When you live in a country like India, thinking is not a very easy task. Trust when a girl says this. Men like in movies don't stop thinking either, only they ignore. No one here lives for themselves, it’s for others. Questions like "What would the neighbors think?" is a very casual thought. So, when one has to decide, it has to be after considering the family and don't forget "the neighbors", even if there are about 50 houses in the lane you live.
Its part of the culture, only a foreigner would think of it as weird but when you are a "true" Indian, it would be surprising if you didn't think like that. Unfortunately, I am in a condition where i don't want to think about others because the saying goes "when you laugh, the world laughs with you but in sorrow, you are the only person crying". Here, life has to move on, that's the thought. You cannot be stuck at sorrow because again, life is meant to be happy with a little bitterness not the other way, right?
So a family in India includes, your mother, father, son/daughter, your neighbors (in which every angle they live from your house). You have to know what is happening in the neighbors' place because we are true to be Indians. It doesn't matter if a million things are wrong in your own (house); skipping information of the neighbors is a big, bad, mistake. Even though it may sound funny to you when you read this, it takes your life away when one is at this spot. Again, if one of the family members is missing, example like a mother passed away a few years; the "family" is always concerned to know how one managed to be at that state. "How they got the girls to grow up so responsibly?" "How did the father not re-marry?" or worse, "He remarried, he couldn’t wait!”
Well these thoughts generally sound funny but when you are living through this, there is nothing you can do about it. Even worse, if you are the only person thinking why does the "family" care about us when they have their own to worry about. The equation could sound tougher than Einstein's.
Live and let live is never the motto. Watch, listen and learn has a whole different meaning here. Now, your choices fall between either to mind one's business and let them talk or decide after considering the "family". When you are stuck between these thinkers, life is never one's own business.
In order to have a perfect normal life here, every element of a defined family has to exist. You bitch through others life to make yours look better. I am missing an element here, not the person only the name and existence.
A father.
A father.
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