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We take our parents for granted, looking forward in life, instead of taking the time to look back and spending time with them. Don't do that, says this heartfelt post.
We take our parents for granted, looking forward in life, instead of taking the time to look back and spending time with them. Don’t do that, says this heartfelt post.
Oh parents! How they are like the brightest star in the darkest night guiding us through the thick and thin of life, and how much we take them for granted. How much we assume that there is always another day to make up for the time we didn’t spend with them. How much we think or rather don’t think that their time with us is limited.
Ours is a love marriage and my husband is my closest buddy. When we declared our love for each other, our families embraced the news and arranged our marriage. Everything was going better than one could have ever planned. My parents-in-law were in another city and they would often request us to come over weekends to spend time with them. Though we would visit them as often as possible, we were hard pressed for time because of our work, and then – don’t you always have the next weekend to see them anyway?
Around that time, the job market went down and we had a lot of pressure in retaining our roles. This took a toll on both the quality and quantity of time spent with parents, but parents, like the way they are, were very understanding and supportive all through this phase. The job pressure would often result in fights over trivial things at home, and my husband and I would make each other’s life miserable. My father-in-law would add a new perspective to the very way we would see things; he would always emphasize that our ‘love’ and ‘relationship’ is what is permanent, and should be nurtured while the fights and the pressure are just temporary and would pass with time.
I vividly remember that eventful day, in fact at that very moment, my husband and I were having a heated argument over purchasing something which wasn’t an absolute necessity given the financial scenario. My husband’s phone rang and all I could make out was – the news is terrible, but I could not even begin to imagine what it was. His parents had just gone to visit their elder son and his wife, as they were on the family way. It was just 11 weeks ago that we had happily seen them off at the airport. They were excited like little kids when they landed in Australia. They were going to be grandparents soon. We all had plans, many plans ahead….but none that included this event.
My father in law, who had no history of any health conditions, suddenly got an heart attack. And it was in Australia, where they were, far away. The ambulance and medical team arrived immediately and yet he could not be revived. I still remember my husband breaking down and asking in disbelief to his brother “what are you saying?? what the hell are you saying?”
Until then life was pretty much carefree, we could be silly, we could fight, we could run away from responsibilities, we could while away the time… we had our parents covering our back. Overnight, reality hit us like a slap on our face. Our father was snatched away from us. We were prepared for anything but this. Overnight we matured. We had no choice this time.
I saw my husband suddenly metamorphosing into a man that his father would be proud of. That was the only thing he wanted, to make his father proud. He didn’t break down; his actions were that of a determined pre-programmed robot with a mission, mission to send off his father to the other world.
The day they took him for the final funeral ritual was the day it dawned on my husband, that this is it, this is how it ends, his time with his father. The father to whom he would run for everything from financing him to share his life’s problems, the one who had always stood beside him during his struggling times. How he wished, he had some more time with him. He wanted to show the world to him, he wanted to take him to places, he wanted to tell there is nothing to worry and that he would be well settled in life, but above all, how he wished he could get a chance for a proper farewell But ‘time’ is cruel.
Today – 9 years later, not a single day goes by without us remembering our father in some context or the other. We are well settled now, with two wonderful kids, but the one thing that we miss is our dear father.
Readers – Please don’t take your parents for grated, Shower them with love, don’t be shy. Take them to places, show them the world, the way they first taught us. Lets not wait for mothers day or fathers day to celebrate and show our love and gratitude to them. Lets celebrate each day like its a blessing. It is indeed a blessing when we have our parents with us.
Published here earlier.
Image source: shutterstock
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As parents, we put a piece of our hearts out into this world and into the custody of the teachers at school and tuition and can only hope and pray that they treat them well.
Trigger Warning: This speaks of physical and emotional violence by teachers, caste based abuse, and contains some graphic details, and may be triggering for survivors.
When I was in Grade 10, I flunked my first preliminary examination in Mathematics. My mother was in a panic. An aunt recommended the Maths classes conducted by the Maths sir she knew personally. It was a much sought-after class, one of those classes that you signed up for when you were in the ninth grade itself back then, all those decades ago. My aunt kindly requested him to take me on in the middle of the term, despite my marks in the subject, and he did so as a favour.
Math had always been a nightmare. In retrospect, I wonder why I was always so terrified of math. I’ve concluded it is because I am a head in the cloud person and the rigor of the step by step process in math made me lose track of what needed to be done before I was halfway through. In today’s world, I would have most probably been diagnosed as attention deficit. Back then we had no such definitions, no such categorisations. Back then we were just bright sparks or dim.
Pathaan touted as SRK’s comeback has been in the news for mixed reasons. Right from the hype around SRK’s comeback and special mentions his body contours; yet I can't watch it!
The movie touted as SRK’s comeback has been in the news for mixed reasons. Right from the hype around the movie being SRK’s comeback and special mentions his body contours and even more than the female lead!
For me, it’s not about Deepika’s bikini colour or was-it-needed skin show. It’s about meaningful content that I find is missing big time. Not just this movie, but a spate of cringe-worthy narratives passed off as ‘movies’ in the recent past. I feel insulted, and not because I am a devoutly religious person or a hardcore feminist, but because I feel the content insults my intelligence.
But before everything else, I am a 90s kid who in the case of movies (and maybe more) is stuck in time as it wrapped around me then and the gamut has too hard an exterior for me to crack it open!
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