Reality bites

You know, sometimes reality strikes us harder than the reality television. Some real life stories would make you wonder if its really happening. I heard such a story last week from a friend. A story that made me think where we are headed.

It is about a troubled young man trapped between his parents. His father is from a humble background and mother from a wealthy family. Mother’s family had helped the father to start a business and everything was fine until the father became a drunkard. Eventually the business was gone and the family had to struggle. So the mother, at 45, had to flee to London for a job leaving her husband and son alone. She kept sending money back but the father drank it all up. He would not go for a job or take care of his son. The boy stopped going to college and began wandering around the city. His regular ‘day’ was from dusk till dawn.

The mother eventually stopped sending money when she learned that the money was going to her husband’s booze fund. This made things even worse. The father started selling things he had at home to find money for booze. When the relatives sent him money, he spent it on booze than food. The boy kept wandering around more often, and many a times without food. Then one day he was bitten by a dog in the neighborhood. People in the apartment says that it happened when the boy tried to steal food from the neighbor’s dog’s food plate. Relatives learned later that the dog had died and the boy did not go to a hospital.

The boy is trapped. His mother tried to take him to London but the father would not let him go. Because the father knew that the only reason that his wife sent him money was their son. The mother is not ready to leave the job at London to come back to India to be with her son and she blames the relatives for not taking care of him. The relatives do not want to accommodate the father and the son, because the father is a complete drunkard and the son has been acting like a psychopath these days. They do not trust them both to share their house with.

I don’t understand how could parents go after money, jeopardizing their family and children. How could people put their ego, convenience and comfort over their children. Leaving them to chaos, letting them be criminals and psychopaths. Perhaps this story explains the growing rate of crime in our society.