On a cold evening in October some 25 years ago, I was taught a very important lesson about opinions. It was a Friday and I had come to spend a few days at Phuphee’s house. At dinner, my uncle walked in and sat at the head of the dastarkhaan (the piece of cloth spread on the floor on which meals are eaten). As custom dictated, we had to wait till he was seated and served before we could eat. It was a sign of respect towards him, as the head of the house.
Phuphee had been out in the village for most of the day, trying to heal a teenage girl said to be possessed by a stubborn jinn (spirit), which caused her to faint repeatedly. After spending hours talking to the girl, it came to light that the jinn had more human features than spiritual. It turned out to be a paternal uncle with a degenerate mind who had tried to force himself on the girl. Feeling that no one would believe her if she spoke up, the girl had started to dissociate and faint.
After she revealed the truth to Phuphee, the uncle had been beaten and banned from the village. Phuphee had said: ‘This is why I always say, jinns are easier to work with than humans. At least, they know when to leave.’ After this, she had come home and cooked dinner. As it had been a difficult day, she made gande ti aalve (onions and potatoes). While it tastes good, it is a humble dish.
My uncle, after he had a few morsels of rice with the gande ti aalve, looked at Phuphee and asked her why hadn’t she made something else. He had worked very hard that day and the least a man could expect was a good dinner. She said nothing. She sat there eating her dinner while he waited for a response.
When Phuphee had finished, she picked up his plate and threw the contents out (onto the food ready to be taken out to the animals) and told uncle, ‘A man may expect dinner, but what could be termed as good is simply a matter of opinion. Seeing how your skill here is only limited to eating, you are somewhat limited in what you may or may not expect from me. If the food is not to your standard or expectations, please feel free to get up and make something that is.’ And she left.
The temperature in the kitchen dropped by several degrees. Everyone else got up to flee. Uncle looked shocked, mostly because, even though Phuphee was outspoken, she rarely directed her anger at him in front of others. This was new for everyone, including him.
I went looking for her and found her sitting on the verandah smoking her two cigarettes.
‘Did you have to be so harsh with him? I asked, ‘that too in front of all of us.’
We are suffocating under the weight of the opinions of everyone around us and maybe the only way out is to stop listening once in a while and, instead, speak | Photo Credit: Illustration: Zainab Tambawalla
‘I wasn’t harsh with him. You just think I was harsh because normally he speaks and I listen. Today, I spoke and he had to listen.’
‘I know you had a tough day but…,’ before I could continue she raised her hand.
‘The girl I met today was in a terrible state. She was more worried about what everyone else would think about her than what had actually happened to her. So much so that her mind shut down. If she had been able to tell her parents or someone else about what had happened to her, imagine how different the situation would have been. For months now, she has been suffering on her own, worried about other people’s opinions.’
‘But that’s just how the world is, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘We always think about what others are going to think.’
‘Of course we think about what others will think or say, but if you cannot draw a line at some point, your entire life will become nothing but a series of reactions — of what you think you ought to do, according to the world, rather than what you should do, according to yourself. Do you think people who go around giving their opinions freely ever think about the consequences? Do you think they worry if their opinions are right or wrong? No. Most people think opinions are like butterflies, floating from one place to another before quietly dying and disappearing without a trace. But opinions are like bees that carry the burden of expectation from one person to another, changing people’s perceptions, changing their actions and reactions. And sometimes they sting, they sting very badly.’
‘I know your uncle is not a bad man. I know he cares for me and while I respect that his opinions are important to him, he needed to learn that at the end of the day, his opinions are his, they are not mine.’
I didn’t really understand what she was saying. In all honesty, I felt she was being difficult. But as I got older, I realised that so much of what we do in our day to day lives isn’t actually decided by us. Rather, they truly are reactions to other people’s opinions. Then, so many of us wonder why we feel trapped in our lives.
The truth is, we are trapped and suffocating under the weight of the opinions of everyone around us and maybe the only way out is to stop listening once in a while and, instead, speak.
Saba Mahjoor, a Kashmiri living in England, spends her scant free time contemplating life’s vagaries.
