Dear Society, Your Conversations With My Parents Are Affecting My Future

We all stay in an inclusive environment; at least we are supposed to. So it doesn’t matter, that we do not know what our neighbors do anymore but their presence matters. Human being developed as a product of his surroundings and little did we know, they would kill him well. Kill because in a way it is restricting our right to live.

Hello society, we don’t meet every day, one on one, very rare, because you are huge to counter. But your influence has been influencing my decisions, forcefully if I may add.

A byproduct of values and traditions, we pride about our ‘Indianness.’ We protect our values, some very redundant and then we discuss in public, anything that goes a little tangent to the said principles. Churning out typical Indian aunties, who are now notorious than respectful. Someone else’s private life is a topic of public intimidation. Their decisions need to go under you scanner, otherwise you are ready to rip them apart.

Photo credits: Unsplash, sweeticecream

Coming to what you do best ‒ Expect? Your urge to make me fulfill your expectations is an unseen burden I carry every day. You probably see the heavy school bag of children, but the burden that I carry on my shoulders to live up to you always go unnoticed.

My college has no dress code, but you have a ‘uniform’ way of looking at me. I may go to work dressed in formal but your talks about my dressing are still ‘informal’. You share someone’s success stories, promotions, marriage dates and affairs in WhatsApp groups, regardless of what the pupil of these parents would be going though ‒ most likely comparisons. The measure of my personal achievements being weighed against someone else’s is a demotivation for me.

Your calls to ask my percentage are now replaced with what’s my age. Although, those percentages and grades you asked about have very little to do with my salary today. But then, you still have a lot to do with my age. My marriage is the next grand thing on your mind, without really bothering about the uncertain future that lies ahead. What you see as a ‘happily ever after with anyone’, is actually knocking on the door full of uncertainties. My wedding probably would be the only time we meet together as a group, because we clearly don’t call to celebrate birthdays or festivals together anymore.

Dear society, if you are planning to raise independent children or grown-ups, give us a chance to act like one? We might fall on our faces with the mistakes we make, and you will still come to laugh at us. If you are influencing my family to make my decisions, you are playing with my future. Your set of principles has drawn boundaries of my decision-making. I hate to admit this.

If you people can order for a Masala Dosa in a Punjabi restaurant then why cannot you let a South Indian woman as your daughter-in-law? In India, we are served with a lot of religions on a plate of faith and then you pick and choose on the basis of caste? Still a Maharashtrian will rarely go to a hotel and order for authentic Maharashtrian food, they will experiment with other cuisines, right? Why cannot you do the same with caste? What bounds you? Is it the ‘collective society’ again? (I may have been hungry while writing this).

My parents live in a fear that ‘what will you say?’, ‘what will they think of us?’, ‘they will keep us names’ and I cannot really blame them. They have been conditioned by their parents to live within ‘Your expectations!’ It is tormenting to them and traumatic to me. I can be a rebel to all of you but I cannot possibly go deny my parents, not at all times for sure. Thinking of your expectations driving my future is a big letdown for me. I cannot not just accept myself, but nor can I deny your existence.

So how do we reach a consensus?

Where do you draw a line of not letting your judgments play such an important role in my individual decision-making? Why are you a deciding factor of someone's individual acceptance? Why is it, that man, who leaves all his money, possessions and luxuries down here when he meets death, but strives all his life to gain these to ‘fit into the society?’ 

I write here on the behalf of not me, not a potential marriage material, but thousands of others who probably are crippling on the inside to serve up to your demands of them. A school child who cannot spell ‘society’ but is taking classes back-to-back to make recognition, a tattooed youngster who got something imbibed what he truly believes in when you don’t, a mother who wants to support her child’s dream but also fears your taunts and lastly an element of society which is bound by your existence. I ask you to kindly excuse from what you have been doing for so long and let me and thousands of us pursue what we can but are undermined and under confident about. Because we can sure cuss you and say ‘Fuck Society,’ but it will somehow lose its meaning and translate to ‘Log Kya Kahenge.’