This is a real-life incident from a dear one in our family. I don’t have the magical power of story telling, so I can’t portray the exact situation here. But the way he narrated the story, it really touched my heart.
The person in my story is named “Deepu”. At that time, he used to live in Ganeskhind,Pune. In a large family of eight members, shortage of each and every necessity was a regular phenomenon. His father was a Govt. employee, who lived a dignified life. Never in his life had he asked for any financial help to anybody. He didn’t like to take loans. Deepu’s mother had to manage everything with her husband’s meagre income. But she used to try her best not to deprive any of her children of anything. As a result, though there was inadequacy of everything, they learned to adjust well with situations.
Days always don’t go the same. When Deepu was in high school, once the price of commodities skyrocketed due to some financial crisis in the state. Before only it was tough to manage, now things were gone beyond control. There is a particular mind-set of middle-class people, they are always very much conscious about their social status. Deepu’s parents were no exceptions. It became a problem for them to arrange for the rice, which is the staple food for Bengalis. Compared to rice, wheat was cheaper, but they were reluctant to buy that. They believed that people who survive on chapattis can’t afford buying rice. For them, this was a sign of poverty which they could not stand at all. Status was much more important to them than hunger and gastronomic pleasure also!
Finally they had to buy the wheat to feed hungry children. But they were so much ashamed to disclose this to anybody, even to the maid who comes daily to clean all the utensils. They planned an eye wash! They had to cook rice for their eldest son who suffered from some chronic illness; therefore he was not able to digest chapattis. While cooking, Deepu’s mom used to cook a little bit more than required. When the meal was over and nobody observing, she used to sprinkle some grains of the leftover rice on each plate. She tried to make it look like everybody has taken rice only, not chapatti. She believed that it will not depict them as poor people in the eye of Shantabai, the maid!
Young Deepu often found it quite strange. He never understood his mom’s actions. He always questioned himself: when we don’t have the capacity to buy rice, they why to fake it? Why it is important to convince Shantabai? Why we always try to pose as something which we are not actually? He got all these answers after many years. While narrating the story, he told me about it. When he was a child, he criticized his mom’s actions. But when the struggling part of real-life washed his childhood beliefs away with it, he realized how much it is important to act according to the situation. If we try to stand against each and every single thing, the situation will not change always but we will be hurt. It is easier to accept things sometime as they are. It saves both time and energy. I don’t know how much it is correct. But what lesson I got from it is, standing against everything is not always a wise decision. Sometimes you have to compromise. It can hurt your ego, but sometimes it saves you from unwelcoming conflicts.
