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People close to you have the power to disturb you the most. I should have torn
my father’s letter. I ended up reading it thrice.
Son,
I am omitting the ‘Dear’ as I am not sure I can address you as that anymore. I knew you
are on the wrong path the day you lost respect for your father. I am sure you remember
that day. You have broken all contact with me since.
I have learnt you are involved with a girl in Chennai. I don’t know the details. I can
only deduce so much from your mother’s conversations with her useless relatives.
We should choose the girl for you, not you. For you are on the path to becoming a
man of low character. Such are the values given to you by your mother and her siblings
that you may not even know how disgraceful your actions are.
That you chose to hide your actions from me only reinforces that at some level you
are ashamed of them as well.
Unfortunately,
Your father
I changed my sleeping position for the tenth time. I wanted to sleep, but felt
more alert than anytime in office. Forget it, he only wants to provoke you, I said to
myself again. Go to sleep, now! – I scolded myself. The funny thing about sleep is
you can’t instruct it to happen. Your mind knows the facts and repeats them to
you – it is late, only five hours when you have to wake up again, you need rest. Your
mind also has a million options on what it can think about; stars in the clear
moonless sky, the beautiful flowers at the Nungambakkam flower shop, the smell
of incense in Ananya’s house, your best birthday party. There are positive
thoughts somewhere in people’s heads all the time. But somehow, even one
negative thought will crowd them out. Maybe it is an evolutionary mechanism so
we can focus on the problem at hand rather than rejoice in all things wonderful.
But it makes life a bitch, as good memories have to make space for the next pain