Saturday, March 5, 2011

The Patriarch

(Err..I agree I've been employing the melancholy theme for quite a few posts, but this one's lyka food-for-thought, specially for those affected by the urban modus vivendi)

“Hello, son…”
“What happened, Maa? Tell me quickly. I am busy.”

“How come you are so busy all the time? Why can’t you…”

“Stop ranting, Maa…I am driving, seriously…what’s the matter? Now don’t tell me you called to ‘hear my voice’ and things like that…”

“I called to tell you that your dad's depressed as of late.”

“What? Come on, Maa…I know this is one of your ploys to make me come meet you…”

“I am done arguing with you, come if you care. Otherwise, carry on with whatever nonsense you are doing!” CLICK!!! She shut the phone rather hard. He was unsure if he heard a sob in that process.

“Yeah right…Dad and depression…pshaw…like that’s possible.”

He was stuck in traffic. He was on his way to the dentist for a check on a fiddling toothache. His car stereo was down, and he didn’t have enough credit on his smartphone to surf the net. With nothing else to do, he thought on.

“Hmmm…Mom was kinda over-dramatic. More than her usual tantrums. Is there really something to worry about? I know Dad’s way past his prime, hoary and feeble, and so are his friends. All he gets to do is sit comfily all day watching television. With the kind of shows being aired and Mom’s dominance over the remote, anyone would undergo brain-damage!”

Earsplitting horns compelled him to budge his car a few metres.

“Battling the blues…that’s one extremely tough exercise. The few months without a job; those were terrible times for me. I kept pondering about the future and the choices at my disposal. I consistently reviewed myself to figure out where I had gone wrong. I isolated myself from the rest of the world, literally! I had yearned for someone to share my woes with, but due to some preconceived egotism, I never did. I mean, we wouldn’t want anyone to portray us as weak, right? But what’s Dad got to be so gloomy about?”

He stopped reflecting for a moment. Voices from the past, mentioning that he was similar to his Dad in aspects of habit and attitude, resounded in his head.

“Dad must be encountering the same sorta situation…he’s bored out of his wits, no longer a person of importance, and has been dethroned as the patriarch. Hence he’s showcasing his ire on Mom, taking cue from the gobs of fights he’s been having with her. He’s being punished for prolonging cordial terms with his friends, not making a sincere attempt with his own wife or children. A trait I have inherited, and which I should soon cease.”

His last tooth knocked him a reminding pain, and he stuck his finger into his mouth to press it down.
“Maybe that’s why they call it the wisdom tooth.”

He looked at his watch. Only ten minutes had passed since the call. He reprimanded himself for not spending time this trivial, let alone think about his parents.

“We tend to bullshit that we don’t have time…this ’lack-of-time’ is a self-evocative white lie with dreadful implications. The truth is we try to keep ourselves unnecessarily occupied, and the alternatives for that have only increased over the years; be it the television, endless parties with friends, reckless gaming, oodles of hours over Facebook… we coerce ourselves to seek for entertainment forever. In order to kill time, I was, and I am, killing my relationships akin. Why blame it only on Dad, as a son there was round zero effort from my part.”

He was now in fact thankful that the stereo was damaged, that he was unable to use the net, and that he was caught in traffic. All that basically took for him to be with himself. Along with the newly-sprout wisdom, a blanket of guilt smothered him.

He dialed his wife and told her to pack the bags. “We are going home tonight, dear…” Before she could ask anything, he cut the line.

He was unsure if his wife heard his sob in the process.