A long week end and a much needed break from work. I spend almost all week ends on football tournaments and this week was no exception. But the national holiday on Monday was something to cheer about and I made up my mind not to venture anywhere outside.
But, God had other plans for me…some of my relatives travelled to Chennai because of the long week end and wanted me to come over to my cousin’s place. Denying is no option for me.
I hated to go…it is not about waking up in the morning…it is not about travelling in the Chennai heat…it is not even about meeting them, but it is all about something that they lavishly shower me with and it comes for free… “Advise”.
This time around I am going to get feed for receiving advice…
After the initial pleasantries it was down to business. Aunties, Uncles and cousins…all of them had their own set of advice for me from money management to marriage. I can understand the Aunties and the Uncles, but these cousins are younger to me!!!…well, just because their relationship status on Facebook shows “married” it is taken for granted that they have every right to advise me on getting married. Seconds turned into minutes, minutes into hours and I could see twilight…
Looks like the Aunties and the young couples have some plans for shopping and I refrained from their invite to join them. I spend another hour or two with my uncles which was a touch productive than the rest of the day. Every topic they spoke about ended with an advice for me and one of it…I don’t know how it landed on the topic 'anger'.
One of my Uncle said “Gokul listen…anger will never do the work for you” and continued “you know…I never get angry…I don’t have BP even in this age”. My inner soul was talking to myself in a sarcastic tone “Uncle, tell me something new…”. Well he had a story in the offering for the part where he told “I never get angry”
The story (as narrate by uncle)
Long back when I became the bread winner of the family…you know how our village is…rows of houses on the slope of the hills. In the neighborhood, there was a teenager who lost his father at a very young age, his Mother and elder sister worked in the nearby tea gardens and they seem to be living a peaceful life. But once in a while, I saw the boy run out of his house while his sister chased him…she tries to catch him the whole day but he somehow manages to slip into one the streets. This happened couple of times and I decided to ask them about the incident.
The sister explained me that her brother asks for some cash and both she and her mother will invariably refuse to give him but this guy somehow lays his hand on the money and runs out of the house and that is when the sister chases him. On further probing I got to know that even though the mother and sister are angry in the morning…by the time he comes back in the night the situation mellows down and he gets his share of the dinner and goes to bed. Further, the sister asked me to advice her brother not to grab the money and runaway.
Now, I as a responsible neighbor decided to talk to this teenager on how his mother and sister felt and wanted to advise him not to do such things in future. The teenager being a restless character, which is typical to the age it was very difficult to get the guy to sit down in one place and talk, but I managed to get him one day. To build the conversation I asked him “See, your sister and mother refuse to give you cash…don’t you get angry with them? ”,the answer that the teenager gave me was an eye opener. He very casually told me “do you think, I will get my 50 bucks if I get angry…that is why I simply take it and run off”. I had no more questions for him.
Well, that made sense to me as well…It was getting late, we quickly wound up our talks and I headed back home. On the way back, for some odd reason the story of the teenager kept ringing in my ears. It was not just about, ‘anger will never get my work done’, it was also about ‘if you are convinced, just go ahead with the work and if your actions have hurt anyone…time is the healer’.
On the lighter note the story also rang a bell on ‘run/be active’, with a sedentary life style that I am living, I sure do need to ‘run’ in the streets of Chennai. Now, who is ready to chase me? ;)
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