I am livid at my parents for messing me up. I am angry at the society that they call themselves a part of. There is nothing likable about it. All their rules, their self-proclaimed laws are decadent and morally so hurtful that if a fully aware and grown person were to live it, he/she would give up thriving under the awning of their care.

A lot of my thoughts and actions were highly predisposed of their ideas about the world. I have done a lot of things in my life that they thought were right, and it wouldn’t be wrong to say that it had cost me a living. If only I had reckoned it then, by not considering their word as the final say, I might not be as much in a deeper muck that I find myself today in. Not just them, but the times too, like movies literally defining our thought process and ideas. I blame them all for making me unpalatable.

There are so many wrongs hidden in my parent’s daily dose of routine that if you had tasted even a morsel of sanity in your life, you would always end up in a squabble for talking sanely to them. I had listened to my father’s advice throughout my life, and I have come to realize there have been so many occasions where he was outright wrong, and yet I followed all his preachings eyes closed.

I have also come to accept that it wasn’t his fault. It was this place he lived in, the habitat that surrounded him that had carved him the way he is. Whispers the wind brought in the form of neighbours, friends, and families, came with stories that made him extremely watchful and vigilant. He was simply protecting me with all the things he had, and all the things he thought in his head were right, and I appreciate that. Yes. But in doing so, he was slowly carving a monstrous plaything that he had no clue about. He was inadvertently messing with my very own timeline and now I don’t know how to live with the changing times just as he has trouble understanding the generation today.

All those little things he did fail to justify his actions. I feel sorry he was a part of such a crooked society, that a big chunk of his brain was influenced by societal thoughts, and not his very own.

My mother too, like every other conventional Indian, believing her place to be in his feet and in the kitchen, has a hard time understanding why it is alright for a man to get involved with household chores. She still believes it would be a disservice if the man of the house worked in the kitchen if the lady is hale and hearty. She has been fed it as a sin, and people like her often have a wont of following things blindly.

I tried to feed them the new age thinking, a little bit of equality and feminism, and they were vexed with its sheer logic. How could a rebellious idea like that exist? So they thought. It was asking too much from people who have been following a certain way for ages. Forget about change, they don’t even concur to what was said.

My father had once stopped me from playing with girls when I was really young and I had never understood why. I had questioned it, just as I question everything in life, and all I got was the following reply:

You are a boy, you should play with boys.

There are certain things you never forget because of the way they reshape you. When you try to change a habit because of a thing your parents said, and want from you. You try to become someone else then. To win his heart and blessings in every form, at any cost, I dictated myself out of a game I was only beginning to enjoy.

I remember how I had completely left Hopscotch that I had once found intriguing. Even before I wanted to try my hands at that game, I was lanced for playing a girl’s game. How do you tack a game to gender, I have never really understood. A game should be played for the fun of it, for the heck of it, and for the challenge it tags along. To entail politics in it takes away the very sanctity of its existence and the whole point of engaging with it in the first place.

I have given up on so many things in life that had made me jovial for a while, just because it didn’t please my parents. It is too late to realize that now since that curious child is no longer curious about the things he was once curious about. Now I know that a person should live for himself and not allow the reins of his life to be squeezed into the hands of others. But why didn’t I know it back then? Why did I allow myself to be herded?

There are hundreds of instances that flicker in my mind now that I think of it. How and where my parents had gone terribly wrong with their parenting.

But then I think of all the good stuff too, and I realize they did alright. They did fine, for I turned out fine, despite the parochial approach that tried to turn me into them.

If it were not for all the ugly stuff that bound me with all the mental manacles, I wouldn’t have learned to appreciate all the good things in life. And for that, I would forever be indebted.