I used to find certain habits of mine sprawled across the memory foam of my comfort zone, their feet half a foot safely away from the boundary. When inquisition repeatedly asked for tradition, my ordinary habits, in hopes of glory, raised their hands obediently.
I used to look back at a routine that unfolded once in a while and expect to find it coloured in ancestral vermillion or, at the very least, dangling from familial ropes. But when I listened to stories rushing out of cheerful mouths, lined with reminiscence and promises of re-creation, I could find the meaning in, and of, traditions. In every such re-enactment of a seemingly trivial activity, I believe there is hope for its perpetuity.
For the longest time, I used to tie tiny bundles of tradition, infuse it, or rather confuse it, with the obsolete scent of convention and culture, and ship them to a faraway address of a relatively religious relative, in hopes that they could find use for what seemed of no use to me.
I know now that it is incredibly stupid − to believe that my mother’s insistence that I learn and live with integrity and a subsequent approval for it, isn’t tradition; to decide that my family of introverts, celebrating a festival of lights and chaos, in a dimly lit café in peace every year, isn’t tradition; to overlook recurring happy moments of togetherness shared with people I love when I look for tradition.
If we were to call this careful process, of picking and preserving moments to reopen and relive them at those times when the memory of them is slipping way, tradition, I think I might have a story or two.
I used to look back at a routine that unfolded once in a while and expect to find it coloured in ancestral vermillion or, at the very least, dangling from familial ropes. But when I listened to stories rushing out of cheerful mouths, lined with reminiscence and promises of re-creation, I could find the meaning in, and of, traditions. In every such re-enactment of a seemingly trivial activity, I believe there is hope for its perpetuity.
For the longest time, I used to tie tiny bundles of tradition, infuse it, or rather confuse it, with the obsolete scent of convention and culture, and ship them to a faraway address of a relatively religious relative, in hopes that they could find use for what seemed of no use to me.
I know now that it is incredibly stupid − to believe that my mother’s insistence that I learn and live with integrity and a subsequent approval for it, isn’t tradition; to decide that my family of introverts, celebrating a festival of lights and chaos, in a dimly lit café in peace every year, isn’t tradition; to overlook recurring happy moments of togetherness shared with people I love when I look for tradition.
If we were to call this careful process, of picking and preserving moments to reopen and relive them at those times when the memory of them is slipping way, tradition, I think I might have a story or two.
