When They Sit Down To Talk

Get togethers, meetings and catch ups with people help sustain the feeling in mind that one is social enough and that he is interesting enough for people to waste their time on. Some people bank more on their relatives than on their friends, while some find their relatives ‘monsterifiying’ their lives and thus, find solace in the company of their friends. No matter who you confide in, the heart of the matter is that we all need someone close to vent out the flux which boils in our mind over the time and also, to console ourselves with the fact that we have someone worthy enough to be called at home or caught up with on holidays.

Growing up has brought along numerous kinds of experiences, some good, some bad, a few irrelevant and others useful. It has been hard to live as a kid, when you are too foolish to understand the whys and the hows and as a teenager, when everything you say looks exactly like the kind of food you eat – junk – until you hop on from teen bracket to a more mature age, 20’s, by when you already have turned immune to most of the things that happen at home and have figured out one answer to all the questions – YES.

So, you sit as a mere spectator in the family gatherings and speak only when asked to, resembling a monkey who acts when his master, the juggler, gives him a spanking. Thus, the experience I share today is one such, gained having braved all these family gatherings for ages. Whenever the seniors would sit down to chit-chat, one topic would always crop up, no matter what the context or the source be, the crux would mostly boil down to the same old regret stories. The previous generation or the one even senior has many things to regret in their lives, why or how they could not choose a better career, a better place to live in, better options in terms of the kind of person they are, a better bank balance or sometimes worse, a better spouse. They could talk incessantly on how time had not favored them in the past or why circumstances could not turn any better so to have them emerge as winners.
                  

I loathe all these stories I’ve heard till date, because none of them sounds strong or convincing enough to have screwed their lives to the extent they could not think of any alternative similar or better. I wonder what gives way to these regret stories? If they are the ones who were given the power to think for themselves and decide, there should be no reason whatsoever to regret now. They should, in fact, be happy for the decisions they have made despite the bitter circumstances.

Anyway, since I am a mute spectator who keeps waiting when she’ll be asked to speak (which is seldom, considering how merrily elders forget our presence when they are with their folks), I keep jotting down excellent stuff like this for my blog - elders and their, sometimes funny, regret stories. Here is one coming from an aunty to quote,

Mere do bachhe na hote to main Mallika se kam nahi thi.

Oh, I guess you must have been clearly confused on what the aftereffects of a happy marriage are. :)