Responsibility

A friend of mine sent me some pictures of her recent travels with her family to some lovely exotic places. She has apparently had a somewhat troubled marriage the past couple of years so I was really happy to see pictures of her with the rest of the family, the husband especially. They both seemed happy and enjoying their time together. She continued to send me a few albums and I would tell her how much I enjoyed looking at the stories woven by her pictures. She has been my friend for over a decade and a half and I know a lot of her cousins and family members and I recognised many of them in her pictures. Somewhere, many years ago our friendship was strained and these pictures brought us together in some ways. She told me I was the only friend who knew her so well. We both felt very close again and I was so happy. Then she sent me this set of pictures that left me speechless. Pictures of the 'happy' couple with their 5 year old at a bar, the husband completely inebriated. My friend with her arms wrapped around this man with bloodshot eyes with a completely lost faraway look in his eyes. What I noticed next really disturbed me. The five year old sits, looking completely bored, with a half melted ice cream in his hand and stares at his father. I wish she had sent me pictures of those hands giving him a tight slap instead.

The next incident I write about is much worse. Some friends of mine from graduate school introduced us to this family of four and one bun in the oven recently. The man is a much older academic, the wife, I am sure, is not a day older than 25-26 years and their two kids. With, like I said, one arriving any day. We went to their house the other day for dinner and I saw the mother-to-be drinking a glass of wine. Turns out it wasn't the first glass and she had downed a whole bottle of red wine by the end of the evening. I asked her politely if she was fine with alcohol during pregnancy and she said na, nothing happens. We left soon after that and my friend, the one who had introduced me to her, told me the next morning that she had had so much to drink that the very pregnant lady was screaming her lungs out at the two kids and the kids just stood quietly and listened, so immune had they become to this scenario. This past weekend, we visited them and it was the same thing again. She drank the whole evening and I told her this time, in the sweetest possible way, that it could be bad for the baby. She just shrugged and said the baby would be just too happy. I could not bring myself to joke about it. It annoyed me so much. I tried to talk some sense in to her but guess what? She was too drunk to understand and just kept laughing in the silliest way at me. Doesn't surprise me that her poor two year old goes around banging toys on little kids heads. I guess you don't blame a kid for trying to do anything to get his parents attention. And what should be said about the husband? He talks non-stop about the book he just published but shows no concern for his wife's drinking at this stage. She is almost 9 months pregnant, for Chrissake!!!!!!

Last night I had a nightmare that I can barely talk about. All in all, it consisted of us losing our house and in a hurry to find a roof to spend the night, we couldn't find Pickles (I cannot bring myself to even write the L word). It has been such a tiring and traumatic day for me and I am tired from having spent the night dreaming about this and now I am too shaken up at even the remotest thought of anything ever happening to my baby. So I wonder how these parents can do this to their little ones? The little part of them that needs all the possible love, caring, protection and encouragement to grow and prosper every day. How can they damage their bodies in utero and their minds when they are so innocently tender and impressionable?

What about parents and families who yearn for babies and yet cannot have them? What about the mother on NDTV's We the People who spoke about her young son of seven being diagnosed with cancer? How can parents waste a life away and play so ruthlessly with a baby's delicate mind and body?