Part of ‘dear almost everything’— a series of letters on becoming.
old women need to chill. not all of them, of course, but at least those who’ve absorbed the hatred they have received from everyone around them.
i used to love spending my vacation in my mother’s hometown. it was a small village with open sewage system and narrow alley ways. the stars shone bright at night when we would sprawl on the beds laid down on the terrace under the night sky.
during the day, the oldest woman of the house, who also was widely respected in the family, would send fresh mangoes upstairs for the city folks. we would run around in the two tiered ancient house with old architecture and a questionable foundation.
i would love to meet all the extended family cousins i would see once in a year or two. it was a big family fare for two weeks straight.
until i grew older, that is. slowly, but surely, i was asked to stop mingling with the male cousins, which i didn’t mind because half of them were growing up to become creeps. i was no longer met with kind hellos and harmless questions about school and friends.
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i was asked to talk less, laugh quietly and was downright shamed for wearing jeans. a man i had never met before had the audacity to question if i was allowed to wear jeans in public.
naturally, he was met with my mother’s fuming rage and a curt ‘mind your business’. that was the summer i realized i had grown out of my mother’s lovely hometown. the sun still shone on the underdeveloped streets, the corner store vendor still sold my favored tamarind candy and the old uncle in the opposite alley still made fresh ‘ponganalu’ early in the morning.
but the innocent admiration for my extended family had vanished. i didn’t understand then what was so unbelievable about a piece of clothing for them. i didn’t understand why they needed me to disappear in the background when they could teach their sons to behave.
i was too naive to understand where they came from. then, it was many years since i had last visited the hometown. and many years still since their musical accents graced my ears. i sure did miss the happy feeling i got as a child.
15 years later when that ‘oldest woman of the house’ visited us for my sister’s wedding, i was elated. she was well known for her kind nature and was naturally respected.
so when i was berated by her in front of a room full of people i was shocked. see, i was being pulled in all directions. everyone needed something and the house was a chaos. so when she had asked me to get something for her earlier i never got a chance.
she very tactfully taunted me about it later. i looked around to see if anyone else had noticed. to add on to my shock, they had taken it lightly.
‘ah, aapa you’re so funny.’
i had to brush it off assuming i was over reacting. the night went on and we were taking photos. when my mother asked me to put a different set of sunglasses for a picture, i jokingly told her i didn’t want to.
are we shocked that miss ma’am had something to say about that too? i was furious. because i had never experienced such unexplained scrutiny from anyone let alone someone i was meeting after over a decade. i pushed down the anger and smiled at my mother, ignoring the old retard sitting next to me.
everyone was enjoying the silly photoshoot with the silly glasses i had made. someone passed a compliment or two, and i thanked them in excitement.
the ‘oldest lady of the house’ couldn’t digest it. she turned to me and grabbed my face to turn me towards her, ‘let me see’.
then came the waterworks. i hated her. i had decided. i couldn’t sit next to someone so filled with disgusting hatred towards a girl she knows nothing about for the sole reason that i was in fact just a girl. that i was probably too lazy for her liking, too smiley, too happy.
i got up and left.
what happened next didn’t harm her. no one stood up to her. and it wouldn’t shift her world an inch if i admitted to hating her.
i always read about people being filled with rage for not getting what the newer generations so easily enjoyed. i never believed it because of my unshakeable faith in humanity, of course.
but i got to experience it first hand.
when i try to make sense of it and apply some well researched social psychology concept like the fundamental attribution error, i could say she was just tired from travelling so far. or that she was dealing with something very personal.
but my heart said, she’s a bitch.
so there it goes, some old women need to chill.
some adults treat children as their own personal pet projects. they think they can dictate everything a child does and invent a brand new paul rudd.
trial and error is great. i’m sure there are well meaning parents and most of the time it all works out. but the people who are not ‘the parents’ and are just there by the direct result of sharing the same blood, need to sit down.
asian culture has their own ‘Karen community’. these are the people who sip on their tea at the back of the function, gossiping about every single piece of clothing and the innocent glances shared, about not being invited on the stage or not being shown any attention.
while in actuality, we can all benefit from finding happiness in the happiness of others. it’s not a shocker why communities are dying down and why people want nothing to do with big fat weddings anymore.
love does not grow in the dark hearts of envy and suspicion.
how hard is it to tell someone you’re happy for them and really mean it?
everyone wants to wear jhumkas on their jeans, and add duppattas to elevate their outfit for OOTD for social media. but when it comes to it no one actually wants to adopt the asian culture.
growing up i believed asian culture meant respecting your adults, helping out a family member in need, and that hard work leads to success. this new old generation has made it out to be something that cannot be questioned.
nobody deserves respect who in turn can’t show respect themselves. there’s a popularly accepted idea of subservience which is actively preached to today’s society.
i’m not asking everyone to leave their houses and run up and down the streets yelling, ‘death to culture’. let us however recognize that we are the future of our society. we decide if we want to perpetuate this cycle of hate or cultivate love and closeness among our neighbors.
we should discard this tradition of teaching shame and self-hatred under the facade of humility.
so, girl, lift your damn pen. we’re rewriting the culture.
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Part of ‘dear almost everything’— a series of letters on becoming.
i read ‘the hunger to be everything’ by amber. while sorting a few personal things, it felt like a fresh breath of air. to know that someone somewhere a few thousand miles away felt the same way too. highly recommend reading it.
i love, love, LOVE ‘no one is coming to save you’ by Devashiii (you’re an icon). it felt like pages from my journal, pls give it a read for the nostalgia and warmth in your heart.
