A Cruel Mindgame

I'm going to play a cruel mind game. Those whose hearts are fragile, skip this post.

Imagine with fierce conviction that your father has died in an accident—or from some other grave illness. Your father was everything to your family, meaning the provider of all expenses. For those who have no father, or whose family expenses are met by an elder brother, sister, or someone else, just assume that person has suddenly ceased to exist. Leaving this world is utterly natural and yet utterly unacceptable. While we're alive, we assume we'll never die. But that's a terrible lie. And again, deep down, we all know it. Strange, isn't it?

So, as I was saying! You live on your father's money. Your social and familial standing rests on your father's dignity. His absence means people will gradually begin judging you by your own position. The most transient identity in this world is "so-and-so's son, so-and-so's grandson." Let's make it a game, shall we? Sit in a quiet, soundless room. Close your eyes. Empty your mind completely for a while. Keep imagining: you've begun walking the world's paths with your identity and absolutely zero money in your pocket. What would happen then? You'd have to look after your mother, your younger siblings. They're all looking at you. The surrounding world mocks you every moment with cruel eyes. Everything your father bought becomes not property but debt, staring at you with wide, accusing eyes. When the banyan tree overhead is uprooted, who will give you shade? When you stumble and fall, who will catch you, pull you up, and ask, "Doesn't hurt, does it, son?" Everyone will know you're utterly helpless. Humans are strange creatures. They only search for who's helpless and strike when they sense opportunity! Everyone will want to believe you can't be loved—at best, pitied.

What would sustain you then? In whose love would you believe? People can't survive long on pity. We're made to live on love. And this love is the scarcest commodity of all. Love's chemistry is mysteriously complex. Suddenly, from the most unthinkable people, love appears like that single drop of water that saves a weary, thirsting traveler in the desert. (The genuine, selfless love I've received in life—I don't deserve even a particle of it. Such people have loved me that whenever I think of them, I nearly die from guilt! They constantly force me to realize I don't understand love's complex equation.) Doesn't your lover sometimes love you for your position too? Well, let's assume they love you completely selflessly, the way parents do. Even that won't work. Truly, without money in your pocket or your own solid foundation, even that love will fade in time. How long will you fight? At most, you could take them and turn away from the world into complete exile. But anyone can do that! That doesn't require being human—even animals can manage it. Would you abandon the very family that, had they not been with you since birth, might have prevented you from ever meeting your beloved? I think it would've been better if you'd never been born into this world. At least there'd be one fewer cowardly, selfish, spineless person.

I know very well how often time travels the path of untimeliness! Sometimes you simply can't survive on love alone. You're content with your bit of love because you have shelter overhead. These days love has become so cheap, even cheaper than money! You can't walk long on your own feet—I mean, solely on your own feet—with such cheap goods. There's no one to help you walk, your banyan tree is dead; only two types remain around you: One—those looking at your face helplessly, whom you cannot turn away. Two—those looking at your face with contemptuous laughter, whom you cannot ignore. No one else exists anywhere. Just you and your most trusted friend, your family, whose members would want you to be well even at death's doorstep. You might ask about your lover. Be practical! By then they'll belong to someone else! In this world, love for nobodies escapes through the back door.

Forget about love! When the rice runs out, you must buy rice first; love is available more or less free—you just have to say a little "I love you" and such! But money for rice won't come from thin air! Who'll buy the oil, chili, salt? Have you ever thought how hard it is for your father to pay the house rent? Don't you feel ashamed constantly asking him to buy this, buy that? Your father's responsibility is giving you the capability to walk the world's paths—fulfilling your frivolous demands isn't his duty. By what logic do you tell your father you need a smartphone? Why do you keep reminding your mother, who manages everything through sheer mental strength, of the burden of giving birth to children? And why burden your elder brother? Put yourself in his place and see how you feel! Before asking your elder sister to buy things, have you noticed how long she's been going to work in those same three or four old saris? Can't you die before making such demands? I say, go into the bathroom, close the door, stand before the mirror and give yourself several hard slaps! Let me remind you again: without the shade over your head, you are nothing! Take your father's shoes that have grown so old they can't get any older, and slap yourself hard with them. You haven't yet earned more than that. Every night before sleeping, touch those shoes to your head once; in private. Perhaps some wisdom will dawn!

What courage do you have to lose your temper? What do you possess that's yours? Even the rascals on the street can speak big words. The difference between you and them is slight—no one's there to console them when they sulk, but you have someone. One day you too will have no one. Then your responsibility will be ensuring no one around you harbors resentment. What will you do that day? Flee from life? Your father won't leave any money for you. I don't think leaving money for children is a father's duty. He might leave something for his wife. These days it's an era of beastly, worthless offspring. So that's necessary. You'll find nothing ahead but yourself. What will you do then? Flee? But where? The ground will shift beneath your feet, the entire sky will crash on your head, no one will care about you, your social position will be what you alone are—nothing more, a few rupees in the bank, hunger, the duty of taking your mother's suffering on your shoulders, sufficient reason to silently endure cruel people's mockery. Oh, and you'll soon receive your ex-lover's wedding invitation—that's another inexpressible, suppressed pain. What will you do that day? These days of carefree laughter, of playing lord with others' wealth, won't remain. Don't misunderstand. By "others" I don't mean strangers, but your own dear ones. But essentially, everyone except yourself is "other" in this world.

When people are happy, they love believing they'll never suffer. When people suffer, they love disbelieving this suffering will ever end. That's the rule. I know you can't live long on tears alone. The pain of spending days in suffering—you can't even imagine its terror unless you experience it. Accept this: if you're not happy yourself, the world isn't truly happy. You'll pretend you're well; everyone around you will pretend they can't see through your pretense. The torture of acting happy—how could you understand that now? You mention friends? Think once: are they beside you, or beside your position? Even if they are beside you, when you see everyone ahead of you, your tremendous self-resentment will make them all seem like enemies. You yourself will withdraw from them, struck by middle-class Bengali pretensions of fragile aristocracy. Is that all? Not at all! Those who are ahead remain ahead! Accept this. No one actually cares about you. What do you possess that deserves care? Are they really close to you?

That day you'll understand how your father's shoe soles wore away in secret, how his shirt tore even before the needle went in for mending, how he ate only bread and banana outside—not because he wasn't smart enough for pizza like you, nor because bread and banana were his favorite, but to save those two rupees for you. While you went dating with his money, he worked overtime in his sick body, and when that old pain flared in his chest, despite your mother's nagging, he'd say "It's nothing! It'll get better" rather than see a doctor—though he'd rush you to the doctor for the slightest cold, certainly not because he had surplus money.

You might say you tutor, you manage on your own money. Oh brave hero! Why don't you share the household expenses! Sometimes do the shopping with your own money! It's your own home! You sleep there too, eat that food! Try telling your younger brother suddenly: "Listen! From now on, I'll pay your tuition fees." You can buy your girlfriend expensive wine-colored lipstick but can't buy your father even a cheap bedsheet? Or your mother a cotton sari? Let it be cheap! But still bought with your own money, wrapped in tenderness and love! Yes, sometimes love too is sold for money. Alas! Some idiotic sons live only for their girlfriends! What shame, what shame!!

Learn to imagine yourself this way—you have no home, no assurance of satisfying hunger, no God-given banker called "your father," no TV to switch on at will, your only capital for social recognition is yourself, no knowledge of what tomorrow morning will bring when you go to sleep, no compassionate people anywhere, nothing left in friends' eyes and faces but contempt-laced pity, relatives who make you feel it would've been better if they didn't exist, no job—that best friend of the middle class—or if you have one, nothing worth mentioning, so you don't want to tell anyone, you're not on any list of people to invite to social functions, you can't just buy a T-shirt when you want, no one's there to value your tears—so absent that even crying seems needless luxury, what you want must be bought with your own money, if serious illness strikes you have two paths: treatment with your own money or begging for others' charity, you no longer need to bother Google to understand "a penny saved is a penny earned," not living within your income but suddenly facing the time to earn according to your expenses—learn to live accustomed to facing so much more! If you can do none of this, then unbutton your shirt and press a burning, glowing cigarette to your chest to understand, even a little, how much pain your father or mother or elder brother or sister carries in their chest while living through hardship with infinite dreams of making you human!

Don't misunderstand me. If any of my words have hurt you, please forgive me. Stay well. My best wishes remain with you.