Relations

Do you remember travelling long distances (on bus, train or plane), getting into conversation with the passenger sitting adjacent to you on various topics, converging to subjects or hobbies you both like the most, and before reaching the destination you exchange the contact numbers to stay in touch in future? There are scores of such journeys one can remember where they interacted with the co-travelers, became friendly to each other and made promises of maintaining the contact in future. However, that friendship didn’t run anymore. Once you step out of traveling mode and reestablish links with the people who really matter in your life, all short-term (brief) relations get vaporized.

Another category of relationship that lasts longer than travel-relation is on-the-job colleagues; association with people you meet at workplace. Since one keeps changing job every year or so, therefore, it becomes less likely to remember all those you meet with in the line of duty during the entire job-age of nearly 40 years. Working in large organizations throughout or major portion of your job-age may provide opportunity to make friends on sustainable basis but again, frequent transfers from one office to other workplaces prevent creation of lasting relations. As a result, a few people come and stay in your life as you grow old. You keep on forgetting old names and adding new ones in the contacts list. A peculiar relationship always exists between an employee and the employer i.e. subordinate and boss. But this relation is often based on hate, backbiting, sarcasm, smarmy and hypocrisy terms.

Friends are forever. This sounds reasonably true. You can never forget your friends that grew up along with you; beginning from neighborhood to preschool to college/high-school to university. You can never forget those friends with whom you did many “first” things, like; watching first movie from the money theft from Abba’s wallet, viewing first hot magazine, first fight, first bike accident, first cheating in exam, first food in a restaurant without payment, first smoke, and first slap from a young girl over indecent gestures/comments. One always recalls their names vividly and likes to spend leisure time with them whenever opportunity strikes. Friend in a need is friend indeed; this proverb is evergreen because once in a while one faces a situation in their lifetime when friends turn up and help with their time and other resources. These are pretty good, enviable and lasting relations.

Here comes blood relations; parents are on top of the list, followed by siblings, and then first cousins. Of parents, mothers occupy the most important position. Mother is a complete love package without limits, conditions and prejudices. It’s a unique character of endeavors and endurance. She is a source of protection from all evil forces for her children. She is with the most powerful prayers and is believed to holding powers to jolt skies and heavens. She’s a pivot of integration for her children irrespective of their age. Her annoyance, scolding, smacking at the back, and sometimes, running with one of her slippers in the hand to hurl at disobedient kids, are actions of pure love for her children.

A mother is capable of absorbing all wrongdoings of her children without making complaints. She remains the role model of all children, especially daughters, and happens to be first informal school for her children imparting education in multiple disciplines; from ethics to religious values to behavioral sciences. Mother is the best friend of her kids, forever; children share happy moments of school, confide in little fantasies and frustrations, and always find mother agreeing to fulfill their dreams, desires and demands. Children consider their mother immune to heat and cold, electricity and lightening, weathering effects and diseases, tiring and ageing, and most of all, an insomniac machine ready to prepare meal at any hour of clock.

Blessed are those children who payback to mother’s love, prayers and care with their time, respect and resources in her lifetime to reap up her prayers for this world and hereafter.

Fathers are the natural protective force for the family from the hostile world. They remain a strong basis of inspiration to kids in our society because, generally speaking, they tend to be the sole bread earners for households. Fathers play a key role in designing the career path of their children and most of the time children follow fathers’ chosen route for their future. As the children grow, they usually become argumentative leading to heated debate with their parents on certain issues. Mothers have the capacity to ignore such provocative behaviors but fathers can’t tolerate them and therefore they remind children of being disrespectful to them.

And blessed are those children too who behave as cane or short staff to their elderly fathers.

The relation among siblings is one of the cutest in early childhood era when they begin sharing their smiles, cries, eatables, colored pencils, toys, and playing hours murmuring in their jargon. Next phase is about fighting, teasing, hair-pulling, pushing down on the floor and printing scars on each other’s faces. As they grow they make many friends but remain intimate to each other sharing every petty detail of schools, classrooms, classmates and liking/disliking of teachers. Finally it transforms into love, care and respect for each other when they begin living independently. Young girls and boys always try to copy their elder ones, and they remain highly inquisitive to learn what lies in elders’ wallets/clutches, copies, novels and bags. Young siblings always need to know the passwords of elder siblings’ cell phones and internet social sites for which they exploit mother’s intervention successfully.

Perhaps the most delicate relationships are between husband and wife, and between a wife and her mother-in-law. The first one is of a private nature and must not be touched while the other is a highly volatile one. We would discuss the latter some other time, hopefully.