I grew up around books. My parents strongly believed in giving children books over anything else. Though initially they were just books with animal pictures in it.
When i was four, my dad started getting me a monthly kids magazine. I understood nothing from it, but i was veryy excited nevertheless. It was something i looked forward to every month. I think i had over hundred editions over the years. They also never failed to bring me to the yearly book fair that happend in our town. I still remember pestering them to buy me expensive books even though i wouldn’t understand a single word off it.
When i look back on my childhood for happy memories, I always zero in on these moments. Either the joy i had when i held my books were so high that they drowned out everything else, or they were the only moments of joy i experienced. I’m so thankful to my parents, though. They tried hard to give me a clear head despite their shortcomings. They are kind people.
My dad, especially. I’ve seen that man take pains to not inconvenience any life form, even seemingly inconsequential beings.
I’ve heard him tell about how he always turns off the shower when he notices an ant on the floor, to let it run away. “Don’t make a concious decision to harm another life, to the best of your abilities”, he used to say. It awed me a great deal when I was a child. It influenced my thinking a lot, too, that carried over to adulthood.
I think that is why the whiplash is so hard, so,so hard when I see my dad be casteist and use casteist slurs sometimes. It’s like at such moments, the man i remember from my childhood and the man throwing away such casual hate are two separate entities and there is no way for me to merge two of them into the same person. He has never actually said or did hurtful things to anybody. He treats those people with kindness irl, but I cannot ignore the fact that people like him still do lots of damage and help propogate the hate more down the lane. A couple of off-handed thoughts are still deeply problematic.
He is a part of the same system I hate, even if he doesn’t actually do anything to spread the discrimination. Or perhaps, any hate that is ingrained so deep in a person would always, always show up in subtle ways, and “small” things done by everyone in the society is powerful in how it keeps discrimination always living, always thriving. Some people have infinite compassion for beings inside the boundaries of their world, and zero consideration for beings that live outside of it.
I don’t know how to come to terms with the fact that the man i view as being so kind is a part of an oppresive system which makes life terrible for a lot of people. Perhaps that is what makes certain things hard to battle with - when kindness at a level that genuinely moves you, and structural blind hatred with one dimensional thinking co-exist in the same person.