Dad and his love

I've been thinking about my dad lately. It was only recently that I heard him cry. I know he as cried before, and I vaguely remember once about 15 years ago when my grandma died. But never since then or before then. The way my relationship with him has changed over the past year, rather since I visited home in August last year has been really... fruitful is not quite the word, neither is revealing. Once again, I'm stumped by the lack of appropriate words for the emotions I'm going through.

I've been talking to by T about this. All my life I've been trying not to become my dad at many levels. Now suddenly, I've started seeing him as a complex person rather than as simply the person I don't want to turn into. But today, I realized something beyond that.

For the first time, I realized how he never really expressed his love in an understandable... well what I'm saying is that he never communicated his love for us very well. I now see that he really cared about us very much, he just didn't know how to show it. Perhaps I'm being too generous, but I genuinely felt it today. When I look back on it, I recall him being very frustrated when we didn't understand his love. All we saw was his frustration and his anger resulting from it. Nothing more. At least I didn't see anything more.

Today, I felt sorry for him and connected with him somehow. He did what he thought was best for us, which wasn't always best. He always did things out of love, but when not appreciated for it, he got really angry, but may be he didn't know why he even got angry for. He tried to tell us he loved us, but saying it is very different from showing it in action.

Once again, I don't want to end up like my dad; only, this time it is for a different reason, an entirely different reason.

Empathy

I felt transported to about 9 months ago, when I was brooding over things. This time it was different. First it was short-lived. Second, I felt it in a different way, very very different. It is hard to put it into words. But I felt the suffering not of my own but of the other. I could feel the sadness dripping in the atmosphere of the other. Yes, it is possible that it is my own misinterpretation, but I do not think it is. Nevertheless, this has left me deeply touched. Somehow I find this to be an eye,... no heart opening experience.

There is so much suffering in the world. I've been too very focussed on mine alone that I've failed to look at others. No, I don't mean that I've been so self absorbed that I've not noticed any of the suffering around me. I actually "felt" it this time. It was as if the distinction between me and the rest of the world simply disappeared. Thus, I felt their pain as if it were mine own.

I don't know where I'm going with this, but I found it pretty interesting to note that feeling of empathy rather than sympathy.

Child abuse in India

I saw this BBC news article entitled, Abuse of Indian children 'common'. First I thought they were talking about physical abuse. I know that physical (and emotional) abuse happens in nearly all of 100% of the families in India. Yes, this is going to sound like I'm stereotyping, but this is my experience as it is the experience of many of my Indian friends. Physical abuse is also common in school. I would not be exaggerating in stating that physical abuse is pretty much the norm.

Now, the surprise in the article is this:

Commissioned by the Ministry of Women and Child Development, the study says 53% of the surveyed children reported one or more forms of sexual abuse.

That is huge! More than 1 in 2 kids! That is f****** disgusting. I f******* hate India for being what it is, for being so slow in even admitting it. I'm angry at every one of them hypocrites, and there is a damned huge lot in India, who do not even acknowledge that such things can happen.

In India there's a tradition of denying child abuse. It doesn't happen here is what we normally say. But by remaining silent, we have aided and abetted the abuse of children.

Fuck yeah! We are complete idiots to not see this happen. People who are not conscious of the dangers kids could be exposed to should not be allowed to have kids... heck neuter them! Yes, I'm angry, big time angry.
Reminding myself that sexual abuse is almost always under reported only makes me feel even more angry.

How is this for a statistic that came out of this government funded study:

Two out of every three children in India are physically abused, according to a landmark government study.

Am I the only one who finds anything wrong with this statistic. How is that if 1 in 2 kids are sexually abused, only 2 in 3 kids physcially abused? Where do they come up with these numbers that seem obviously flawed? More fuel to the fire!

They did get one thing right:

a disturbing finding of the study had been that 70% had not reported the abuse to anyone.

Yeah, try reporting that yourself in a society that denies such things ever happen. We consider ourselves morally superior that we refuse to look at our own dirt. The entire country is full of self-righteous snobs who live in self-denial.

I need to lay-off of writing now to cool off... may be I'll try to write when I'm a bit more cool headed.