A husband and wife fought in the neighborhood . Let them . Why did they marry after all, if not for fighting? But why should I be called to interfere? I don’t even know them! I enjoy such quarrels sitting inside my house near the door or widow so that I get a good view. But the other ladies called me to enter the battle ground. I went. After all, it was a Deepavali night. The crackers were not making enough noise to make me go crazy. If not during Diwali nights when do I go crazy?
The next morning the second son of that couple came home and said, ‘uncle, you know why I pulled you back?’ Then, he showed the scar on his hand muscle and added, ‘my mother bit me last month. I don’t want you to be bitten by her’
‘Even dogs don’t bite me’, I said, ‘they don’t like my smell’
‘Uncle, it is not a joke, getting bitten by one’s own mother’.
There was sadness in his voice.
‘Now I guess why your dad was shouting at her’, I told him.
The engineering student replied calmly.
‘No, uncle. He slapped her as he was fully drunk’
‘Your dad is a drunkard ?’ I asked him surprisingly as he appeared to be a honorable man like me when I met him the other day, for the first time.
‘Now I guess why your mother went crazy’, told him what I felt.
‘No, uncle’ said the elder son, in the final engineering, who entered. ‘They both got married only because of the compulsions from their relatives, not because they liked each other’
‘Now, I guess why you two sons are so reasonable, intelligent and smart’
‘No uncle’, they said together, clearly, firmly and with no tinge of anger in their voice. we want to show them that we can come up in life despite the damn, dirty environment’
I still feel the force and hatred with which the boys pronounced the words, ‘damn dirty environment’ .
I knew that they were actually cursing their parents and not their fate or environment Please note that I didn’t say, ‘I guess’ this time.
Allow your children to grow in a peaceful ambience. Otherwise, they will curse you throughout their life- ‘damn dirty’ !