Three small vignettes showing how excessive parental love for sons can sometimes lead to absurd situations and do the boys more harm than good. Small wonder then that our daughters grow are far better equipped to face life than our spoilt and pampered sons. It is hard to understand why parents get so completely blinded with love for their sons, when one only needs to look around to see that girls are doing as well, if not better, and most often than not, it is the daughter, and not the son, who takes care of her parents in their old age.
Take I
An Assamese family somewhere in rural
Assam -- man, wife, three daughters followed by a son. Man, wife and two daughters
are graduates, second daughter MA B Ed, the son is still in school. The man
had prioritized his children’s education. The man’s father was a rich
businessman but he had not been as successful and the family had gradually
fallen on bad days despite the relatively large inheritance that the father had
left him. The man looked burdened with worry -- they barely had enough to
survive on, how would he manage to get his three daughters married. The eldest daughter was at home and helped her mother to keep
the home going, the two other daughters had moved to a rented room in Guwahati
with the hope of finding better job opportunities and also to be able to better
prepare for competitive exams. They did not like asking their father for
support but they had not managed to find more than a couple of tuitions in the
city, which meant that the father had to send them some money each month for their upkeep.
The Assam type houses in which they lived must have been very beautiful once, but looked badly run down and almost ready to collapse. There was only one room which looked sturdy and new. What room is this, we asked. That was the son’s room, we were told. It had been built recently since the boy needed a proper room to study. Nice, but why only the boy? How did the girls manage? Well, this boy is doing science. He had even cleared the Talent Search Exam that year, they told us proudly. A little while later, we were introduced to the young man. He was in Class XI in a DAV school; he was about to leave home to return to school. His classes had started from today but he would go only later in the day. He disappeared after a brief hello. He told us he had a lot to do before leaving. He seemed not interested at all in finding out why we had come or what we wanted to do.
When we offered to drop him part of the way, the offer was turned down. His eldest sister had not yet ironed his clothes, his mother had not fed him lunch and packed food for him and his friends. And the young prince felt very self-important having everyone around him doing tasks for him. The father’s eyes were moist – it broke his heart every time to see his son leave home. The mother and sister were impatiently waiting for us to leave so that they could get things ready for their darling son/brother’s departure. The school was not more than half an hour away but still…the poor fellow would miss his mother’s cooking. And what would happen to the newly built room when the fellow was away? That would be cleaned but kept locked for use by the son when he came back from school. After all, how could he stay in a dilapidated house where even snakes could came in.
I did not dare comment.
Take II
A nuclear family in Guwahati -- man, wife and son, who was studying in Class X. Man was a lecturer at a local college, the wife was a graduate but stayed at home to take care of the son who was studying for his matriculation exam due next month. He was summoned briefly to be introduced to me. He came and plonked down on a chair in front of me.
His father and I had just returned from a field trip. Have you ever been to the field with your father, I asked him.
He looked puzzled. What field was I talking about? I gave up.
I asked him what he wanted to do in life – he told me he wanted a job that would bring in lots of money!
Seeing the surprise on my face his mother promptly defended her son by saying, at least he is being completely honest!
He wanted to be very rich. That is why he wanted to get into the IIT. So although he did not like maths very much and was about to give up advance maths last year, he was now determined to get into IIT, so he and his mother was going to take a 1BHK flat in Kotah for the next three years and he would prepare for the JEE, he proudly informed me.
But you don’t need to go to IIT to be rich or to get a highly paid job, I told him.
Yes, but if he got into IIT, he would be able to go to America, he told me.
And why do you want to go to America?
Because it is neat and clean he told me. It looks exactly like in the movies!
And who will take care of your father and the house when the two of you are away in Kotah, I asked him.
My father knows how to cook. But I will have to spend a lot of time studying, so my mother will have to come with me and take care of me, he told me without hesitation.
Well, what are your interests? Hobbies? I asked him. He did not know what I was talking about. Do you like swimming, singing, stamp collecting, gardening, running, playing something, cooking etc.?
The parents came to his rescue again. He has no time, he is so busy studying, the heavy pressure of school work does not leave him any time to do anything else. We took him for singing classes, then swimming, also to learn karate, but nothing lasted more than a few months.
I just hoped the Kotah 1BHK
experiment would also not go the same way.
Take III
Again a small family – man, wife and plump 8 year old son. They lived in town but had gone to attend a sokam in the man’s village. The son had been very reluctant to go with his parents. What could one do there? One would have to take off one’s shoes and sit and listen to boring chatter. And those silly village people would keep patting him and exclaiming how much he had grown up and keep testing him by asking -- do you recognise us? One could not lock oneself in a room and watch TV. His village cousins spoke a strange dialect of Assamese that he did not understand, and then made fun of his broken Assamese. And he hated the people saying how tall he had grown and a pinching his cheeks and giving him strange pithas and such stuff to eat.
Once they had arrived, he had refused to go in to say hello even to his father’s older relatives and had spent most of the day sitting in the car, fiddling with his smart phone. When it was time for lunch, his father came and somehow persuaded him to go in. But first he did not want to eat the food, since it was the usual boring rice, dal, sabji, etc… and he did not know how to eat fish anyways. When he found out that there was no meat or chicken, he got up from his seat, and left, refusing to drink even the water, saying that since the water had not been purified, it could contain germs. He went back to the car, where he opened packet after packet of chips and munched on them along with some bottled soft drink they had brought along.
The mother was almost in tears, their poor son had no had anything ‘proper’ to eat for lunch. She scolded her husband for not allowing her to bring some packed lunch for her darling son. She begged her husband to get her two packets of Maggie which she would cook and give her son to eat. But her husband thought that his relatives might be offended. He did not wish to hear any sarcastic comments. They would stop at a dhaba on their way back, he promised her.
Seeing the son’s sulking face, the parents tried to leave as quickly as was possible. Another elderly couple had also come from the city for the sokam; the man was the man’s uncle and they had been dropped by a kind neighbour who had then proceeded to his destination. The old couple asked the man if they could get a lift back. Since they were just the three of them in the car, surely it would not be a problem. Otherwise they would have to take a bus, which they would prefer to avoid since it would get dark by the time they reached the city.
That put the parents in a fix. How could their darling son
manage to sit with two almost strangers all the way back? Moreover they would
have to stop at some eatery immediately to get their son some chicken dish. But what excuse could they make –
the wife smartly came up with one. ‘Our son often feels queasy when the car is
in motion. So we normally make him lie down on the back seat when we travel. So
I don’t think there will be space for the two of you to come along with us.
Sorry!’
No comments:
Post a Comment