A Storm of Situations, a Stillness Within

October 13, 2026

October 13 happens to be my niece Saifiya's birthday. We call her Saifu with affection.

An introvert, silent girl.

She has seen very unbecoming circumstances right from childhood. Her father, a chronic drunkard, has not been able to fulfil any responsibility, and she, being the only girl child in a household stricken with her father's almost sinful carelessness, had to witness him just lying flat, fully drunk throughout the day, not going to the office for his small job for weeks altogether.

And we, her mamaji and mausi, right from the beginning, have been trying our level best to support them.

And after my mother's demise, things went so wrong that my sister's husband could no longer go to his office. He quit his small job as a factory supervisor, and there he would be throughout the day, lying drunk, senseless.

A horrible environment in the house, in that small two-room apartment that they had taken on rent.

We had been trying with our meagre resources to fill up the gaps in order to help them survive economically, but now even his little earning was gone, and it was a vicious, painful environment for a young girl.

Saifiya was 17 or 18 at that time, and that is when I realised this little flower needs a better environment. It will just wither away in such tension.

My sister has a temperament that would enable people to term her as one of the best girls in the entire village. So soft-spoken, honest, gentle, just staying on the course of domestic life on the basis of her faith, no anger, no bitching, no spreading rumours like women in neighbourhoods do.

I would say a quiet and silent sufferer.

So it was too much.

So I brought them back to our house. We had to abandon the idea of continuing with the earlier arrangement because her husband has absolutely nothing. There is no ancestral property, no savings, nothing. Even the apartment they stayed in was on rent.

And there was another consideration, the familiar question of what people would say. In conservative societies, people start passing judgements when you have your daughter sitting at your home.

But I thought if I just look at it that way, that would be like feeding this drunken leech just in order to save this so-called social objection that a woman, however hard life is for her, should stay at her husband's place.

So that is, I thought, instead of just supporting him, who does not deserve support in any way because he himself is not taking any responsibility, had he even just gone on with his small, petty job that was just sufficient for his own expenses, we would have still continued supporting our sister and niece.

But now it was impossible, and with a heavy heart I brought them to my place, and me, my brother, my sister, we have been taking care of them.

Absolutely, they are family.

In fact, to me they are the immediate family.

So the little girl, the little flower on the stage of drama of life, whom I had seen years back as a little pink-faced, tiny monkey in the hospital, just 15–20 minutes after her birth, is a young woman now and working hard to make a career.

All the best to her.

I wish her the best of life and living, and we are always there with our protective, blessing hands to nurture her, to help her realise her full potential.

And this is a sort of gift in the drama of life from her mamaji on her birthday: this article.

There is one simple thing I would like her to understand as she goes through the various situations of life.

Don't take things, people, situations personally.

Remember, we are merely playing different roles, various roles at home, in the office, in business and careers, in relationships.

Now what do I mean by taking things and situations as just roles played without taking them personally?

By merely playing a role, I mean being aware of the level of engagement involved in dealing with a situation.

The situation, of course, will have various operating elements involved in it, including people, relationships, duties, responsibilities, dos and don'ts.

So we will use the word situation, by which we mean any type of engagement a human being goes into on a routine day, involving both personal and professional domains.

So we can say, as a summary, one should not take situations personally.

There is a reasonably wide scope for our level of engagement with any type of situation. Enough to play the role of a problem solver, or being a part of it, or resolver of the issue, or facilitator of the process in some capacity.

There is a healthy level of engagement with a situation that saves the situation from turning personal.

By personal, I mean a situation that tampers with our ego and starts triggering our impulsive reactions, thus breeding hate, anger, argument, guilt, shame, etc.

I will give you certain examples to prove this point.

Suppose people are watching Ram Leela and they get involved and become something other than mere audience, take things personally, forgetting that the person playing Ravan is a chap like them acting in the epic story, and attack him.

Won't it create chaos?

Or take the example of a bureaucrat sitting on a file.

Now there can be two reasons for delay or denial: purely technical, that is, things not matching up at the legal, regulatory, policy or instructions level, or his own personal biases and judgements born of them.

If the delay is due to the latter, then it becomes problematic.

It will bring anger, which will further feed on his sense of balance and fair play.

It breeds injustice.

And all that just because he took things personally, forgetting he was playing a duty.

The only loss for him is that his ego gets more strengthened. He turns more arrogant and power-crazy.

We can also take the example of a stage play.

Suppose the actor playing the lover on stage takes things personally and starts assaulting the other actor who is playing the heroine's molester.

Won't it be crazy?

It will be, surely.

Or say two groups on the stage, standing against each other as per the plot, take things personally and cross the playwright's boundary of arguments and discussion to outright assault.

That is how it is in real life.

The role merely needs an argument, but we end up assaulting.

And assault, in its direct as well as indirect, subtle forms, is a massive nourishment for the ego.

Thus, we have to understand that there is a hierarchy of engagement with issues.

There is a threshold beyond which things turn personal, creating chaos.

It's a very simple spiritual practice if we try to be aware that we are merely playing roles meant for various situations in the drama of life.

We can one day become detached from all that we do. The wisdom of akarma -- learning to play our roles beyond our ego. 

A stillness within a storm of situations. We might be in a storm of situations, but without that personal bondage, we build akarma, even though so many things happen through us. That, according to me dear readers, is the wisdom of detachment -- playing our roles without becoming them.