Return

It seems like AGES since I last wrote a post. That aside, lots of musing has been happening. About Life, battles people choose to fight, give up on and what not.

A person I know went missing, its been 4 days now. Her parents brought in a private investigator onto the case and they recently discovered that she bought a bus ticket to another city and took off. I tried to put myself in many shoes in the last few days; her parents, her younger sister, and her. I feel like I should be saying "I knew her quite well" after the many conversations her parents and me had.However, I don't feel that way, maybe because she is such an introvert. I keep asking "Why are you putting your parents through all that agony if you just wanted to run away from them?, why couldn't you just tell them to leave you alone, tell them you don't want any parental advice in life?". She was born in India and brought up in the States and it brings me to my perennial musings on how hard parenting can be. She was stuck between being in a country that posed freedom, liberation, free-thinking, taking control of life and 'values of the Indian system' that make parents expect a lot of things from their kids - be it for reputation, social acceptance or just conforming to the society. Now they are readily accepting of anything she might say "I will drop out of college", "I will give up on a stable money-earning, family-supporting career", "I will sit at home and bum around".

That's of course just one scenario. Maybe she is in real trouble, maybe she got into bad company and that took her to another city. Maybe she is scared of something in life and needs real help.

Talking to the investigator I understand that securing ones privacy is utmost in most sectors of the system, which makes finding details very hard. Details like what was her last phone call, what did she go to the hospital for, what did she use her credit card for etc. Once you are 21, you can go missing and no one will find you, unless you want to be found. No one will continue looking for you, even if you are a detective, if the detective is convinced that there is no threat to her life.

I realise that with exposure to new worlds comes the urge to embrace, but not everything can be abandoned. You need to know how to convince the people in your life that something in life is what you want, know how to stand by it and explain till they understand and also learn to turn away if they refuse to try to understand, because at the end of it, you have one chance at every opportunity. One Life.