The Gravity of "Us"

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I am a very family person. I love my family. I love my immediate family to death, but I also love parts of my extended family. Not that all of us are great or characters from the movie “Hum Saath Saath hain”. We bitch, we gossip, we do panchayat, we take offence, we give offence and the whole 9 yards. But somehow we still manage to be nice to each other. We still manage to love each through all the lies and backstabbing. We fight on petty things, but we also forgive easy, well most of us. And we’ve had big fights. Fights where it felt like it was impossible to come back from, and guess what we came back. We might bitch about each other, but we fiercely protect each other from the world. Yeah, I can bitch about them, Geetika, you keep your trap shut.

Think of it as a bunch of us being help together by clay, sometimes, someone comes off loose, but with just a tad bit of water, easy fix. But off late, I think the clay in starting to harden and is becoming brittle. Guess global warming has its effect everywhere, huh? I think we are starting to take offence too easily now. Maybe Modiji is finally succeeding in making us less tolerant? Jokes apart, I feel like with each tiny instance we are coming off loose. Maybe as we are getting older, our ability to keep together is decreasing? Is that a thing? No Aayush, I am not that old yet. Sorry for digressing so much. But yeah, there are definitely a few connections that we are not interesting in keeping. Things have happened that cannot be undone and things have been said that cannot be taken back. And it is starting to show. Though it is easier for the ones who live on another tectonic plate, because all you have to do say "Happy birthday" once in a while. Harder for all of us on the same plate. 

What I fear is that if this goes on, we may become too distant to ever walk back. Think of this as the universe expanding, if we keep finding reasons to be mad and annoyed with each other, and the universe keeps expanding, we may eventually reach a darkness when we cannot see any other galaxies anymore. It is just us and the emptiness. 

Again, as I said, we may all be horrible people who are horrible to each other, but what I liked about us was that we used to find reasons to connect and talk and bond. We would take every opportunity to do so, and now maybe we are not? 

I am hoping though that we find some gravitational pull and not let each other veer too far. 

Too many metaphors and digressions? Don't worry about it. I will write a book someday and torture you. 

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