Paying the Price for My Father’s Mistakes

It’s a truism of life, and certainly that of Indian society, that a son pays for the sins of his father.  It’s something I’ve come across, subtly and directly, in day-to-day life many times.  It’s also something that makes me angry. 

I bring this up because now I’m paying for the sins of my culture – more specifically, of the men in my father’s generation and generations before him.  I was talking with this Parsi woman last night.  We talked about the veg and non-veg issue.  When she brought it up, I was very reluctant to get into it.  I know where these things end up.  I just didn’t want an argumentative conversation nor did I want this relationship with potential to go down the tubes.  Of course, I knew we had to have the conversation so we did get into it.

My friend’s ex-boyfriend was a vegeterian.  She decided to convert because of him.  Apparently, he never asked her to do that, but she thought he wanted it.  I’m giving her the benefit of the doubt to think she’s right.  I wasn’t there, I don’t know.  I also have no reason to doubt her judgment skills.  The other part of this is that she thought it was expected of her.  And this is where our conversation got interesting.  She said she doesn’t want to repeat the problems that her parents had and have.  They continue to fight even today.  She didn’t like it then and still doesn’t like it.

This raised a question in my mind – is this woman a feminist or a closet feminist?  I am not particularly interested in getting romantically involved with either one, especially the closet feminist.  I told her I wasn’t sure if she was or not, I didn’t have enough information, but this is the question that gets raised in my mind.  And it’s a concern, so I’m sharing it with you.  I asked her if she thought she could fix the wrongs of her/our parents generation?  She said she was not going to repeat the problems that her parents had.  She did not want to give up everything for her man.  It wasn’t right.

Now, I can’t argue with her there.  I told her there were many things in our parents generation that were just unconceivable today.  We do not do many things the same way.  There are still, of course, many things that we do.  I told her I was not interested in fighting the wrongs of yesteryear.  I want a relatively painless and simple life – there is enough that’s going to go wrong in our relationship, enough problems we’re going to face, that I don’t want this to be another issue.  I also said we couldn’t fix generations of problems in one.  This stuff will take 3-4 generations to undo.  She agreed but said she’s going to do her part.

Then I asked her if her issue of veg/non-veg was really about the food or was it about her being forced to follow “her man”.  Was this a rebellion against Indian custom or was it really about the food?  To me, they were very separate issues with very different implications for us – if it’s about the rebellion, then I’ve got a whole host of other things I’m going to be facing as she tries to fix the wrongs of our parents generation.  But if it was about that, then the veg/non-veg thing was not really about the food.  She didn’t like me bringing this up and saying it didn’t need to go that deep of a level.  I couldn’t have disagreed more.  This is an issue that needed addressing and you weren’t going to get to the bottom of it if you were not even recognizing the right root cause.  She and I have had conversations about my past issues and we went to deep levels to and I did it voluntarily.  She wanted to know, asked me about it, and I told her everything without hesitation.  So why was it different now?

Partly, I have to admit that I do get into this analysis of situations to identify root causes.  I do that with myself too, so no discrimination.    I’m an equal opportunity shrink.  I should have been a psychologist.  Anyway, maybe I shouldn’t have gotten into this thing with her.  Maybe I should have just left it at the superficial level that she gave me.  But I didn’t.  I am not sure one night/day later if I wouldn’t do it again.  To me, it really does matter to get down to the root cause.  But, the thing is I like this girl.  I see potential there.  And I can tell she likes me.  She’s got things already planned in her head, I can tell that.  She’s already accepting “us” as a “definite thing” in some ways.  So I’m not quite sure what to make of it all.

To smooth this rather rough discussion, I wanted to talk about more peaceful things, more romantic things.  Of course, she resisted on that front too.  This is something she does a lot, it’s her yoga and meditation thing, and it bugs me.  She essentially says we should not prescribe anything, just go with it.  On more than a few ocassions, I bring something up, she cuts it down and says let’s not talk about that.  I’ve been annoyed by that.  On one level, she says don’t prescribe anything and essentially just go with it.  When that’s exactly what I’m doing, she is the one not doing it.  I found it odd.  I told her that and she was taken aback at it for a minute, as if she didn’t get it herself, but then kept going with it.  I didn’t want to argue, or make it into an argument, so I just let her.

Anyway, to smooth this discussion out, I asked her to describe how she saw her and me.  I was feeling rather shitty and feeling like I had no reason to continue with this.  I needed to get some idea of how she thought things would work so I could find a reason to stay connected.  I asked her to describe how she saw our relationship, with the give and take, the fixing of our parents generations problems, etc.  She said she wasn’t willing to do that.  She didn’t want to go into the future.  I wasn’t really going into the future in the sense of leaving the present, I was more of thinking what could be possible while still squarely staying in the present.  A few minutes later I realized maybe she is not able to do that while I can.  I told her I am asking this because I feel really shitty and need something to keep connected on.  She said she hadn’t understood that but then she did and went with it. 

And we had a great 30 minute conversation after that or however long it was.  She described a few things she’s imagined.  One was 10 days from now, she’d be leaving for the UK, and she’d be wondering when she’d see me next and how we’d talk, who would call, etc.  Then it was 10 weeks from now and similar kinds of things.  The third was 10 years from now.  She said she’d hope her husband had given her a nice house.  With a great kitchen!  And she described it in detail (clearly telling me the kitchen and cooking thing is a big deal to her even if the cause is a fixing of our parents’ generations problems or about the food.  I am leaning towards a bit of both and go back and forth on which is the bigger deal).  She said she’d hope to have at least one 5 year old by then.  And, she added, she wanted her firstborn to be a girl.  I asked her why and she wouldn’t tell me.  This perturbed me too.  It was such a simple question, why couldn’t she answer it.  If you don’t go with the flow on these things and get to know each other, how do you expect to form any kind of bond or convince each other you’re the right ones for each other.  You’re just cutting the whole getting to know each other process.

She then said she wanted to explain something that didn’t necessarily have to be at any moment in time, it could happen at any time.  She had this thought in her head that she would be married and her and her husband would be at a party.  They’d know half of the people and half would be unknown.  Her husband would be talking to someone and would want to introduce his wife (i.e., her) to this person.  They would catch each other’s glance from a long distance (so movie like, but not something I haven’t heard from women before, something about catching the glance in a crowded room at a party seems to be a very common thing among women).  In one situation of the event, he would nod to her and acknowledge by saying something like ”that’s her” to the person he was talking to.  In another situation, she’d come up to him and put her arm around him and he’d put his arm around her and then he’d introduce her.  She said, it wasn’t just an introduction, she wanted pride to be there when he said this was his wife.  As she was looking to describe it, that was the very word that went through my mind, she wanted him to be “proud”.  I told her this later and we smiled.  I also told her that in both situations, that’s exactly how I would have imagined it.  She was smiling and clearly feeling better and so was I.  It was a very nice way to end the rough conversation, which apparently I felt worse about it than her!

When I got up this morning, was not feeling good.  I wasn’t feeling really awful either but it wasn’t ecstatic.  I got an SMS from her a few minutes later and I didn’t reply.  I just lay in bed.  She then sent me another message about 20 minutes later.  I felt bad and replied.  I told her I was in the shower and just getting out and putting clothes on, which is why I couldn’t reply to her.  But I didn’t reply because I was a bit paralyzed.  I didn’t know what to reply with.  I was a little uncomfortable and frozen.  But I didn’t want to convey that to her because she takes these things to mean more than I want her to because I probably would have forgotten about it and she’d have remembered and it would have diverted the direction of our relationship (for the worst, I presumed).

So this is where we are now.  I’m still going to meet her next week.  Oh, I didn’t mention – she told me after our veg/non-veg conversation that I needed to think it over and let her know how I felt.  Not about the veg/non-veg thing but about the whole bigger issue of feminism fighter thing.  While I didn’t call her that, and clearly said I didn’t have enough information, she found me labeling her and didn’t like it.  I found that interesting – she seemed to know what I had concluded even before I had concluded it.  Was she indeed a feminist or a closet feminist?  We almost finished our conversation then.  If I had let it die, which I did not, I don’t know if I would be still in conversation with her.  I probably would have pulled the plug on it this morning if we had finished our talk at that point in the night.

Let’s see what’s next.  Let’s see where we go tonight.  We’ve exchanged SMS’s again today, things seem good, but this is not out of my mind, it’s very much there.  I need to come to terms with the conversation and the veg/non-veg thing.  Oh, I guess I should also mention that I did think – maybe I shouldn’t care about this diet thing.  Let me just forget about it.  This girl and I seem to have the same things in common in terms of what I want and what she wants (again, up to what we know now).  I went back and forth on it for a bit and didn’t conclude on anything.  This is something I do on these kinds of things, I let them sit for a bit.  Let them just sit.  For good or for bad, I just let them be.  And if it comes up again it does.  If it doesn’t, it doesn’t.  In this case, it of course will come back up again.  I’ll deal with it then.  Until then, I’m happy not thinking about it.  I know, I know, not such a great thing to handle things.

These are the majority of things that came up.  They’re not all exhaustive.  I want to mention that.