Express love to your near ones
Not even a fortnight has pass-ed since Diwali, and I am sitting far away in Phil-adelphia shooting a film alongside one of my all-time favourite international act-ors, Robert De Niro. There is a lot I am excited about professionally; I have a great role in a Hollywood film, I am working with a great director and a supremely talented cast. Yet there is a dull ache in my heart. I have missed all the sights and sounds and smells of Diwali back home.
There were no festive lights here, no thalis of home-made sweets, no rustle of silks which comes with the hustle and bustle of socialising with friends that is the norm on these days. In short, life goes on routinely.
To be sure, I never did think much of festivals and celebrations when I was back home. Maybe it was because I was too much in the midst of them all. It is something like home-cooked meals… you never miss them when you are at home! And then, sitting in solitude, I realise that such is the story of our lives. Very often, we do not realise the worth of people when they are around us. We realise their true worth only when they are not there.
Prime among them would be our parents. It is well-known that we can never even aspire to give back to them, measure for measure, all that they have done, or sacrificed, to bring us up. And yet, we rarely remember anything of what they have done for us, when we get upset with them in later life. Then there are our childhood friends, the ones we grew up with and the ones who knew us when we wore half-pants. They know our innermost fears, worries and our little childhood secrets. Is that why we often jettison them as we go along our career paths?
Then there are our well-meaning, and long-suffering, spouses. Very often, as they are our closest companions and mean well for us, they give us advice which we do not wish to hear. That is because they are our life partners, and not yes-men or yes-women. They do not say what we wish to hear, but they speak what is in their hearts and in our best interests. So we often take them for
granted.
Halt, before you do this again. Do not continue to tread the path you have been on all these years. Make this the onset of a special festival season. Tell all the people in your lives, the ones who really matter and the ones you truly love and cherish, how much you miss them and how much you care. Tell them how inadequate you have been in expressing your gratitude to them. Tell them exactly what they mean to you.
Such a heartfelt chat is more meaningful than sending
out SMSes that do not capture even an iota of your feelings.
If you don’t do it now, next year may be too late for some of them.
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