# 124 blog post
It’s a beautiful German word for “ADVISING” as TH
Iyer mama explained one day while at the walks at Eliot’s Beach. He said, “The
Germans consider ADVISING as akin to beating someone with a stick. The least a
German would say by way of a conversation is – If I were you, I would think or
act like this……..but then you are not me and leave it at that. It is a very
open society where individual freedom is respected.” I said, “In my case
ADVISING others is like beating myself with a stick. Self-flagellation. Self-mortification. Masochistic. I have been trying to
drill some sense into my sisters' heads and they just don’t bother.”
This
story is so interesting that it does give me the right to break the 2019
resolution of no writing on the Bad four. I don't want to deny myself and the rest of the reading world for there is a powerful lesson embedded here.
First a disclaimer: Of
the Bad four, my mother and the Sindhi (my ex-girlfriend) are like those
documentaries that movie screen would show in black & white era where Nehru is
seen shaking hands at the airports with some world leader while descending a
plane. Meaning these are fossilized characters in my head; these two cause as
much nuisance as the memories of my father who passed away almost three decades
back – so diffused as though from my previous births.
Bad 4: My
mother
My mother is a diseased gene at work. She has
not learnt one life lesson even as the clock shows over 78 years. This is a
rotten egg at birth but my only grouse is “she had ample time and freedom to
learn yet was adamant to insist on her nuisance ways.” For the last 15 years
she has been on psychotropic drugs (any moodswings or depressions is
symptomatic of a mind rolling in too much hate and fear) and I would tell her
often with the patience of a saint, “It is time that you learnt something; your
daughters are married and worse still your grandsons have got married. There is
no payoff being a gold medal in stupidity anymore.” Her immediate retort would
be, “I am useless to everyone, I would rather die than suffer.” I would tell
her then as per the usual sequence, “You seem to think of death as some kind of
relief from pain and a paradise where you can behave as you wish. The
sufferings on earth get multiplied a thousand times after death. A peaceful
mind is a gift while an agitated one will only cause misery either while living
or gone.” She would blank my reasons out
and next day, it is same old story of fear, grouses, and complaints.
Bad 3: THE Sindhi
I truly loved this woman with the whole of my being in 2007- 08 and only drifted away after she announced her engagement to
another man. Even if she had taken that decision, the least she could have done is snap our ties with some tact, straight forwardness and a contrite attitude like, “Sathya, I am marrying
another man. I am really sorry for walking out on you. As you say, I am
returning your books and images, deleting all your mails kinds.” At least this would
have been small concessions and saving crumbs at parting. I would have returned that
gesture with “let her fly away” in peace and without a guilty heart.
Since
I got no apology, I pasted –served boiled and fried like noodle strands -her reputation for a while
in 2010 before a threat of defamation and police complaint got me to halt in
the self-destructive fire (there is an amazing insight here: When a heart is
attacked with hatred and non-love, it gets so addictive to take revenge and set
on a course to defame and maybe even choke the throat). Years passed and I used to think during my
darkest days, “Maybe the Sindhi got it right, it is better she is happy with a
new man otherwise she would have to suffer alongside especially in the 2015 and
2016 years.”
Then
MINDFULNESS happened and I realized that the Sindhi suffers from a character
problem. She had broken one of the five silas of Vipassana (no stealing, no
murder, no lies and gossip, no intoxicants and this one is important NO
PROMISCUITY) which means Buddha’s teaching no longer applies to her. Observing
the five silas is foundation course; kinder garden level. The least she could
have done was to write after a decade, “Sathya, I am sorry. I was your first
date and first love. I hope you are happy.” Instead she threatens me with legal
notice when she finds my blog posts besmirching her supposed reputation. Look
at this, the truth does not hurt but loss of reputation does. Who is she trying
to fool? Herself? Husband? Colleagues?
Is truth and honesty so far lost in the wilderness of life that they mean
nothing as compared to one’s monstrous and erroneous self-image? There is another insight here: One does not think of any sweet memories associated with this pest, the mind only remembers the pain and sorrow this pussy inflicted on me. This is a character I can never forgive and sadly not forget too (unless I fall in love again).
That
attitude saves me further for I am doubly and triply convinced that such a rat
is not fit to share my cot in any capacity. Since then, each time my mind thinks
of the SINDHI I feel like in the toilet and wash my hands with Dettol hands
wash. Good riddance to bad rubbish. Mine
is a very large heart easily given to forgiveness but she would not give me a
chance for those nobler feelings to flow! Such a crook. Exactly the way Pi felt in “The life of Pi”
when the Bengal tiger walks into the forest after that boat drifts into a shore
without stopping for a second glance.
Bad –
1&2
Both my mother and the Sindhi are losses in
my balance sheet account of life. But both my sisters are working capital accounts.
I have to be in contact for we still have a mother as a joint responsibility. Both are graduates, both are worldly wise
unlike my mother, both are rich monetarily and family wise but again no minds
or hearts are narrower.
I
used to lament often like a broken record to my eldest sister “V” that I have not seen a
festival in three decades. She would hear it and let my angst go from one ear
to another even as the years started piling up. 18 months ago I wrote a blog post
with my litany of sins on both “V” and “L”. Again no effect! I started to
circulate these blog posts to my first cousins with a copy; again no effect.
Then
these events happened in a sequence. I was bound for Delhi in the middle of
August, 2018 and invited “V” who said, “I am scared to visit Besant nagar for
there is no knowing how you will behave.” It felt like she had hit me with
a rod as I asked for clarifications, “Do you fear your physical safety or
emotional well-being?” Getting no answer, I was livid and wrote a email to “L’s
industrialist brother-in-law” saying how cheap and gross both my sisters
are. “L” is hypersensitive when it comes
to the industrial magnate for her husband works in one of their concerns and
they are easily one of the richest people in the city. “L” could have picked up
a phone or visited me, try to reconcile but she did nothing. It is then you realize that tamasic people like the Sindhi, V and L have no moral fibre.
Then
in December as the house sale proceeds were going on, I hear “V” saying on a
landline, “I am so nervous of my son getting a work permit in America that I am
spending sleepless nights,” which gave me an opening to ask, “How come you care
so much for your son and not squander a minuscule in my direction?” Again no
response and this time I was so livid that I wrote to her brother-in-law and
also L’s industrial magnate innocently asking, “Are siblings required to care
for a brother in this age and time?”
Then
this social experiment happened as I wrote emails to V and her entire family of
sons and daughter-in-law explaining how elder sisters should behave. I gave
examples of our paternal second cousin Jayashree who tends to her brother who is afflicted with muscular
dystrophy with daily visits from her residence in Virugambakkam to Ashok nagar.
I also rattled out other instances of a Usha, our maternal cousin, coming to
the aid of her estranged brother after 25 years when his wife deserted him or a
Radha who went to America leaving her infant daughter in Chennai to supervise
the treatment of a brother in pneumonia. Again no response.
Then
I threatened them with article features in Tamil newspapers and magazine or
even writing to the PMO on such depravity (which dictionary defines as moral
corruption and wickedness) and again no response.
For
those still fogged about my issues, let me reiterate – both my sisters had not
invited a very vulnerable brother for three decades nor visited him at my house
for an instance of extreme selfishness and self-centredness to a Arctic chill
level,
My
cook Thangam wanted to speak to “V” to drill some lessons on Family
responsibilities. Even the grocer Muthu and the milk maid Lakshmi felt outraged enough to heap abuses on them. My friend Arun Kailasam gets visibly annoyed anytime I talk
about my sisters. He was so upset at me for attending my nephew’s wedding that
he stopped talking to me for a while. My neighbours and beach-goers would spit at my
siblings for this prolonged lapse of duty. In fact I wanted to write to their
alumnus KEYS HIGH SCHOOL for refund of school fees and to OSMANIA UNIVERSITY
for revoking their degree certifications. And then I learnt this lesson – I went
around trying to drill sense to them instead I got this lesson drilled into my
head for a very powerful insight: you cannot teach others using threats or
ridicule or shaming them or sarcasm or even at the point of gun. Both my
sisters are like those cobras; you will die of exhaustion beating them with
sticks but nothing happens to them. A
simple apology like, “Sathi, we were lost in our own worlds. I am sorry and
tell us how we can involve you in festivals or when you fall sick.” A simple
acknowledgement of this fact would have saved both sides from a whale of
misery. As I told TH Iyer mama, “I do not possess the German sense of individual
freedom” and my lesson is “Advising others is like beating myself with a
stick.” There is no percentage gain here, only losses. There is a corollary here: Bad - 4 was instrumental in killing her husband, Bad -3 in betraying a man's love by dumping him are CHARACTER MISTAKES while Bad - 1 & 2 are ATTITUDE mistakes of a WRONG CONDITIONING of the mind and very poor sense of PERSONAL VALUES. As for me, I too earn my freedom from the Bad four finally. The world is far and wide and there are very many sensible and decent blokes out there.