Jaseena Your Thoughts Are Interesting But You Need Better Understanding & Judgement

Dear Jaseena,

Your Facebook post and the conversation you had with your maid (http://indianexpress.com/article/trending/this-is-serious/sanskaari-bahus-facebook-post-going-viral-must-read-5148113/) is indeed interesting and thought provoking but is not devoid of gaping flaws as well (go through the link first to understand what this blog is all about). Just like your maid you too seem to have a set mind about this topic. Being a psychologist you should have had displayed a better understanding to the situation of your maid. Allow me to break down your thoughts and your conversation with your maid and highlight the important aspects of both.

1) “My son drinks”

This says nothing about the maid’s son as a person. Is he irresponsible towards his family? Is he employed? Is he spending all the money he earns on alcohol? Does he come home drunk and abuse his family? Plenty of questions can be asked here. A lot of boys start smoking and drinking alcohol from their adolescent years. That’s the age when they want to try out everything and boast around among their friends. But that’s not the age when they can explain rationally why they are hooked on to those things. When the boy grows up into a man and if the habits persist with him that’s when he has to be able to explain why. The ones who are either low on self confidence or do not have enough courage to express their thoughts and feelings are the ones creates all the noise after getting drunk. The additional benefit of this is, people either ignore or forgive them considering their intoxicated state. Easiest way to do and say whatever we want with minimum repercussions. Question here is, did you ever try to find out why he drinks and why he is addicted to alcohol? That would be the first thing for a psychologist to do in this context.

Our lives are not so simple to be explained. According to ancient Indian texts, among the innumerable factors that govern our lives, the most significant ones are our karma in this life, and karma from our previous lives. Our genetic structure is supposed to hold information from 7 previous generations so the consequences of their karma also influence our lives. With so much information governing us, what defines and becomes our personality, behaviours and habits would depend on the environment and circumstances we grow up in and get exposed to. Remember the 17 year old who was the most barbaric in the Nirbhaya case? Many criminals who committed gruesome crimes were not able to comprehend their horrific behaviour when they reflected on their actions with a sane mind. It must be the genetic information of a rapist ancestor along with the situation and the people he was with that acted as the trigger. Maybe a rapist or alcoholic ancestor is hidden inside all of us and all it would take is the appropriate fertile ground to invoke the beast.

2) Girls aren’t more mature mentally than boys their age

I would suggest that you try asking a 15 year old girl what type of man does she aspire to have as her husband. Most girls by that age would be idolizing a man in her life, mostly her father, or else one of her grandfathers or one of her uncles or even her best friend’s father. They would have already found the qualities in a man that have endeared to them and would want the same qualities in their men. Ask a 15 year old guy what type of girl would he want to have as his wife and chances are he might give you a long stare and walk away. When a boy looks at a girl, he is staring at her physical features whereas when a girl looks at a boy, she is searching for those manly qualities in her mind in him. This is all about evolution. Males are made for procreation and females for nurturing. Why do you think 22 year old girls are married off to 28 or 30 year old guys in India? Why is it the unwritten norm in the corporate world that guys have to be at least 30 years old before they can become managers? Everyone needs to learn self management before they can start managing others. Guys can take up to 28 years to start managing themselves decently. As little as 3 generations back, 16 year old girls becoming mothers were common in our society. What does this tell you? Girls can be ready for nurturing by that age if required. It is just sad that male hegemony still rules the corporate world otherwise women employees would have become managers with as little as 3 year’s work experience.

3) Wives are not teachers, mentors or coaches for their husbands.

A wife is a mother, sister, daughter, friend, teacher all rolled into one. She is capable of wearing any hat as the situation demands. That is why the role of a woman as wife is so unique. Now the problem here is the maid questioning why her son’s wife is not able to control him and you questioning the maid what she was doing with her son for 28 years. Both of them have been rendered helpless by the patriarchal society. Male hegemony has to be passed on to successive generations so the nurturing environment for boys are created appropriately, be it at home or outside. They grow up seeing women subjugated and silent so they never really understand how much women are suffering in their minds. This has again got to do with our evolution. Men were responsible for hunting for food and getting wood from the forests back in our cave dwelling days. Nothing was more important than the instincts to survive at all costs and the biggest enemies to survival instincts are empathy and compassion. In male dominated households there is no place for empathy or compassion even now. This is why men don’t like to be mothered by their wives and at times even by their mothers.

Now there is a flip side to all of this as well. Strong mothers can either make boys subjugated to them or make them despise women when they grow up. I have lived with an extremely autocratic grandmother for 34 years of my life. I was not supposed to go out and play, no going out without reason and absolute no to talking to people outside. When people come home I was not supposed to sit with them. I was only supposed to answer their questions and asking questions back especially to older people was a sin for which I would burn in hell. I had to back at home or where I stay before it becomes dark no matter where in the world I was. One day, I was late coming back from college because of an extra hour of class and the first thing I got when I came back home was sound thrashing from her with a long fat stick. This was at a time when there were no mobile phones. But somehow I never resented any of this because I realised her love for me very early in life and when I left home to work, I started loving the discipline I have in my life when the entire world around me was going haywire.

Either the maid’s son has to grow a better sense of judgement and understanding about himself and life or he has to go willingly against his male hegemonistic roots and start lending his mind and ears to his mother or wife or both. Till then they can both continue and enjoy playing the you-me (“tu tu main main”) game all they want.

Our star shines in the nether world now

We lost this girl 4 days back.

 

 

 

Exactly 11 years back, we brought Judy home along with Tommy.

 

 

 

 

 

Prostrate cancer took Tommy away from us 5 years back. Both were apples of my mom’s eyes and they were vying for her attention all the time. Mom was devastated after Tommy left but Judy’s presence kept her afloat. It’s kind of weird, but everyone in my family has a mind of his/her own and we never agree on most of the things. My granny was like a radio, there was no point trying to tell or convince her about anything. What is astonishing is, every pet we have had, be it dogs, cats and even a cuckoo bird, all of them imbibed this personality automatically.

Tommy and Judy used to know each and every activity inside the house, especially what mom does. They used to disappear the moment they understood that mom was getting medicines ready for them. They would try to keep their heads away from her sight as much as they can. If they had a chance to bury their heads in the ground they would have. Both of them used to sleep as close to mom as they could at night and Judy used to do periodic patrolling inside the house and around mom to make sure nothing were there to disturb her sleep. There is a reason why dogs get attached to us so much. Tommy and Judy were taken away from their mothers when their mothers were still nursing them. They came home and mom started feeding them so mom became mother to them. There is no love bigger and more envious than the love between a mother and her child. Even in his death bed and in his last moments, he was constantly looking at mom. Ditto with Judy as well. We made sure we were around her all the time so that she wouldn’t miss her family in her last hours.

Love in the animal world is straight and simple. Feed them and take care of them and they will give their complete loyalty in return. Their love is unconditional unlike in the human world. What pets do in our lives is something unique and special. They fill up spaces in our lives left behind by other human beings. Parents, siblings, family members, friends; pets make sure that we do not miss them. How do they do this? By constantly seeking our attention. They know when we are sad and need to be left alone and when we should not be alone. We believe animals are less intelligent than us. Most of our knowledge is built from our education system and what we experience in our society which has been created on the concept of wealth. The knowledge that animals possess is rooted in nature which is why they understand love, empathy and compassion much more than us.

Why does death hurt every living being? It’s just not us; every animal displays remorse at the passing of their loved ones. There are two things that happen when a beloved one passes away. We can no longer communicate with that person and most importantly we can never see each other again. This is what hits us first, especially after the funeral. Before this sinks in, we start missing that person and what hurts the most are the little things. Judy used to constantly move around inside the house and keep shifting her resting places. Her footfalls could be heard most of the time. Now there is a certain deathly silence.

What we need to understand is that our comprehension abilities are limited through our 5 senses. We were created with the knowledge that if we understood the entire process and cycle of life and death, we would become reckless beings and would never respect the rules of the Universe. If I knew when and how I was going to die and what would happen to me after death, I would live my life out without care rather than respect the time I have and everything life has given to me. This is why the entire system of life and death has been restricted to us. But as we approach death, that world opens out to us; especially in cases where people have lived out their lives and are dying of old age. My grandpa had a big wide smile on his face as he took his last breath. Death is release from the agony and miseries of our physical existence. Our souls are chained to our bodies just like we put birds and animals in cages. This is why I despise seeing any animal in chains or inside cages because their sufferings are doubly ignominious.

My dad reminisces about all the pets he has had from his childhood and keeps wondering where they are now. Of all the 7 billion people in the world, why do we know only the people we know? Out of them, very few become our best friends and soul mates. Why did we pick Tommy and Judy out of all the big bunch of babies that were there? It is impossible to believe and accept that all of this is random selection. There has to be some sort of connection that brings two people or a person and an animal together. When I look back at all the friends I have made, none of them seem to be random connections. It just happened with each one of them without any explanations. I thought about one of them yesterday and lo and behold, I see his call on my mobile in the evening. I keep telling dad that his beloved pets are just no longer in the physical form; they are in the form of energy and are everywhere. Our beloved ones become our guardian angels when they go to the spirit world and in the spirit form they will have a lot more influence in protecting us. We will not see them in the same form again. They discarded it when they left. But they will always be with us. I don’t miss any of my beloved ones because I have realized that there is no going away. We are eternally connected through space and time and once we realize and accept this, the boundary between life and death will vanish from our minds. We need to actually look forward to the end of our physical existence so that we could be with our beloved ones again.

Judy, my girl, be at peace wherever you are. We buried your body but your memories will be with us till we go to our own graves. Till we meet again in the spirit world…..