I was watching a movie on Zee 5 last night where the father of a grown-up son is constantly criticising him for not having focused on his studies and hence, not having secured his future. Every time father and son walk past each other, the father would express his disappointment in a bitter voice. Finally, one day the son stopped the father and asked: ‘Why are you always so angry with me?’ A sad melody starts playing the background as the father says with tears in his eyes: ‘Son, you see my anger, but you don’t see the love behind the anger. You hear my harsh words but you don’t hear the hopes and fears that lie behind those words’. You may have heard such dialogues even in your day-to-day life where someone who loves you may say harsh words all the time and yet when there’s a confrontation, they may say ‘But can’t you see how much I love you?’ The sad truth is that us humans – we are not mind-readers. We cannot always guess the love that hides behind the criticism. We cannot always hear the pain that lies behind the sarcasm. We need to occasionally be shown just a brief glimpse of that affection. If you love someone but never show it, they are never going to guess how you feel. Don’t expect them to just KNOW. They won’t. Let them know occasionally through words and actions. Because us humans….we are not mind-readers. Nim Gholkar, 2021
7Archana Menon Pandya, Chandu Nagamalli and 5 others