I find it extremely upsetting when people have been blessed with a better life, as compared to their own childhood, and yet they don’t put it to a complete advantage for their own children when time favours their present.
I was talking to my 18 year old sister, who was talking to me about a particular friend of hers. This friend's mother has raised all her daughters with so many dont's, that I feel she has been unfair in ways, more than one. On the surface, this lady looks like a smart well educated working muslim woman. She has raised her girls, forbidding them from wearing jeans. She forbids them to go out, and if at all, they have to be back in time that they demand (which is usually ridiculous), and they are allowed to be friends with only those girls who have been screened by her. When the lady leaves the house, she disconnects the phones and locks them. She checks on all calls and messages sent via a mobile that she leaves at home for emergencies. The older daughter who is studying in India is under the watchful eye of a policeman in that town, who is the mother's cousin brother!
This girl (my sisters friend), loves the plastic bags that come from the accessory store called 'claires'. When my sister told me, that she was looking for a claires plastic bag, I asked her why only claires? And she tells me how her friend loves them, because owning them gives her a good feeling (as she has never been to the store and only ever heard about it), and my sister was giving her a going away gift (it’s their last few days of being together in school before they leave for college), and wanted to gift it to her in a claires bag as it made her friend happy.
On hearing this, I was soo upset with all the parents who have been blessed with leaving their home towns and coming to work in this big city, and still being so dead set in their heads to keep their children away from little pleasures like going to a store in a MALL all because, GOD FORBID their daughter go to a place where people hang out and boys check out girls, or whatever their god forsaken reason is?!!
I feel so bad for the poor child, to pine for something so simple as a claires bag!
She has been born and raised in this country! 18 years! And you can’t take your child to a MALL?!! Or let her go with her friends?!!
Am I crazy in being so shocked? Some parents don't deserve to raise kids, because they are SO oblivious to their childrens' basic happiness. I have way too many stories to jam all into this one rant of a post. They should go back to where they come from, so that their thoughts and actions don't stand out as insane. What is worse is that most people I see who are like this, are the most active gossipers of the town. Its just so sad. I badly ache for all these children! Most grow up unheard and end up lying or hiding things from their parents, and end up doing things that mess up their life for good. I know because I grew up with those with similar stories, and know where they are today.
I take life as an experience to learn from and grow with. To accept where we lack and build on our inadequacies. To accept our ineptness at things and to learn all that we know not. To be open to new experiences. To not waste the time and opportunities that we get each moment of each day. To accept things that are different from what we are used to. To be tolerant to that which we are not. To embrace knowledge and keep seeking. To listen. To give. Why are some people so dead set in their ways and manner of life, that they refuse to see all the nuances of it, in the people of all kinds?
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