Love to Hate You

No, this isn’t a spoof on the Arjun Rampal show. It’s actually the state of my mind. Have I hated anyone to the point of annihilation? Yes I have - my mother’s mother, my monster-in-law, & a friend’s wife - let’s call her memsahib.

Problem with granny: There’s always that 1 person in every family who is the villain. What she did to my mother is what I hold against her. I stopped talking to her. I’d never get myself to even see her face. My mother forgave her saying, “she bore me for 9 months in her womb.” Yes, my mother was a real life Nirupa Roy!

Problem with MIL: I did all I’d to make peace with the situation I found myself in, to please her, to find a way into her heart but nothing worked. Some people are born with every organ except the one that is most needed – a heart. After I’d reached the last ounce of my endurance, I remember saying to Sathya, “It’s over for me” And when I say something is over, it truly is over.

Problem with Memsahib: her ingratitude, artificiality & holier than thou attitude. She is the last of the surviving sati savitris/perfect bahus on this planet. Or so she thinks.

Does hatred kill us? Eat us? I don’t know. The people I hate I negate. That’s all. I don’t see them, talk to them. They simply don’t exist for me anymore. That’s the extent to which I distance myself. I turn ice-cold in the face of ingratitude & indifference. If I’m not wanted or welcome, I erase that person from my life. Is it good? Is it bad? This is not a question of morality. This is a simple, & yet, not so simple case of being unloved. The feeling of being unwanted can drive you to emotional desperation.

Why can’t I find within me the strength & the largesse to let go? Because I don’t live in half measure: I love fully, I hate fully. I don’t live cautiously or according to society’s book of superficial etiquette. When you love someone & do things in the hope that it’ll make them happy but it doesn’t, & they expect more & more but do not show gratitude or even a smile, is when it starts pinching, very hard. A calculative person treats a relationship with an excel sheet at the back of his mind with all columns/rows neatly filled in. Love someone with a hidden agenda, you won’t be hurt. You hurt when you give it your all & get taken for granted.

Sometimes, compromising & adjusting actually gives the other person the power to walk all over you. “Joh jhuka use aur jhukao”. I’m proved wrong when I think “This relation is important to me, so it must be important to them too & hence the way I’m working at it, they must be working at it too”. It doesn’t function that way. You realize it has been a one-way street all along & your decency is your weakness. That’s when deep love turns to great hatred & the hatred sustains you because the love has gone & left a gaping vacuum leaving the other face of love to fill its place – and that is hatred. “Love & hate are alike, it’s the same energy inverted” (Osho)

“Hate can become love: it is energy in a disturbed state. The energy can be calmed, stilled” says Osho. Maybe I’m waiting for a closure. Waiting for the day when I can actually face them & tell them they hurt me, the nights I sobbed myself to sleep or wept till my eyes dried out. Maybe I’m waiting for the day they’ll say, “I’m sorry I hurt you.” And mean it. Till then, I love to hate you.