snippets

I had long, tensed conversation with my mother. She was trying to drill into my head that I need to comply to systems, be polite to people whom I detest with all my being, or worse still people who don't even exist for me. She was vehement about it almost as if she was on the edge. On asking why I should do all of these things, she could only muster a fake rhetoric of 'living in the society, living for others, doing all these things that when you need help, when you are old and dying these strangers can come up to you and help you'. I shouted back, rather impulsively, I don't owe any obligation to anyone, no one, I am going to lead my life to please me, to make myself happy. If I am not happy, how the hell is anyone else going to be happy around me.

I do believe in these things but later on thinking over the conversation, I realized, it wasn't as much about me that my mother was talking about. It was her. She is getting to that stage when old age, loneliness, desperation are real. When children do no hesitate to walk away unable to forgive you for the follies of their childhood. When partners cling to each other only because they have nowhere else to go. Worse still, they don't have the courage. The whole system of checks and balances which expects one to pay obligations, make appearances, be polite is to shatter anything vaguely resembling that courage to carry on without any appendages and without any support. It's not only my mother, I see people like that everyone around me. The situation just gets accentuated to the point of disgust in older people. I was like that for a while. I have been in relationships which suffocated me only because I dreaded being alone. Why is being alone so scary?

Why should one have to manage relations, people who mean nothing in the present so that in the future they might be of help? I am never going to go to these people anyway. Why are we required to wear skins and skins of pretensions only for a distant hope that when we are lonely and old they will provide a kind shoulder? This logic seems too hollow to me. I don't think I have been able to manage the most stable relationships but they have been courageous (I no longer use the word honesty, it is very easily contrived to suit ones own needs) to deal with the issues. I have been and so have been the others involved. I make a conscious decision, conscious effort to not base these relationships or sustain them so that they can yield some long term dividends for me when I am lonely and old.

For me, me and my relationships, my coordinates are going to be defined by the moment and not what lies beyond them.