..Only after a few years of fighting and visiting temples and not having any result will you realize the time lost in mere fighting and dragging him to temples just because some astrologer claimed that going to these temples would cure all problems..You'll have to deal with your dad whose mood swings are highly unpredictable and who allows his mood to be controlled by the so called society . Your dad will grow to adore a person ,K who is also popularly called Guruswamy. This person, K will instigate your dad to ask you to sell the house that you would have bought, will ask your dad to bring his son-in-law for a darshan at Sabarimala and what not..Your dad will in-turn get furious and ask you to dance according to his tunes..Its quite funny how your dad will literally force you to buy a house during the early days of your marriage, make random comments , and after the house is bought, will praise the house and even after 4 years of staying in the house, since there is no progeny, will now force you to sell the house..Your dad thinks that the whole world should revolve according to his wishes and will continue to think so even after a decade..He is the person who is most worried about you, but in his anxiety , he will forget that he is torturing you and will continue to do so..Your love and affection towards your dad will prevent you from even uttering a word against him, you'll be very cautious in making sure that you don't hurt him, in fact you will be the one who will end up giving him the strength and courage to remain positive..But, your dad will not realize the fact that you are hiding your emotions and you are trying to put up a brave face to him..Instead of consoling you during hard times, he will continue to force you to visit temples, do poojas , sell the house and what not..Yes, you do agree that all this can be done, especially when it comes to temple visits and poojas..But, your husband doesn't believe in all these rituals and finds it very irritating when he is forced to do things that he doesn't like time and again..Your patience to bear all this will get saturated once in a while, you'll pour/vent to your mother , and regain the patience reserve..Just as everything else in the world, your patience levels also are not perennial, you'll reach a stage which you cannot bear and will want to sort things out once and for all..What will you do? A subject for another post..


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