Thank you readers for appreciating FC 179 and sharing your experiences with controls.
The comments are quite elaborate and would be unfair to abridge them, but space constraints make it harder to present them verbatim. However, these comments are thought-provoking and will resonate with the readers. If this post takes up more than usual space for comments, it is because they are worth reading.
Radhika says: “Helicopter parenting is a new age word. The opposite of that is ‘benign negligence’ which, according to experts, may help children gain strength in their abilities. I suppose that’s how children were brought up in earlier years, particularly when there were multiple children.” I agree. That’s how we were brought up. No fuss. Tantrums were ignored.
Dr.Naina’s detailed comments were significant, but I am sharing with you an excerpt: “After reading your FC, I’ll be less controlling with my grandson, and his parents and give them their space in bringing up their son the way they would like to and offer advice only when solicited. I will divert my attention to matters that I need to prioritise and attend to them.”
Tarun Kunzru says: “The ability to use these styles judiciously (when and with whom) determines one's evolution: Control, Direct, Influence and Align. At the most basic level, it's control and command and at the sophisticated level, it's influence and collaboration.”
Swati Belur says: “As a teacher, I have seen parents on both sides of the spectrum. On one hand, a parent requests special meetings to discuss the progress of their ward, pouring over answer sheets, and scrutinising the loss of every mark in every subject. On the other hand, some parents are absent from their children’s lives, and it's difficult to get a meeting with them.”
Manivannan says: “I have always wondered how much parenting is enough. As a kid, I grew up with no access to gadgets, walked miles or took public transport to go to school and college. My parents, while caring for our safety, never bothered to check where we were at any time and whether we reached school safely. They never showed their love for me in public or private. I was independent, and their arms-length attention taught me self-confidence and, to a large extent, the ability to handle situations on my own. Fast-forward, to my children. They get all my attention, and they get things that they have not asked for. While I may not be a 'helicopter parent', their safety concerns me a lot. Time will tell if I am as successful as my parents. :)”
Ashvini Ranjan left a very rich and insightful comment. I’ll share the gist: “We all grow up and are never free from controls in one form or the other. It is an essential feature of social living. But the term ‘control freak’ narrows down the scope for discussion and conveys a negative meaning, implying undue authority. Imagine my moral science teacher who exercised authority on me to help me grow up to be a good human being. The controls […] extended beyond the class, when friends under the influence of the teacher kept an eye on you and snitched on you. Parents too extended support to such controls. […] If the term ‘control freaks’ is replaced with the term monitoring for promoting good with love, it communicates an entirely different story with less pain and sadness. Leading to a much saner society and less policing!”
🏠 House Guest
In this post, I am going to tell you a story concerning a house guest and his host. It may be reminiscent of your own experiences. Please read on:
An octogenarian, much widowed, living on his pension in a one-bedroom apartment answered the doorbell to find someone of his age standing with a toothless grin. In the moments that followed, the visitor walked in, made himself comfortable on a rocking easy chair and proceeded to establish that he was the cousin twice removed and that he had come to attend a wedding of the daughter of another cousin three times removed.
Before I proceed, I should inform the readers who have no ‘removed cousins’ of the meaning of ‘removed’ in a relationship. If you and a cousin are one generation apart, you are ‘once removed’. If you are two generations apart, you are ‘twice removed’. If you are three generations apart, you are ‘three times removed’. As per this rule, the visitor and the host shared the same great-grandparents.
The octogenarian (I will refer to him as the host) is not too convinced about the relationship and is wary of the cousin who descended on him from nowhere. Anyway, he got to the point of asking him about his luggage and was told that since he would be staying just for a day, he did not carry much. Our host resigned to his fate, and the visitor made himself at home so much that the roles seemed reversed.
After what seemed like an eternity, the visitor left after the host had gathered enough courage to tell him the meaning of ‘overstaying one’s welcome’. Not that he had welcomed him to start with.
That evening, the day the visitor had left, the host, looking relieved, met up with his friends of the same age group at the park where they usually meet. The friends asked the host why he hadn’t come to the park the previous evening. The host clutched his brow and said, “You guys don’t know what I went through the past 24 hours” and proceeded to talk about the ‘cousin twice removed’ who descended on the host from nowhere. The friends did not find anything strange in a cousin came visiting and wanted to know what upset the host.
The host began his narrative as if he were reliving the horror. “You see, the day the so-called cousin barged in, I did not even know how to react. He made himself comfortable on the easy chair and after a long explanation of his relationship with me, he said he wished to take a bath to wash off the travel dirt and fatigue. I pointed him to the bathroom. He turns back and asks if I have some oil that he could apply to his head and body. I gave him the expensive Ayurvedic oil that I had procured. He then asked me for a towel, which I gave. Before going in, he confirmed with me that there would be soap that he could use. I was about to protest but held my tongue.”
The host paused to see if his friends appeared sympathetic to his plight, but they egged him on to continue. So, the host, like Vikram telling a story to the vetal, continued the narrative.
“This cousin comes out of the bathroom after what seemed like a long and leisurely bath with the towel wrapped around his waist. He asked me if he could borrow one of my lungis and a T-shirt.
I was quite appalled at this request but decided to give him what he wanted than see him prancing around half-naked. After putting on the clothes, he suggests that we have some dinner. I tell him that I haven’t cooked anything, but there’s a café downstairs. He invites me to have dinner with him and after a sumptuous meal he turns towards me and says, ‘when you come to my house, I will treat you to a better meal. You must come.’ He makes no move to pay for the meal, not even to go Dutch. We trudge up the stairs back to my apartment to get ready to retire.”
The host shudders. His friends wonder what might have upset him so much and ask him to continue. The host resumes.
“When we are getting ready to go to bed, this sin of a cousin with his toothless speech suggests that I let him sleep on the cot as he has a bad back and cannot get up to go to the washroom at night. I am now beyond myself, but what can I do? So, I decided to sleep on the floor and let him sleep in my bed. He goes to the bathroom and after a while returns to tell me ‘Hope you don’t mind eh? I used your paste to rinse my mouth’. I told myself, thank God you don’t have teeth. You would have used my toothbrush too.”
His friends laugh at this remark and nudge him to continue. The host resumes the narration.
“After he made himself comfortable in my bed, I went to the bathroom and removed my dentures, brushed them nicely and put them in the jar with water in it. I slept, but was woken up alternatingly by his loud snoring and his visits to the bathroom. The following morning, I am not too happy making coffee for him, but I still do. He takes a sip and says, ‘I’ll make better coffee for you when you come.’ I control myself. He tells me that he has to get ready to go to the wedding and after a good bath comes out wearing his clothes and a beaming smile. I didn’t notice it immediately but realised that he had a full toothy grin. Before I could ask him anything, he said, ‘We both are so similar. Your dentures fit me perfectly, and I can attend the wedding and look good in the photographs.’”
The friends in unison exclaim, “What? He put on your dentures and grinned at you? What did you do?”
The host resumes, “By that time, I was fed up to my teeth, literally. I glared at him and insisted that he remove the dentures, collect his bag and leave immediately. He was horrified at my outburst. He looked insulted, humiliated and shocked all at once. He went to the bathroom and returned toothless. He glared at me and promised me that my name would be dirt in my ancestral native village. I couldn’t care less and was happy to see his back. Grinning at me with my dentures was the proverbial last straw.”
Dear Readers, I hope you liked the story and let me know if it resonated with your experiences. I shall in a future post share my other thoughts on house guests.
In a lighter vein:
Years ago, when guests came into your house, they would exclaim “What a lovely home you have!!” Times have changed. Now, as they enter, they ask “What’s your wi-fi password”?
See you next week. Take care. Ciao.
Ha ha ha.. it was like a Hitchcock movie.. I was hoping to find out whether he was really a ‘three times removed’ cousin tho’ 😀😀
very interesting - nowadays everyone including kids are used to sleeping in cots and it becomes a nightmare to identify place for everyone to sleep, especially when one has senior citizens who are particular about their cots as well which side of the cot they will sleep. With regard to asking wifi password, guests also give gyan about which service provider is better and urge us to change. If one has data limits we are in constant tension as the guests may use all the data during their stay. Many guests also decide what programs should be watched during their stay.