Our family business is of hardware tools: hammers, chisels etc. I manage our store and handle sales.
Last week, I had a strange yet sympathetic experience. As usual, I was busy in reading a book, The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, when a customer, who was probably in his fifties, entered my shop and asked for something we didn’t have. I instructed him the address where he could find what he was looking for. To my surprise, he didn’t take it so well.
He was anguished by my directions and abusing words just burst from his mouth in an angry rush. You young people are all disrespectful. You misguide people. Then, seeing the book in my hand, This modern education has ruined your morale. You machines no longer care about human relations.
All of this was out of blue. Sudden. My impulsive act was to ask the old man to leave my shop. He did leave. Abusing did not. As he carried on to disparage me through his words. My salesman trode towards him to do what he thought was a good thing to do. I, however, stopped him. Not because I was intimidated by the old man. But because there was something peculiar about his anger. His face expressions, his eyes, his body language were not going with his words. There was a vivid opposition in what he was saying using his tongue and what his eyes said using imagery undetectable.
Just like behind mother’s anger, there is always love. There was something different behind his anger, other than anger and rage itself.
All of this did not take long. In about twenty or thirty seconds, he was out. Silent. I asked him to come inside and and requested him to take a seat. With a shivering body, he sat. And when I asked him if there is something wrong going on in his life, he broke like an egg shell and out came TEARS! Very Real Salty Tears.
He apologized to me for all the harsh words and explained how tense he was. HOW DEPRESSED he was. The problems were not uncommon. Not exclusive. He was a victim of show-off culture where his daughters were unable to get marry because he just was not able to arrange dowry.
Now these are the kind of “family secrets” we keep resided inside walls of our homes. They are not supposed to be spoken of outside family community because the “clean” atmosphere outside does not need to burdened by such talks. Now imagine, how depressed that person could be that he lost it in middle of a market. To a boy who might be of his own son’s age.
We genuinely need some love out there. Love is in the air? No more. It’s lacking. It is not present. We cannot see it. We cannot feel it. It’s deteriorated. It’s limited to monetary benefits. Our relations are controlled by wealthy predictions. And this is creating more and more old men like the one I came across.
It is not just him. It is us. Society.
