A Silent Sacrifice

By Mayank

Generation gap, a hindrance in the path of communication, where thoughts and beliefs of persons be ailed to different generations contradicts with each other. A father thinks he is correct while a son thinks he is. Where in reality both are correct but have different perspective. They hardly accede to each other’s views. Rudra, college graduate who had wrapped up his B. Pharmacy from D.A.V College Chandigarh. Although he had a passion towards writing since class 9th and desires to become a writer. But keeping in mind the requirements of family he chose the course as per the direction of his father. His father owns a general store and had fetched a handsome amount through that store. He also had expanded his business by inaugurating two other outlets of his store which were ran by his brothers. His business was moving smoothly but with the increasing competition accompanied by increment in family members. It got really hard to draw that much profit. Seeing this he was fed-up with the business but never revealed this to anyone. He was all-in to his son and secretly desiring to retire as soon as his son get settled. 

Rudra while pursuing his degree got indulged in spending money relentlessly and his father never asked him for the statement of his expenditure. Rudra all the time acted like he has been making all the sacrifices for his family by, giving up his dreams, and that expenditure was the charges for that. As soon as maturity hit him, he got to know the value of his father’s hard-earned money. From then onwards, he started saving money and cut down his expenditure. In his views, this too was a sacrifice he was making for his family. In his mind, he was the savior of his family. With these thoughts in his minds, he cracked an interview and got job in renowned MNC with an annual package of 20 Lacs. This helped his father to give-up all his worries and the time came for him to rest finally. Now he had all the responsibilities of the family but rather taking them as his own responsibilities he used to complain his father about transferring all the burden to him. With the passing moments, he started to refrain all the sacrifices he had done. Due to this his mother got depressed and again he blamed his father for all the past traumas that in accordance to him was the result of his father. His father still decided to stay quiet and move away with a smile. Rudra started asking his father about his daily expenses and too about the petrol bills. Each and every time he used to hurt his father by representing him as a burden. 

One day his father decided to take cat out of the bag and he went to his best friend. That day he broke into tears for the first time since his mother’s death. He revealed everything that he reason behind reduction of his profit was that his own brothers were stabbing him in the back. Still, he decided to stay quiet! He tried everything to give his children all the luxuries although he never spent even a penny on himself. Even when he was all burdened with hefty loans and business loses. Still, he was treated like he had done nothing for them! He had sacrificed everything for his family. His personal interests, his dreams, his necessities! But still he got treated like worthless. He never asked about the statement of expenses to his children. But now his son asking him about blow-by-blow description of every expense. His mother was depressed due to him but he blamed him for the trouble he had caused. After spending quality time with his friend, he felt quite good. He went back to his home to live his normal life. He decided to reopen a small store in order to get ride of all the taunts from his son. Again he decided to eat his heart out, how his son going to weigh his all the sacrifices with his father’s on a scale. His father never complained about anything even though he had all the rights. How his son is going to repay his father’s debts. We can’t know the damage we had done to someone until the same happened to us. 

The day when Rudra is going to realize everything would be probably too late. We should value every person in our life, we only see our sacrifices but never think of what our parents doing for us. This is all what generation gap is. It doesn’t mean we have to support them in every situation wrong or right.  But we can correct them and understand their perspective in that scenario!

By Mayank