A Family break up after 37 years of marriage. El Kay Mawkin
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we never got divorced , yet I have written an imagined case of divorce after 38 years of marriage in a court .
I tried to convince my family as to why we should always be together as a family for facing good and bad times in our lives .My wife belonged to 1950/60/80's and my children were from 1990/2000 onwards generation .
"Forget him ."
"Never forgive him ."
" Let him go to hell - " , was their attitude with which they stormed my wife 's mind .
No amount of my apologising and explaining helped me and I thought of putting my dirty laundry on the paper today .It is quite difficult to write many private and internal happenings at one's family ,but I am left with no option at this stage .
In between ,I visited my wife and my daughter at their home , to talk to them face to face .
I was constantly crying and my daughter was saying ," Dad we can never ever stay together as a family ".
I hugged both of them and came out in my cab waiting for me .
How it happened and why it happened is a long story of 37 years of ups and downs that every family goes through and luckily , we all survived our good and bad times for almost four decades .
But let me focus on the last ten /twelve years ,since my severe illnesseses viz, cancer of the kidney ,my hearing loss ,my retina problem ,a big tumour sitting at the back of my forehead , my loss of job that happened during this period ,led to my or our family's overall downfall .
Was it pre destined ?
That is a typical Indian way of looking at things .
Is it karma of each member of the family that comes into play ?
My actions , my wife’s reactions , my children’s struggles with their career settlements .?
Or times had changed and we didn't change with the times and the so called generation gap came into play ?
Do we keep postponing the inevitable ?
And when incidents come together to let it happen and we look back in anger or amazement at the bygone times and feel sad and sorry about them .
Any family unit is a part and parcel of a particular society .
Metropolitan town dwelling has made it quite isolationary and small fnuclear families in their existence ,to an extent that your next door neighbour may not even know what has transpired in your home .
During 2002 , we were having our breakfast when we realised that a young married girl staying upstairs just above us was committing suicide .Only when we heard commotion outside ,we realised that a young girl had died .
Coming from smaller towns ,having lived in a well knit joint familiy and becoming a nuclear family in a metro city, takes one through quite a struggle in adjusting,adapting and creating our own little spaces with a few friends in our locality and at our offices to survive .
Modern living has exerted tremendous pressures on a middle class family all over the world, especially in India , to keep their heads above water and survive.
Children’s education ,watching their growth and career settlement has become a major issue, especially , if the parents and children do not want to fall in the rut and let their children do what they love doing in their lives .
Simone De Behaviour ma French writer and philosopher , said life consists of CHANCE and CHOICES .
We are born into a family as a son/daughter/gay , which is purely a chance factor .
After our teenage years ,we make choices for ourselves ,whether good or bad but our entire life is governed by the choices we make in our adolescent years .
Chapter 1
Year 2000-2006- happy days
We were living happily in our small two bedroom flat at Rail Vihar, sector 56, in Gurgaon .
These were Railway employees' quarters built by Indian railway workers organisation.
A peaceful and well planned society for railway employees .There were more than 150 families staying in the society .There were four bedroom,three bedroom and two bedroom or even a single bed room units there .Flats were mostly three storeyed , with a lot of open spaces and a community centre within the society ,
My elder sister was working at Railway audits and got this flat on loan but she never stayed here .She had moved into another flat at DLF Phase-II,, Gurgaon and offered me to move into the vacant flat ,since I had no job in hand and my children were still studying .
Hesitatingly and with a lot of concern in our minds , with no job in hand , I had moved alone and sent my family on a forced vacation to my wife’s parents at Ambala cantt .I was hoping that I shall get an assignment or a job and would shift to a better place at south Delhi with my family ,where we had stayed for almost ten years ,after having shifted from Chandigarh .
Having worked with well known American Multinational companies and some big Indian Corporate houses ,I was jobless for various reasons for the past two years ,which is another long story of how bosses kill their subordinates careers .
It would need another book like this to write about the most obedient servants to the management as CEOs in Corporates and kill their subordinates careers .
But it didn't happen and we had to stay put and wait for better times .
Our hesitation for moving this far in Gurgaon was because of the house being far away from the main roads ,with no conveyance facilities or shopping facilities nearby during year 2000.
I used to commute to my office,nearly 40 kms every day by my car but my son had a tough time going and coming back from his school at south Delhi , in an autorickshaw filled with labourers and servants .
My daughter had to take a bus from the main highway , where I would drop her by my car and then she used to catch a bus .But while coming back from her college , she had to walk down from the highway and stay at my elder sister’s place at DLF -II , till I picked her up in the evening while coming back from my office and brought her home .
Things improved slowly and I got a job ,first as a consultant and then as a regular employee with an upcoming healthcare organisation and we started staying in this flat ,when gurgaon was still coming up in the year 2000.
( I remain grateful to my highly placed mentor who helped me get the assignment )
Gurgaon was quite deserted those days and even a cab driver would fear coming this far till sector 56 ,at night .
Shepherds from Rajasthan would often come here in winters with their flock of sheep and build their temporary huts on the large tract of vacant land ,just behind our flat .
It reminded me of Aryans having moved from Mediterranean to India almost 2500 years ago, since there was no fodder for their cattle back home in winters .
Whenever it rained ,I enjoyed sitting in my small balcony to watch rains on the open landscape
.
It has all disappeared since then , over the years and a number of buildings have come up on the vacant land .
We had our parental property at Ambala cantt, where my younger sister , a divorcee from 1987 , but employed as a lecturer at a local college ,stayed with her school going daughter .
She was fortunate having stayed with my old parents, looking after them financially and they supported her and her daughter till their demise in 1997 .
My younger sister was teaching mathematics as a lecturer at a local college and go by small two wheeler called Luna and then by her scooty ( a clutch free two Wheeler) to her college , nearly 20 kms away from our home and taking private tuitions in the evening at home or correcting