Familiarity Breeds Contempt

I wanted to narrate a couple of real-life incidents which I feel is a classic testimony to the topic of this post. A few months ago, over a weekend, my parents and I went to a super market in a shopping mall. We completed our shopping and headed to the billing counter. We had about 12 items to be billed.

As to expected over a weekend, the billing counters had long queue with people invariably having a big trolley full of items. I was wondering if we should just dump our shopping cart and go out rather than standing in that non-ending queue.

Looking at the big queue, my mom, who has been suffering from knee-pain and arthritis for over 15-years, suggested let’s head to the “express-counter” and be done with our shopping. I was thinking that my mom is irrational and did not realise that express-counters accommodate customers having only less than about 5 billing items.

I said to myself, my mom is unable to stand owing to her knee pain and trying an irrational easy-way-out by heading to the express-counter.

While I was pondering on these lines, my mom said, let’s split the items between us and that will make it legit to get through the express-counter. Wow. That is when I realized how we take things for granted, more so about the ones close to us. We did get the billing done at the express counter (12 items split between three of us) and exited the super market in few minutes, avoiding the big queue in the regular counter.

The other interesting anecdote happened more recently.

I am a member of a WhatsApp group consisting primarily of my cousins. One of my cousins shared a very old family group photo. I showed that photo to my mom, thinking that she will relish and recall those moments.

She was very happy to see that snap but she was not there in that photo. My dad was in Air Force which meant mom could not attend most family-functions as she would be stationed in a different city.

I was wondering what the occasion would have been when the photo was taken. My mom immediately said, this should be “seemantham” function (check this link for details ) of one of the relatives featured in the photo. As always, I thought my mom was just shooting in the dark without logic.

Even before I could ask her what made her come to that conclusion, she pointed to our relative who was the only one wearing a nine-yards saree. And she was pregnant. These two points were apparent after I looked at the photo again. And my mom said, it was a no-brainer. I just checked the thread of messages and my mom was spot-on. The cousin who posted the photo did acknowledge that my mom was right.

These two incidents made me realise how we take people and their intelligence for granted. We do not give due credit and/or acknowledge the credentials of our dear ones. Felt personally humiliated and proud at the same moment. That is why I wanted to share this with you. Am sure lot of you would have had such moments.

Give credit where it is due!! More so, if they are the ones close to you. Don’t take people for granted. These are the takeaways for me from these two episodes.