Fugly

A person, man or woman, needs an anchor in their life. For a large majority of people that anchor is their family. Family has been my anchor but not overtly and there is a reason behind it. I grew up during the Star Movies era, there were movies in which you saw children in Hollywood movies as paper boys and generally also 2000s was about becoming independent as soon as possible and so I wanted to become independent as soon as possible, not that you desert your family, but become independent as soon as possible. Unfortunately I ended up studying medicine which takes time in making you independent, but mentally I was independent as soon as I turned eighteen. The days of MTV Select passed and now even though people want to become independent, those times, that window of aspiring to become independent has disappeared completely and now it's all about who your daddy is. How do you end up realising that the nation is run by not the government but a few families from regional to the national level? When it becomes all about your family. These days it is all about your family. You wouldn't have cared less about your family when your were independent from your family's identity making a name for yourself during the Star Movies and MTV Select days, but now you have to sacrifice your individuality for the name of your family to prove that you don't care less about them or you are not ashamed of them? Who the fuck is ashamed of their family? I have seen the world quite a bit in the past twenty years and I know that there are people who actually are ashamed of their families and not like their families are criminals, it's just that they don't fit in the modern society and follow the old ways. This is how enlightenment happens, it happens when the things you didn't think were possible confront you and you have to accept them, like "kanjoos makkhichoos", it seems like a hyperbole, but maturity is realising that there actually exist people who would drink their tea when a fly drowns in it but also suck the fly before throwing it away. America is the most visible nation on the social media and you see Americans, each an individual, expressing their individuality while acknowledging their families. In India, it seems that families kill the individuality of their children but if you look closer it's not the families, it's the system. A system making your individuality impotent differs from you sacrificing your individuality for your family. I did the latter so I don't have any regrets and actually I am absolutely content but a lot of kids get their individuality crushed by the system, through their families. The more you look at the nation we live in the uglier it gets. I wear boxers and T-shirt at home and checked shirt and trousers outside, but I keep the modules of my individuality and I follow my interests. I watch Baiju Dharmajan playing Carnatic metal on YouTube, I check out cafè racers on Tumblr, I watch freestyle motocross reels on Instagram. I have a tattoo of Japanese kanji spelling Ronin on my chest, and I wear my figurative leather jacket inside my checked shirt. It's a crushing machine, that crushes your individuality, your dreams, so that you become that frustrated uncle and aunty that you hate. I won't become that, but a lot of others whose individuality and dreams got crushed by the system run by greedy oldies, their litter and the criminals employed by them, will.