Success, at what cost?

Oasis

I often mull over my neighbour’s family in Mumbai. A young lady lived with in-laws and a school-going daughter. Once, I had called on them, maybe at an inopportune moment. This schoolkid, being academically feeble, had scored awful marks in class tests. The child’s busy father, being the family’s main bread-winner, couldn’t monitor the child’s progress.

The mother, unperturbed by child’s plumbing scores, was pursuing her passion of procuring her PhD degree. So, on that day when I visited, the couple was having a blazing dispute. The man screamed at his spouse, in stentorian tone, saying, the latter never showed attention to the small child.

The wife riposted, “I can’t ever be babysitting. The kids ought to be ‘rough ‘n tough’. I believe in hurling them in life’s deep-waters! Sink or swim, they eventually learn”! Saying this, as she stormed out, her stupefied mom-in-law started confiding in me.

"I feel sad for the neglected child. When family fabric is in tatters, bahu is busy dreaming of mending others’ lives! Ironically, her research work is of ‘women’s empowerment’! Agreed, men too have duties. But, if the father is busy, then shouldn’t the mother step in to nurture her kids? Isn’t this trait found in birds and animals, too?"

“These people want all rights or privileges of marital status, but not its concomitant duties. Funnily, when their involvement or investment in the family is execrably micro, their expectations from it are extraordinarily macro! By this attitude, they try burning others’ feelings at home. With their low tolerance, any advice from us is a major irritant to them. And, despite being cocooned in comforts, they have no guilt or qualms in playing dirty-games of sullying our family image, all to have their way.”

Well, even today, we do see many men and women, nefariously trying to raze down others’ lives, by juggernaut of selfishness, all for personal glory. Of what use is this ‘pyrrhic victory’ that causes profound pain to others? Are we unaware, ‘when we try building palaces on others’ graves, surely, they’d crash and collapse’ someday?