Mutual Coexistence?

Remember that phrase from DDLJ (Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jaayenge baba!) "Bade bade deshon mein aisi chhoti chhoti baatein, hoti rehti hai!" (bad literal translation: Small skirmishes keep happening in big countries, metaphorical: these little fights keep happening in a big situation, it's not a big deal). Evidently I will never be an effective translator/interpreter. Anyway, I was thinking about the phrase yesterday and surprisingly just such an incident occured yesterday. It was an all-round case of lack of/ miscommunication, ego clashes and a desire for change that got me thinking about the inevitability of conflict in any big institution.

Yesterday, X hurt her foot was rendered relatively immobile for the next month or so, much to her disappointment, as she was expecting to have a rocking holiday with her family and friends and go for lots of weddings and parties and all that. This had happened early in the morning before her sister living with her left for work. Not seeing X at the breakfast table, her younger sister (Y, for simplicity's sake), assumed that she had not returned from the gym and left without checking while she was semi-conscious in pain. Her partner Z too, who was awake, didn't inform her because they don't normally meet in the course of the morning routine. Y finds out in the course of her daily phone call to X that this has happened, by which time it is too late for her to return and X's and Y's other sister must take her to the hospital, naturally indignant at this apparent lack of consideration on Y's part.

Z decides during the course of the day that he's been craving Chinese all weekend and demands that Y acocmpany him because he cannot go and stuff his face alone if he wants to order all that he does. After a phone call to X, who allows her permission in a seemingly cheerful manner, Y agrees. They return home at night to find X rather cold and hurt. X, in her let-down state, which admittedly she was, berates Z for leaving her alone on her first night of injury to EAT CHINESE, and it sees funny for a while because he's snickering and just letting her vent before one thing leads to another and she takes out a topic about which she's been feeling bad forever now, since the beginning of their relationship more than a few years ago, that he never celebrates her birthday and anniversary, which is such a big deal for her because she is such a commemorative person, and celebrations were never made a big deal of in HIS natal home. That's when Z got mad, and said that everyone was different, and why couldn't she just be and let him be and accept it. (Of course their room was slightly disorganised because she manages everything and that day she couldn't and she was snickering at his managerial failure in the bathroom because he couldn't find the toilet paper). After some tactful mediation by Y, they fell asleep making faces at each other (Y wasn't free from X's wrath for not bothering to find out if she was at home or not).

So that was the situation. X would never have been mad if Y had noticed that it was unusual for X not to be having breakfast with her. Z could easily have told Y because this was evidently an unusual situation and he knew her morning routine. If Z had not insisted on going for Chinese and declaring that he would ask someone else and seemed so frighteningly adamant, and both Y and Z had simply gone home to pamper X's bruised foot, ego and expectations, and made use of the opportunity for Chinese another day, none of this would have occured. Even if all this happened, and X had simply accepted (karmically or whatever in the spirit of Hindu fatalism) that Y and Z (more so Z) are independent, relatively unemotional personalities who do their own thing, she would not have taken it as personally, or expected such consideration from them. It's funny how these events, when taken in isolation, seem so very insignificant, till they all build up to a crescendo of hurt feelings. (Of course, I agree that Y and Z should have come home and been more considerate of a woman who does so much for them).

If such a misunderstanding, and refusal to accept people as they are and demand that they become what one wants them to be out of deference to an ego that's been repeatedly bruised due to what seems to one to be realistic expectations, can cause the boat to rock in a stable relationship between 2 or 3 people, how much more complex and conflicted can it get on a communal or national or global scale! In which there are multiple people saying multiple contradictory things, imaginary concepts such as national honour/pride/sovereignty/autonomy at stake (all terrible no-no words in all religions), in which multiple people have innumerable, permutating and combining stands, are members of multiple groups that often have conflicting and myriad interests, motivations, goals and methods to achieving them. If you take many steps back into space and view the globe in its entirety - it is likely, and indeed expected, that a skirmish, a riot, a shooting, an attack takes place among random groups in different parts of the planet, just as quarrels occur (minor ones maybe daily, major ones sporadically) in a marriage.

And all due to egos, misunderstanding, and not letting bygones be bygones.

There. I feel at peace now. A good lesson to be learnt.

Even business, strategy and politics are like that. It's hard to think of being only one pawn out of soooo many players!

(Hehe, this morning, Z asked X how she was feeling and she laughed and asked why he wouldn't change, and he laughed and asked if she was still angry, stating that she took it out on him and Y. Of course Y, playing devil's advocate, stated that he does it too.)

So a new morning begins in Wonderland!

And how are you?

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The above reasons can simplistically relate to this well-written article on a rather silly subject - CEREAL, for God's sake. No one is sillier, greedier and more selfish than America when it comes to protecting imagined individual rights - and to such an exaggerated extent that it's almost a parody on the noble concept of autonomy.

I'll have you know that I'm against patenting mixed cereal because I do it all the time (I can't just eat a plain bowl of Raisin Bran when I can have honey nut Cheerios and Honey Bunches of Oats mixed in as well. But I have discovered cereal salvation and a break from mixing and alternating in Muesli! Yay for discovery!