Thursday, April 24, 2014

A what..? Hug??


What is in a hug? I did dare to ask myself. It seemed rather obnoxious to me. Even while I was an adolescent, we were brought up in a paternalistic culture. While respect to elders was of utmost importance, evidence of affection was still not appreciated. It was natural that I never hugged my mother, brother , leave alone my father. I was among the ones who would rather shove off my brother at the slightest hint of depicting an outburst of affection. What was the need? After all, we loved each other and it should have been understood without having to say it.

Unfortunately it did nt. I remember an incident when my mom had complained, rather cried for not giving her enough time, for not telling her the three magical words “I love you” and for not giving her a plain hug when it mattered, while one of our cousins were the ones who made their affection to their mothers known to the society. I dismissed it as a routine pang of emotion of the womenfolk. It seemed silly as to how trivial a thing could impact the relationship as strong as mother-son. I was wrong.

Let me iterate a harsh truth to you all. We live in a world where we can muster sweet nothings over and over again, for hours together and umpteen times a day to our better halves, candy floss or whatever sobriquet you wish to give to the designated person but we can not last a minute of conversation with our dads. I wondered if I was the only one who was out of topics when I spoke to my dad over the phone but soon I realized that most of my generation adults face the same plight.

I have lived 25 precious years of my life. My dad is now 50+. We will live in this world for many more years to come but separated by distance and the imaginary wall of self evident love. I shudder at the fact that when the day of separation arrives, I still would not have gathered the courage to have given him a long and armful of hug and told him how much he matters to me, told him that though we have nt spoken much, I wish to know how his childhood had been, who his first love was and what he wanted to be in life.

Even now I can gather the courage to tell you this only on paper for I fear how you would react, for if you would think that your son was less of man for wanting to give you a hug. But beneath those sunken eyes, behind that silent speech and beyond those deep thoughts, I am sure even you want to give me a hug. And trust me, it helps, it helps ease the pain, it helps transcend the barriers. All it takes is one tight hug dad. One tight hug.

2 comments:

skyscratcher said...

wow no frills or fancy words..u really have written this straight from your heart! i dont know if that day will come or not when this finally happens(i hope it does asap though), but i pray to god to bestow similar peace upon you n your dear ones.

Ayushi1507 said...

Loved the topic, something I have always thought about :)