I grew up watching Karan Johar and Sooraj Barjatya movies. For me, the idea of a happy family was synonymous with giant mansions and extended relatives. I reckoned that they used Razor scooters to go from one corner of the house to the other. Perhaps that’s what I needed—giant mansions and a bunch of Razor scooters to have a happy family, right?
But things seldom work like that. Today, as I stand on the precipice of my 30s and as the new ‘man of the house’, both the idea of a house and that of a happy family seem elusive. I have a functional relationship with my parents. They know as much as they need to about my life. But it wasn’t always this way. Growing up in a lower-middle-class family, I was always seen as a retirement plan rather than a son or a human being.
For the first 21 years, my parents dictated what course I studied and what profession I chose to be in. It is hard not to look at my upbringing through the lens of 2023, and not call it problematic. But I think I understand where my folks come from. I honestly do time in therapy has made me realise that. They themselves started working early; without their fathers present and were forced into being the sole breadwinners, at the ages of 12 and 15. I have no right to judge them with my modern morality. When your whole life is forged in a brick oven, gentleness all but dries out. And so, my upbringing had a constant shadow of anxiety; the pressure of being someone successful and growing into the man of the house might have come from my parents but somewhere down the line, I too started dreaming of owning a big house. Little did I know that it was a figment of my misdirected imagination that would eventually become a burden before turning into anger.
Like it or not, there’s a stench attached to being poor. But you don’t smell it; you see it. In unironed clothes, ill-fitting faded shirts, and the torn soles of your worn-out shoes. You also see it in the eyes of your parents when extended families meet. I’ve seen it in myself and in the thousand different selfies of my wealthy ex and me. But no one tells you that it builds rage and a sense of victimhood. I wouldn’t call myself a victim, but I felt like one. Why wasn’t spending Rs50 lakh on an education abroad a choice for me? Why didn’t my family have a car? Why do I have to live in constant fear of being kicked out? Why did I have to race with both my shoes tied? The rage was immeasurable.
It also didn’t help that I decided to pursue a career in what my fellow middle-class friends would call audacity, or what you’d call, a profession in writing. With no engineering or medical dreams on my back, I thought I’d finally be free of the anxiety of meeting society’s definition of ‘success’. If I was to be a failure, so be it. At least I’d go down doing what I love.
Yet, the imposter syndrome followed, weighing heavier when career success rolled through (not monetary). I had now been to three different continents, eaten at five-star restaurants, and lived in hotels that would make even the wealthiest of my privileged friends envious. In hindsight, I thought all this ‘free’ luxury would make me happy, but I knew it was smoke and mirrors. After all, could they really not tell that a mere outing to any Bandra bar could bankrupt me? At the end of every press junket, I had to return to the same old 1BHK rented apartment my parents could afford. It felt suffocating, even more so when I felt my voice would never be equal.
Right now at 28, the only things I am great at are acquiring debt and trying to make a living off puns and metaphors. Both are counterproductive in the pursuit of a mansion. My folks, though, are still trying. Their weekends are consumed by visits to dilapidated houses and encounters with questionable landowners. This is their way of grappling with reality rather than acknowledging that the world has moved on, leaving them and their dream of ownership of a home behind. I, on the other hand, had taken an unhealthy approach, always feeling inferior among my peers, my friends, and my girlfriends. The dreams of dancing in a Barjatya mansion had been replaced with the realities of folding paper towels in the bathroom of a rich friend, like Murad in Gully Boy.
But I was drowning in my own self-pity, for things that were beyond my control. There’s a line in Netflix’s Bojack Horseman that reflects what I feel today: “It takes a long time to realise how truly miserable you are, and even longer to see that it doesn’t have to be that way”. The practical and the logical side of me tells me that I’ll never be a homeowner in this economy. On the flip side, there’s still a naive, stubborn and overly optimistic me that says someday, one day, I’ll have a yard of my own. But I know only Sith deals with absolutes. Life doesn’t take place in a galaxy far far away; it does so in between the delicate nuances of pessimism and optimism.
There’s a football club in Spain called ‘Atletico de Madrid’, which has a tagline along the lines of partido partido which means day by day. I don’t know what is going to happen next; a thought both scary and exciting at the same time. But for now, I think I want to take it one day at a time. Maybe eventually, someday, I’ll be closer to a person who is happy.
Feature Image – Unsplash
