The burden of answerability Decades back. A tired Saturday Evening. Pleasures of a Saturday morning included, being allowed to sleep late, provided the home work was completed proactively. Extended sport sessions in the basketball ground bang opposite home and then a tiring session of cricket till we were no longer able to visualise the rubber ball hurtling at reasonable speeds and either knocking off cheap plastic framed spectacles or hurting you in the wrong places. We then headed home reluctantly trying to stretch the time available.
Mother then announces that Sharma Uncle and family are hopping over. Now usually the prospect of a family friend with two kids coming over for a casual weekend chat should be an inviting proposition. But we readied ourselves for some nerve wracking competitive conversation which would eventually leave us in miserable knots of inferiority complex.
After very polite Namaste’s usually supported by Japanese style physical gestures of utter humility - bending to the guests with folded hands, hoping fervently that the guests hearts could melt and they could be less probing than usual. The family trooped in with Uncle Sharma leading the pack followed by the kind Aunty and their kids almost hidden behind their soda lens spectacles. They all settled down for on the only sofa that we had covered with a beautiful throw to carefully hide the stitches of the rexin cover that was giving way. It was a standard practice for the children to ensure that the guests were served with water in clean glasses wiped dry from the outside on trays. Serious efforts to avoid eye contact with Uncle Sharma always failed. And then the ordeal could begin.
“So beta? Kaise chal rahi hain padhai” ( Son , how are your studies progressing “)
I would shrink. Hoping against hope that my parents missed that one. Not on a Saturday night please. Now my parents were not the quintessential snorting about studies all the time,types. Nor the type of parents who wanted their kids to be holding important looking books every time they entered home or room. But yet they were curious about my response. The comparison was yet to start. Uncle Sharma does not wait for the answer. He knows from my pathetic face it is not going well. So he decides to patronize himself.
“Well Aditya did not do well this time” He looks disparagingly at his elder son who stares back with an equally admonished look. My heart lightens. Perhaps I am not so bad after all. However the next sentence undoes that feeling in a hurry
“ He just managed 98.2 % this time “ . “ And you ?” Uncle Sharma challenges me almost sure that no one can come close to his champion son. But he wants public endorsement. And especially from parents of academically challenged children perhaps. My parents look at me nonplussed. Waiting for my answer. They are not too sure about it either. What was it that their son had mentioned as his result. They remember he said something like 75% of the children in the class got lower than him. But how much did he actually get ? They must have been kicking themselves for not asking me earlier. Wait till this Sharma goes home, my father must have thought at that time before I get down to the interrogation. This guy had given us all the environmental parameters with apt discussion but failed to mention his own marks.
My percentages or rather my lowly life is saved in the nick of time by neighbouring Babloo and his mother who saunter in just in time. Why? Well (twinkle twinkle) he has scored 98.7% and now the war is between these two while I retreat wisely to do my homework. Years later when I got to work there was another round of ducking to do. It was which Aunty’s daughter or son had got the highest starting salary.
“Mera beta tho ….or mere beti tho…itni kamaata/i hain “ ( my ward earns this pay packet blah blah )
I could see preening mothers proudly boasting to my mother challenging her to bid a better figure for her son. Again my parents had forgotten to ask me my starting salary. So how much ? My mother’s raised eyebrows seemed to say hoping against hope that her son was close to being a TATA on the sly. I frowned not at all interested in becoming a commodity on the auction market. Besides I just could not beat their inflated figures by a long mile.
My mother flipped it on its head “ we don’t ask our son such personal questions . It’s his life “
Sigh of relief. This burden of answerability chases you through life. It just crops up in different forms.
At work it is related to designations, salaries, mentions etc. But the most intriguing and repetitive is the one on the social front. What did you for the weekend or where did you go for the holidays. The children want to know if we are really planning to go to Maldives for the weekend. Or to Madrid for a film festival. Their friends had done that.
“Papa you are not even taking us to Les Miserables “
Ok so one by one. I choke on Maldives on the weekend. Maldives is one thing but on a weekend. A lifelong ambition cannot be condensed into a weekend plan by donating 60 % of my monthly salary. ( Wait don’t go around fishing out calculators and air fare websites. That was just an even number I threw !) . Next I am not the event manager for film festivals that I chase the film stars and go to a film festival. I nod to the children
“Check the parents of your friends will you?. I am sure Their father is probably a mechanic with the stage arrangement and must be hitching a free ride to Madrid”.
I knew I was being nasty but then it this burden of answerability was killing. Like who actually chases film actors who themselves desperately seek freebies everywhere. And last but not the least going to Les Miserables. Well Victor Hugo never envisioned his 1862 work to be a musical that will romp around the world making moolah.
“Why don’t you read it?” That was enough to deter them for the moment. And if it did not work I knew what had to be done to move the chain of burden of answerability. I had to find an Uncle Sharma in the neighborhood with children who scored in their 90’s and could be a good foil to the challenges I faced at home. And in the meantime I look up the events page of the local newspaper to rack up events that I could imagine having attended to on the weekend and to be able to speak about with a causal air reflecting carefree expendability of excessive wealth , to all those who had managed heavily competitive events on the weekend.
And my pen dived to to the paper as I encircled my first heavy duty page 3 event. Aah the burden of answerability!!
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