THE STORY OF SOMEONE WHO FEELS POWERLESS

It is very human to remain rest assured of being without any responsibility when there are elders holding the fort for you. Along with this state of being, also comes a sense of indifference and at times our actions touch the horizon of disrespect. Compounded to this foregrounds arrogance and heights of ignorance of their sacrifices and unqualified support. We end up seeing an unwanted situation or scene but do not have the patience or endurance to find out or enquire about the cause behind such a fiasco.

Father of Jaison was the bread winner of the family of two daughters and a son who is Jaison the eldest of the three siblings. Jaison used to feel for his parents who are now no more. He also used to look at the life each of them lead and how much they ensured the comforts of their children.

Though the father was working in a government sector and mother as a teacher in the initial days of their married life it was not easy to ensure that both ends meet.

As days moved further circumstances demanded that mother leave her job and life continues with only father doing the earning and mother control the draining of the earning.

Initial decades of the twentieth century or to be precise beginning decades post Indian Independence was not much evolved, which witnessed colleagues and friends engage themselves dissuade the better halves in taking up employment outside their households and peers pressure female members to confine themselves to the household chores, little realizing, little caring about the amount of damage, distress and injustice they are knowingly or unknowingly meting out to their friends and colleagues.

Another thing most parts of the society do not realize is about the person with some kind of physical handicap which is not conspicuous but plays a vital role in hampering, and becoming a hindrance to the smooth functioning of his day to day life.

Father of Jaison was one with that of hearing. This handicap landed him into a lot of problems and impacted the running of the family in the way he would have desired had he not born with the handicap of loud hearing. To cite an example, in order to defray some unavoidable expenditure he took loan from his friend for some interest and could not hear the rate of interest and terms of loan as laid out by the friend in the way that he should have. As days passed and time came to return the principal and interest, Father was shocked and nice man that he was managed from somewhere to ensure that his name is not spoiled among his peers and goodwill remains intact. Similar incidents only added to the burden on the family affairs and lead to lot of stress and strain in the family aggravating the health issues of the family members and themselves included.

Mother of Jaison in spite of all the power at her disposal in terms of education, endurance, empathy felt powerless on account of being from the feminine gender in the prevailing social conditions.

Life for her started off even though on equal footing to the masculine gender, which she made full use of but failed to realize its fruitlessness in pursuing a career of her liking. Her getting first class and that too the only girl from that district gave the initial happiness to her and her family members but was not good enough to study further and had to sacrifice for her brother, the male gender who made it to whatever he chose for himself. She was taught other household works that would benefit her as a future housewife.

Those were the days the male members of the family moved from southern end of the country to the western, eastern or northern ends of the country in search of jobs. After passage of few years of continuous employment the search for a bride for the employed bridegroom becomes the obvious enterprise for the elders of the family. On the other side with the passage of a few years the girl becomes a burden and efforts take a giant leap and the girl leapfrogs into a bride and gets ready to sacrifice her life of freedom and embrace a life of uncertain dependence and gets transported to a totally new location, new world, new habits, new language, new relationships and a life entrenched with subservience and subjugation.

Jaison and his siblings were lucky to have parents who were capable of understanding each other handicaps and covered each other in order to pull on with their life of hardship with dignity and pride.

Jaison strongly felt the financial crisis in the family and did his bit by taking up employment along with his studies after the schooling. Even after all this, life for the family was a struggle and father of Jaison could not savour or experience a journey by flight even though Father of Jaison consoled him by saying that he was scared of boarding a flight and did not live long to experience air travel at the age of seventy one.

Mother of Jaison experienced the air travel but not which anyone would desire because it was to attend the funeral of her husband who left her for heavenly abode after a long journey of togetherness.

Jaison also remembered his father had some liking for gardening and had procured saps and plants to sow in their small garden. One of them grew into large mango tree which bore fruit invariably every season, another grew into a jackfruit tree which had jackfruit hanging both from the branches at the very top and a few at the very bottom of the tree. In addition there were also three coconut trees giving piece wage to Chandran who use to climb the tree to fell the coconuts for the Jaison family.

Now as informed Jaison’s parents are no more but still he himself and his family along with his two sisters and also his Father’s brothers and sisters when they happen to visit the house of Jaison carry a few mangoes, jackfruit and coconuts as a token of remembrance but Jaison keeps wondering how his father’s act is becoming a continuous source of income and happiness to the future generations. The action of a powerless man so powerful.