A glimpse from the foot of granpa's chair..

And we're back even before the dust settles down from the last one. And this time, we will keep the disclaimers for the last, if at all, since it didn't seem to have helped last time.

When we watch all these stand up comedians do stuff on indian parents, we really laugh along don't we? Impressions of old grannies with disapproving looks, forced marriages, meddlesome aunts, screechy sisters, the patient but irrational dads. And done to death by movies for the indian english audience, the other side of the world/life. I mean, who hasn't had the compulsive urge to stab Zohra Sehgal on her face for her grandmom roles? mostly for the repetitiveness and distortion of it. Yes, even in an indian english gay movie. But in all this, deep down, somewhere there seems to be a resonance which makes us wonder about all this.

At the heart of all this is the cultural difference, and that is common knowledge. And our generation is caught in the middle of it. Like bang in the middle, tearing our pants apart types. Living a western life, in a boat tied varyingly loose to the intangible set of limits, values and emotions(not the least of which is happiness) which forms our culture. I have seen it form both ends, miserable lonely middle aged mothers, and sad lost adolescents. Well, we all have.

One way to look at this could be to go along the idea of self. one wonders, where the energies for a person extending his self (for working defnn read last blog) to his family, come from. One really has to live in a middle class indian family to see where it is coming from. By the force of habit/societal norms and i am guessing, by the lack of adequate peer/parallel interactions, the entire force of a family's emotion and energy gets invested in each other, and consequently in the unsuspecting children. My dad used to say that he used to go for walks with us, for his own selfish pleasure. half true or fully so, i don't know. Even in the absence of such insight (for which i cannot stop admiring my dad), it could very well be operative for a majority of families. The emotional investment is so large, that one cannot help prevent a diffusion of the parental self to one or more of the children. And this is where it gets more murky. The extension of self, brings with it the extension of your own aspirations, expectations and not in the least your own insecurities bang all over your child. How can it not, the child is not a child, but MY child.

The role of a parent, as in all descriptions in sociology is to raise a child to be independant and prepare him for the world. The child has a role in caring for his parents, but the child should in no way be the sole source of joy and raison d'etre for the parents. For then, life cycle doesn't go forwards, but just in circles. I imagine what it will be like to let my own child go. It won't be easy, but I will be cheating the system if I didn't.

Then again, less of a problem if we continue to live in our own cultural system. Without the exposure to an altrenate life which is more liberating, exploratory and individual centric. It is a problem for the us at the interface of this mind-self continuum.

adios,

osho

Disclaimer two rpt: it may not apply to a significant minority or even a majority of people. But i am convinced that there are a lot people who fit in. A significantly scary bite of the pie chart.