MAN – THE SOCIAL ANIMAL

THINKSPACE
SocietyWith so many of gadgets and apps, the man has been socializing more or are they really socializing? Sometimes he has to be social forcefully though; anyways there is hardly any Jungle left.

I have always been in love with what we call small town life. I think in the end, people here are really who make society what it is, they just don’t live in the adjacent building they do socialize in real. But to what extent that surprised me when I see incidences taking place here.

One of my relative (my grandmother or my mother’s aunt to be precise) died in her 80s. She was severely ill for more than 5 months. Hence the family was investing whatever they had for her. After giving more than 4 warnings where every relative assumed that she would be dying, she left this world at the 5th warning just a fortnight back.

Even though every single relative was present there, I was not able to find her ‘Anmol Ratan’. At first, I thought he was busy preparing for the last rituals but then all the ritual preparations were done already. I was wondering how anyone could go missing when he has to fulfill his ultimate duty as a son.

When he finally arrived, I went near him but had no guts to ask him anything. I observed his face; it was bit tensed rather than being sad.

Someone finally came close to him and asked, “Did you get any caterer?”

He said, “I have asked a cook to come and prepare, he will do it well.”

The person again told him, “Everyone will call you stingy if anything goes wrong, just go and get a good caterer.”

He again went and came after half an hour.

After three days I went for a ritual. Just like the first day, there was a meal prepared for many people.

At lunch, many people from village arrived and to my surprise, there was a sweet as a part of the meal.

I asked about it when I came back home to my mother and she replied,“You have to prepare a sweet for these 12 days.”

My immediate question was, “But it wasn’t a celebration”

And to my surprise she already knew what m going to ask, she immediately replied, “but then it’s a social ritual that they can’t avoid”

Here’s another incident, a few months back one of my relatives got married. The uncle and aunty were known for their behavior in and outside our family, but somehow they were always deprived of the love or care that they deserved.

It was finally their son’s marriage and they thought finally they will have a happy family.
Even when they had seen so many wrong examples of lesser fortunate marriages in this so called society, they had decided they will give their best to their daughter-in-law.

I even got to know that after one of the small fight between the couple before marriage, they had said to their son, “Sorry but that girl is giving up on the family and everything that she has, so we will give her all the love, even the part which belongs to you.”

Finally, they had a perfect wedding, aunty used to treat the girl as if she is the daughter-in-law trying to do everything to please her. The girl also used to tell everyone that she doesn’t feel as if she is at her in-laws. But God had something else written for them. And the marriage suddenly took a U-turn and came under the testing radar.

The aunt and uncle couldn’t do anything but cry for three days. The uncle even skipped his service for few days and to give him competition aunty had skipped the meals. Both of them being physically weak already had only one support – that was of Zandu balm.

But even he was not ready to live with them and used to die twice a day. The drama was unfolding more than a sad Tamil movie.

And in one of incidence, I told the aunt,
“I am going to the district place, do you want me to take you to the doctors.”

She refused, “Can you bring one of the items that we had distributed as a return gift?”

I was shocked to listen to that and asked, “Why that thing now when everything is at such stage? You should take care of your health first”

Her reply was, “It’s a social ritual. Only one was short and hence I couldn’t give that to Reena, what will she think about me?”

These are such incidences when I wonder that is the kind of socializing our generation do is right or the way of such places where importance to society is given more than individual self is correct. All these incidences made me move on a bit more towards city life. Let’s see who I do love more finally – a city life or a village life?