Noel Manuel
Most part of our lives is spent in recovering or repaying of debts. We all have debts and this does not imply financial transactions alone. Though the term itself could stimulate monetary engagements, the greatest debt that we all have till date and much to our surprise is not materialistic.
Debts, no doubt, create a lot of stress, tension, restlessness and even anger at times. Should we need to recover a debt or pay up, it is always the same trauma that is experienced. And whether we decide to remain calm or relaxed there are always those ugly moments that emerge when the glass overflows its brim.
Irrespective of our wealth or power, we all have debts and while many of us our conscious and responsible towards them, there are still others that hardly care much about their liabilities.
I was watching some infamous photographs of bank defaulters that were published in a national daily by a bank. And surprisingly, it was not the meager amount that catapulted my senses to rethink of how some people shirk their responsibilities in life. In fact, I was actually wondering how a few citizens had to pay the price for not being able to repay their debts.
They say to owe someone or to be in debt can cause sleepless nights and the punishment for not being able to repay can be severe. It can be so severe that there are many paying up each day either by having their characters smeared with newspaper publications and still others having to let go of their property.
Debt is not necessarily associated with money that we may have loaned from someone. It could also relate to the amount of kindness, love, affection, consideration, happiness and patience that someone may have financed you during your innocent years or perhaps even your darkest moments in life.
We all love extending our gratitude to people who help us and more so when they do it monetarily or materialistically. To the extent we make it public through press statements in order to let everyone know just how grateful we are to our benefactors.
While many of the good deeds bestowed upon us through strangers hardly go unnoticed, we fail to realize and understand that our greatest provider is none other than our parents. They do so much for us throughout our lifetime without any conditions or reticence.
Understandably because they are our parents, we consider it obligatory on their part to provide everything for us. Indeed they do so and much more than we expect. They are no strangers to us and even a stranger would not loan you anything without evidence or witness.
It is easier to get help from people we know than from those that we don’t. And generally we are grateful to everyone else that makes a difference to our lives, except our parents. This is a natural phenomenon and we believe that whether we repay our debts to our parents or not hardly matters because they don’t really expect much from us.
Our parents are humans and they do possess feelings and concern as much as the money lenders albeit without the conditions and actions that follow against defaulters. And we surely need to repay them as well. Not of course with money or materialistic things, but by what we actually choose to become in life.
Every parent has dreams for their children and they go to any extent to accomplish their dreams. No matter what the cost, they continue to be the provider; supplying kindness, love, affection, consideration, happiness and patience throughout their lives, with the hope that one day we would grow up to repay them by achieving their dreams. And just how may of us actually achieve those dreams of theirs?
We are very conscious about the things we loan from others and more particular about returning the same on time, lest the relationship would sour. We even undertake extreme measures to repay our debts so as to ensure that we are held in high esteem. Our parents are no strangers to us and as much as we strive to maintain our relationship with others, we need to equally maintain our relationship with them by repaying our debts in becoming what they expect of us.
Our debts to our parents are hardly considered as important as the debts we incur from others. And it is this attitude of the younger generation that is making them drift away from their association with their parents resulting in many of them pursuing lifestyles that are unethical to the moral fabric of society.
So long as we consider ourselves debt free from our parents, though in reality we aren’t, we are bound to be enslaved by the miseries of life resulting in failures and abusive habits.
Every successful family evolves on the understanding that each one owes the other a responsibility. The father, mother, children, relatives and even the domestic help owe each other a favour which could mean a kind act, a patient listening, a moment of laughter, a heartfelt consideration, an unconditional affection and those unending moments of happiness.
We need to repay our debts, particularly to those we have long neglected. And our parents deserve to be the beneficiaries for much of the repayment that has to be done. And the only way, we can repay our parents is by striving to become what they expect of us.
noelmanuel@rediffmail.com
The writer is the Bureau Chief (Nagaland) of Eastern Panorama (News Magazine of the Northeast), Coordinator of the Northeast Region (Poetry Society of India) and Life Member of the Poetry Society of India, Phonetics Trainer
