why do we reserve our worst parts for those we love the most?

a memory of shopping //

when i was a child, buying new clothes was a very rare luxury, a once in a year affair. These new clothes would become our “outside clothes” and the earlier outside clothes were only then worn at home, and then the earlier home clothes became our nightdresses. so while we were decently dressed kids at birthday parties, t-shirts worn at home, especially at night were shapeless, mismatched, sometimes a little torn. That was not just me. That was my siblings, parents, neighbours. At home, you would find the wives with uncombed hair, the famed nightie of Indian middle class women, a mismatched dupatta thrown over it, chappals that were worn out, hair oiled to the brim. Men, in their ganjis with holes, clothes so faded you could not tell what they were when they first started out.

Not just clothes. But the best bedspreads, curtains, cushion covers, the best cutlery were all reserved for when guests came over.

a memory from when guests were over //

I must have been 7-8 years old, a child just learning the ways of the world. On the one hand, mom and dad would set out very specific instructions for how I should behave (as a good Gujarati girl) when anyone came over; speak softly, sit like a lady, don’t laugh too hard, don’t sit with a poker face, eat small bites and chew them. On the other, they would be fighting with each other about those guests – how it was inconveniencing to us in our small flat, how the sleeping arrangements would change, how we could politely ask them to leave. Chaos in the immediate family, for potentially ungrateful distant family.

the first time I raised my voice against my parents //

if you know have met me, you know I have a very loud voice – typically Gujju, typically high in decibels. I have tried to bring it under control in the last few years – vocal exercises, speaking slowly. It’s really a hit or a miss – no one teaches you how to express grief, anger or excitement while modulating your voice. and it was this loud voice that I used once to lash out at my mother. She used a Gujarati saying, “Ghar maan vaagh che, bahar bakri.”

You are a tiger at home, a goat outside.

You are strong at home, you are meek outside.

I want to go back in time and ask her, “But do you know where I learned that?”

do you know when my mom’s most angry with me?

when a relative has asked her, “Why is your daughter still not married?” This is her insecurity, and her trigger. And then she laughs it off on the phone, and spends the rest of the day picking out the tiniest of my faults – my hair, my skin, my clothes, her burden of house chores. Someone, a nosy relative, said something, and hell breaks lose.

external validation is a scam //

One month after I returned to Mumbai and moved back in with my parents in 2021, I was forced to trash out all the important newspaper clippings, resources, documents and archives I had built over the years. Lots of books had to go – and I remember crying through that process. It reminded me how an artist and writers’ life can be seriously clipped by infrastructural support (private, public libraries, easy access to archives.) What stayed was my prized bookshelf at home, and a couple of 100 books in another cupboard.

Two months later, when some extended family was visiting, they looked at the bookshelf and marvelled at it – “Yes, our daughter loves to read, we cannot stop her,” my parents beamed with pride.

I was stunned. Two months ago, it was all about how the my books which are literally my bread and butter, were such a nuisance. It was the first time I saw parental hypocrisy; without any tinted glasses to sugar-coat or justify the double standards.

we are no different in friendship //

i did not really understand ‘friendship’ until high school (or junior college for those in maharashtra). through high school, undergraduate, post-grad, and my many first jobs, I realised I was actually quite a social person and made friends easily. A pattern began to emerge. I would meet new people, make friends. Then, I would spend some time with them having fun – going for movies, parties, late night outs, etc. Then invariably something about them would irritate me, and I would call up an old friend and crib about these new friends. (no confrontation was not my strong suit).

Once, a dear friend told me, “Why do you only talk to me when you are angry at your other friends?”

Three years later, I would say the same thing to a couple of other friends of mine. It seemed they only called me when they needed to talk about “real stuff” but not really be there when I needed the same, or when I simply wanted to do something fun and light.

In this time, I had changed. Confrontation came easy, clarity easier.

“But for me, if I want to spend time with you, I want to spend time with YOU. If you think getting a hot chocolate is fun, let’s go get it. I expect the same thing from you. You cannot not hang out with me simply because I don’t want to get drunk all the time, and then come complain to me about how you don’t like getting drunk all the time.”

and certainly the worst as civic members of our nation //

why else would we treat our streets like trash cans while respecting the cleanliness of nations that have done it better? drive like drunk lunatics here while maintaining speed limits abroad? why else would we export our best produce, and try to bypass food safety laws to sell sub-standard stuff to our own fellow citizens? Use our strongest weapons on our most peaceful protestors? Hold our own people hostage under the brutality of army rule? divide and rule with our own people? take away the future of our own children through crumbling public education infrastructure? make our own people suffer through questionable economic policies? appreciate how clean and green ‘countries abroad’ are, but willingly let entire forests be felled unplanned here?

what the memes and books say about love //

i cannot say i have ever really been in love romantically but i have loved people deeply. every story about it always tells us ‘it’s someone you can be yourself with’. but no one shows how somewhere down the road, we begin to be our worst selves with the people we love. we bring our fun, joyful sides to every other relationship – and there’s a certain preciousness is being able to break down completely in front of someone. but don’t the people who accept us at our worst deserve our best too? it’s so simple to me. you pick me up, I pick you up.

if you were there when i was crying, i will be there when you are. and then we will laugh together. we will not escape out of each other but into each other. i will not reserve my best jokes to impress my colleagues or new friendships, but whisper them to you so we may build our own love language. this is how i think i want to start living as i cautiously step out of a scarcity-driven childhood. impulsively buy a silk bedsheet to use in every day life, wear bamboo silk pyjamas to bed just because. put on the most expensive scented candles, and wear the nicest perfume to feel better on a day. get flowers for my friends for no real reason. always have color-coordinated underpants. smell great for my partner, look even better for them. try for them not because it’s pressure but because they deserve my fullest, happiest self.

bring the best parts of me to me, and the best parts of me to the ones I care about.

share memes with my mom, not just instagram posts explaining childhood trauma. laugh at my dad’s boomer-ness. tell my colleagues when they are being unreasonable, not come up and slam the door on family. share mundane gossip and pull pranks on friends who are also my emotional lifelines. tell them if they have misspoke and i felt wronged, not take project the bitterness on every body else. deep clean the home without occasion or guests, because i deserve that energy too.

in the version of me i like the most, i drag my friends out of a slump – take them out when they have been scooped up for too long, bring them their favorite dessert without asking, “do you want to have this today?”. hold grudges if i have to, but never against those whom i proclaim to care about. in the best version of myself, home is where I calm down and relax, not where i dump my emotional baggage and expect everyone to take care of it. i keep the asshole side of myself for the world which can be a bitch, and then bring my people together and laugh at them.

there is a tiny, hopelessly romantic part about me that feels like if each of us did this; we would create a happier family, neighbourhood, village, town, city, state, country.

on linkedin we can then call it a network effect of happiness. on instagram we can tell the story of how one kind act saved the soul of a nation. on print media we can credit excellent governance for a higher happier index. on reddit we could start a thread about the tiny acts of kindness that will make your spouse’s day, and on tiktok we could market it as a co-branded partnership with a mattress that claims to help you sleep better.

what a revolution we could start!

it sounds so easy when i write it.

then why is it so hard to practice being your best version with the people you love the most?