Pampered, the favourite son of the Indian family frequently grows up without basic survival skills. The ramifications can be disastrous
Sumana Mukherjee
Do you know these people? A regular, urban Indian family with, may be, two or more children. Of which one often gets singled out for special treatment. Not consciously, perhaps, but in the sense of extra indulgence. He may be the only boy-child or just the youngest, or, perhaps, he or she was sickly as a baby. As a kid, he may have received more toys than his siblings. As a school student he might have been lavished with gifts and pocket money. And as a young man, he was probably helped out of sticky spots by his anxious parents.
I know such a family. While one child was independent, ambitious and chose to move away from home to pursue music, his younger brother, who was our age, grew up close to his parents. While the rest of us gave tuitions and did odd-jobs for spending money, he was flush with cash all the time, thanks to his wealthy parents.
Once, when he borrowed a cousin’s car (without her knowledge) and totalled it, his folks bailed him out to the tune of several lakhs. When he finally left home with a job, his parents travelled with him, helped him rent a place and fitted it out with brand new furniture, down to a state-of-the-art music system and a top-of-the-line kitchen. A year down the line, they repeated the act when he changed jobs and moved to another city.
Our paths bifurcated then and it was only recently, after more than a decade, that I met up with his brother, now a well-established musician. I asked after his parents and was sorry to learn that both of them had passed away, one soon after the other. And how had his brother taken it, I queried, not with a little trepidation, since I knew how dependent he was on them. “Not too well,” he said. “You know, his biggest complaint is that they didn’t leave behind enough for us. He claims they spent money like water in their last years—they loved travelling and spent a lot of time abroad—which ate into our inheritance.”
A statement of that kind is a bit of a non sequitur, and we returned to our coffees in silence. He seemed embarrassed, obviously lulled by our old friendship into revealing a bit more than he had intended to.
Once he’d recovered, he explained briefly that each of them had actually received handsome inheritances on their parents’ death, but that his brother—my contemporary—had run through his share in no time, spending it on holidays and the high-life. The windfall had also encouraged him to leave his job (at which he was doing very well) and launch his own venture, which, unfortunately, folded up within a year. Now, without his parents to fall back on, or a steady income, he was regularly turning to his elder brother for help. And while he had done his best, I could tell
that his sibling’s perpetual neediness was driving the brothers—never close at the best of times—further apart.
It would be easy to point out exactly where the parents had gone wrong in bringing up their sons (or, at least, one of them), but it would be of little help to my friend at this point. With his brother and a few carefully identified friends, though, we are trying to reach out to him.
The first step, of course, is to help him find employment. Thankfully, he still has enough credibility on that front. The next will be to clear up his debts. And the third, to ensure such income as he earns is administered so that he puts by a little nest egg for the future.
And, perhaps, most important, to acknowledge that our friend has a disability, a financial kink, and treat him accordingly—if necessary, for the rest of his life.
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